A Valley of Darkness (A Shade of Vampire #52)(74)

I let out a breath, forcing my consciousness back to the bright, beautiful world around me, allowing it to separate the past from the present.

Yes. Elmcreek was the perfect escape for all of us this summer.

“Oh man, my hat just blew off.” Angie broke the quiet. “And—augh—I can’t reach it. Could one of you guys help me?”

“I volunteer Riley,” announced Lauren.

Exhaling, I stowed the cob I held in my hand in my sack. “Yeah, okay, shortie. Coming.”

I waded through the field, batting away flies and pushing aside leaves until I reached her. The five-foot-five girl with curly blonde hair was standing on her tiptoes, the hem of her short blue dress hiked high up her legs as she stretched for a floppy pink sun hat that was ridiculously out of her reach. She turned around to face me, her hazel eyes meeting mine. She had a smile on her round, impish face, and her light blonde eyebrows, so fair in the daylight they were almost invisible, rose in expectation.

I eyed the hat again and tried to reach for it myself first, given that I was a fair bit taller than her, but I couldn’t, so we ended up coordinating a balancing act with her on my shoulders, knocking my own hat to the ground in the process.

“Wo-hoah, it’s like a whole other world up here,” Angie gasped as her head rose above the jungle of corn.

“Just be quick,” I muttered from between her chunky thighs. “Your butt is breaking my shoulders.”

“It’s all muscle and you know it,” she retorted, before stretching out.

Then she stilled.

“What’s taking so long?” I asked, squinting in the glaring sunlight.

“Hey, I thought the Churnleys didn’t have neighbors on that side of the woods.”

“What?”

“Looks like there are people over there, sunbathing on logs.” She pointed northward, toward the direction of the woods that bordered the Churnleys’ portion of land. I realized she had grabbed the hat already, and was now just staring straight ahead.

“Okay—I’m glad you’re having a nice time up there, but if you’re finished I’m gonna—”

Angie’s knees suddenly clenched around my head. “Wait, Riley. They’re dudes… Four of them. They look like lumberjacks or something. Here, you can see too.” She dove a hand into the side pocket of her dress and slipped out her phone. “That’s what a zoom lens is for… Still got a bit of battery left.” A sharp click sounded as Angie’s phone camera went off.

“Okay, geddown now,” I growled, tugging at her ankle.

She acquiesced, sliding down me with a self-satisfied look on her face. She squinted down at her phone to check out the photo she’d just taken, but it was far too bright to see the screen properly.

“Well, now we all have an extra incentive to hurry up and get back to the house.” She winked at me, before donning her hat and continuing to pick corn.

Smirking, I rolled my eyes and picked up my hat, then moved to return to my spot in the field, when Lauren suddenly materialized out of the bushes in front of me. Her faded blue dungarees looked decidedly grubbier than when we had started, and her coffee-colored ponytail was a tangled mess, but her brown eyes sparkled with mild interest. Adjusting her spectacles primly, she flashed us a sardonic smile.

“Did I hear someone say ‘lumberjacks’?”



Water was more than enough of an incentive for me to finish the job quickly. After my little break, I worked at twice the speed and managed to pick enough corn to fill all three of our sacks within the next fifteen minutes. Then, lugging each sack over our shoulders, we traipsed back to the wooden two-story house that stood at the edge of the cornfields.

We mounted the steps to the porch, passing the Churnleys’ three lazy golden retrievers, who barely raised an eyelid as we reached the door. It had been left on the latch, and Angie pushed it open with a creak. We stepped directly into the kitchen/dining area, where we were met with the pungent smell of Mrs. Churnley’s cooking, and the short, podgy lady herself standing in front of a stove, her bouncy gray hair cooped up in a brown bonnet, while her bald husband sat at the dining table dutifully peeling potatoes.

Their eyes shot to us as we strode in and planted our sacks down on the wooden floorboards.

“Where should we leave these, ma’am?” Angie asked, panting.

“Oh, good girls!” Mrs. Churnley left the frying pan she had been monitoring and bustled over to examine our finds. “You got some real beauties here! I’ll have Mr. Churnley skin some for lunch.”

Mr. Churnley, who was of a similar height and build to his wife, waddled over to join her in examining the corn with his monobrow furrowed, while Lauren, Angie, and I hurried to the sink. We each grabbed a metal cup from the drainer and quickly served ourselves water from a large pitcher. Once we’d swallowed two cups in a row, Angie remarked to the couple, “Seems like you might have new neighbors, by the way.”

Mrs. Churnley turned, her rheumy eyes widening as she made her way back to the frying pan. “Hmm?”

“Yeah,” Angie replied, “we—or I—saw four guys lounging around in the field next door. They were shirtless, so I assumed they were sunbathing…” She set her cup down and dove her hand back into her pocket to retrieve her phone. But as she navigated to her photo app and touched the screen to zoom in, she frowned. “Huh. That’s real weird.” Her eyes narrowed to slits as she squinted at the screen.