AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter 1
“Are you sure this is the place?”
“I’m sure this is the place. I’m betting my eyesight on it.”
For someone with no eyesight, Daria Sinclair’s humor was as intact as ever, sometimes bordering on the morbid. Charlie Bennett watched as her cloudy white orbs zoned in on the scene ahead before he looked at it, too. The house stood in the center of a brown lawn, a gigantic thing that was just as unkempt as the grass in front. He took in the windows boarded up, the front porch that looked like it would collapse on the first step, and the attic rising above with its blackened window and chipped wooden panels.
“And how long has it been haunted?”
“It’s not haunted,” Daria shot back, huffing. “It was just abandoned for a long time.”
“How long ago?”
“Decades ago,” she said, still focused on the house. She twisted in her spot, braced her hands on the ground, and narrowed her gaze. Something flashed in it for a second. “Witches owned the place. Secret records. I want to go inside….”
She twisted once more, not seeming to care that she was soiling her pants. His hand skated around her waist and hauled her back when she attempted to sprint, and she rewarded him with a scowl. Unfazed, Charlie leveled her with a look, understanding that despite her blindness, she felt it. Daria always felt things on a greater level.
“You know why we can’t. Daria?” he prompted, used to her bursts of spontaneity. “What did I say about witches and their houses?”
Her scowl dimmed into a pout. “Their houses are infused with magic even when they leave it. We might end up with chopped heads and severed body parts if we try to cross their traps.”
“Barriers,” he corrected. “Which come down sometimes, but we don’t know the pattern yet…unless you do?”
“No,” she admitted reluctantly, then glowered in his direction. “Why are you here, anyway?”
“Because you said you had a stakeout. We always do stakeouts.”
“We haven’t done stakeouts in months.”
The last words remained unsaid: because he had grown busy with his last year of studies and she had become preoccupied with things related to her Fae life. He led a double life as a bear shifter clan guard and a regular university student until he graduated and needed to find a job. She led a simpler one being blind, her family a known recluse, and going back and forth between her cave home and his forest home until the last few months when they hadn’t quite seen each other. They pretty much grew up together as teenagers after his cousin married her Fae King—and he supposed he missed that familiarity that he had jumped on the chance when she texted him earlier.
“Either way, patience is a virtue,” he said.
“And following instinct saves lives.”
“What does your instinct tell you now?”
Daria glanced at him and closed her eyes. He didn’t see it, but he felt her senses sharpen in the way she stilled, and he knew she could sense everything now: the cars sputtering about in the streets, the breeze stirring the grass, his breathing. He could sense them, too, but waited for the rest.
“I feel two small animals fighting there.” She pointed to their right, where a forest was situated just beside the house. “They are wrestling over food. There are people fighting two houses down. A couple, I think. She’s accusing him of things and he’s defending his actions. She’s crying and he’s angry. I don’t hear anything from inside the witch house….”
“But?”
Her shoulders slumped. “But the magic is strong. It’s undetectable to humans and most creatures, but I can envision it as a thick wall that never wavers.”
“Thicker than how you see our invisible barriers?” he asked curiously. “The ones a Fae made to protect our forest territory?”
“Thicker,” she confirmed. “Impenetrable. But maybe not for twenty-four hours.”
Hope swirled in her voice, subtle under her casual tone. He knew her enough to know it meant something.
“Why are we here, anyway? What do you want from the haunted house?”
Her shoulders tensed, then relaxed. “It’s a regular stakeout for my clan. I told you. What did you think it was?”
He perused her once more, noting the jeans first: tight but not too tight, unlike the loose ones she always wore or the endless summery dresses she owned. Her hair, usually up in a ponytail or a bun, was loose and curled around her shoulders, and further inspection had him finally see what they had been hiding earlier: that she wasn’t wearing one of her usual shirts but a frilly brown top. Charlie jerked back and assessed her.
“I think you were planning to go out somewhere with how you dressed—nothing too fancy, but fancy by your standards. Either a date with a guy or friends, but I know you avoid men like the plague or are clueless about their interest, so I’m assuming it’s with friends or one of your cousins. But you got information from a source—you always seem to have them—and you ended up canceling your plans and getting here immediately. Naturally, I was always your partner-in-crime, so you texted me. Reflex.”
