Dead and Dusted by Lily Webb (most recommended books .TXT) 📗

of us in the reception room the entire time, so unless she had another secret power of being in two places at once, I didn’t see how she could’ve pulled it off.

The elevator’s ding jarred me out of my head. Silently, I brought Agent Gemwood and Brady to room 312 and stopped at the door. “This is Zadie’s room.”

“Very good. Thank you, er… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“Selena,” I said, and the fairy stared at me with her ethereal eyes.

“That’s a beautiful name. You know, you remind me so much of a dear friend of mine, but now’s not the time for that,” she said, and turned back to the door. She waved her hand in front of it and, amazingly, the lock clicked, and the door popped open — proving her point that not all magic required wands and words. “Ms. Chamberlain? Are you here?” Agent Gemwood called but after several seconds she got no answer, so she faced Brady and me. “You’d best wait out here, just to be safe.”

Though I desperately wanted to know what she’d find, I knew better than to protest, so I stepped back. With a nod, Agent Gemwood pushed the door open and stepped cautiously inside. In the brief glimpse I caught of the room, it looked perfectly clean and normal.

“Oh, my goodness,” Agent Gemwood’s soft voice carried from inside, and my heart dropped into my stomach.

Brady stepped forward. “What is it, Flora?” he called into the room.

“It looks like Ms. Chamberlain hasn’t left us,” she called back, and I felt like I might be sick because if Zadie was still in her room but hadn’t answered, that could only mean one thing. But then, if she was dead, then how could Jorah have seen her walk out of the inn last night? Or had that all been some kind of illusion? “There’s more dust in here, too. Lots of it,” Agent Gemwood added, jolting me.

“Is there anything else? Maybe another letter?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“There is. Give me a moment to make sure it’s safe,” Agent Gemwood said, and after several agonizing minutes, she emerged from Zadie’s room with a piece of paper in hand. Brady’s eyes widened at the sight of it, but Agent Gemwood shook her head. “It’s okay; I did a magic sweep. The dust is definitely what did the job, but there isn’t any left on the letter, which is good, because its message makes no sense…” Agent Gemwood trailed as she held the paper out and read it again.

I swallowed the growing lump in my throat. “Can I… Can I see it?”

Agent Gemwood looked to Brady for approval, and after he nodded, she passed the paper to me. I took a deep breath before looking down at the text, which to my absolute horror, read: “Soon nature will cleanse itself of those who don’t belong.”

As if the piece of paper had spontaneously caught fire and burned me, I screamed and flung it away as a pair of haunting ice-blue eyes and a mouthful of horrible, jagged stone teeth flashed in my mind. Blackness crowded my vision from the corners, and my knees buckled as I lost my grip on consciousness.

“Selena! What’s wrong?” Agent Gemwood asked as she caught me, but I couldn’t speak because a terrifying realization had seized me: The creature I’d seen in my dreams was real — which meant all of Starfall Valley was in danger.

Chapter 9

Somehow, I’d moved to the kitchen table with no recollection of how or when I’d gotten there. Thorn kneeled on the floor in front of me with my hands clutched in his. “Selena?” he asked as I stirred back to reality. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” I answered, and his honeyed eyes squeezed shut as he breathed a sigh of relief.

“Thank Lilith. We didn’t know where you’d gone or if you were coming back.”

“What?” I asked, completely baffled. “I’ve been here the whole time.”

“Physically, yeah, but otherwise…” he trailed and shrugged. “You just kinda checked out. None of us could reach you. I was so worried; we all were.”

As if they’d appeared out of nowhere, I realized Blair, Jadis, Agent Gemwood, and Brady were all sitting at the table. I wanted to say something comforting to them, but I couldn’t because I thought I really was losing it. Plenty of people had vivid nightmares like the ones I’d been having, but no one had them become reality — not even witches and warlocks.

“I’m getting pretty worried myself,” I muttered.

Blair leaned across the table, her elbows resting against its surface, and flashed me a sympathetic smile. “Did you see something, love? When you touched the letter, I mean?”

“I’ve been seeing a lot of things lately. Weird things. They’ve only been in my dreams until now,” I said, but stopped short of telling her the whole story. Jadis’ eyes jumped to mine, and she nodded at me as if to encourage me to share my latest nightmare with everyone, but I looked down at the table. Though I really didn’t want to share what I’d seen out of fear of what everyone might think of me, I had no choice.

Because somehow, my nightmares had bled into reality. How else could the same phrase the creature had uttered in my dream have shown up in the letter in Zadie’s room? Jadis was the only one I’d told, and even then, I hadn’t shared the exact wording, but there was no mistaking it on that letter. So what the heck was the creature, and how had they gotten into Kindred Spirits?

When I glanced back up, I found everyone watching me, waiting for whatever I had to say next like I was some great oracle. Before all my confidence left me, I took a deep breath and dove into the details. I told them everything — the dreams, the creature, what they’d said, and how the same phrase was in the letter in Zadie’s room —