Read Unspoken: The Lynburn Legacy for Free Online Page A

the doors of the school open.
    Holly was on her own. She held her hands up. “I tried, boss. I did establish contact with him at lunch, had a little chat with him about our motorbikes.” She smiled. “And I think I was right about him.”
    “That he’s crazy?” asked Kami.
    Holly’s smile spread. “That he might be fun.”
    “So he’s
not
crazy?”
    “I didn’t say that,” Holly said. “My current verdict would be: Crazy eyes. Nice ass.”
    “I think I want that on my tombstone,” Kami said. “Remember my last wishes, if I get involved in a tragic accident with a fruit cart before I can put it in writing. So, what happened?”
    Holly shrugged, bouncing down the steps two at a time and going over to her motorbike, sliding her helmet over her curls. “He slipped through my fingers. We were talking about motorcycles, a friend stopped me, and then I looked around and he was gone. Let me tell you, that usually does not happen. Usually I can’t lose them even if I’m trying.”
    “I believe you,” said Kami, and sighed. “Well, never mind. We’ll get him on Monday.” She waved as Holly pulled into the street, then headed on to the library. Guys mightdisappoint, but she knew journalism would never let her down.

    The Sorry-in-the-Vale library was one of the ugliest buildings in town. It was a squat brown-brick building that did an amazing impression of a bungalow from the outside and had three stories inside. The roof tiles were crumbly and a strange apricot shade. Inside, the worst part was the carpets. They were weirdly mottled orange and brown, as if someone had skinned a vast diseased orangutan.
    The best part was a computer with an Internet connection that Kami did not have to share with two brothers, one intent on watching every funny cat video the Web had to offer, and the other having a star-crossed love affair with Wikipedia. It was also full of books, though that side of the enterprise proved trickier than Kami had hoped.
    “Hi,” Kami said to Dorothy, the head librarian, who bought bread at Claire’s every morning and instantly returned Kami’s smile. “Can you tell me where I could find books on Satanism?”
    Twenty minutes later, she had Dorothy convinced that it was for a school project, and she really did
not
have to telephone Kami’s parents. When she finally got away from Dorothy and into the nonfiction section on the top floor, she didn’t find any books called
Animal Sacrifice: Why We Do This Completely Disgusting Thing and Who We Sacrificers Are Likely to Be
, but she found a few books that she hoped related to the topic. She piled them by her computer and spent time alternately leafing through them and feeding the printerchange so it would print her articles as well as truly horrible pictures of people trying to tell the future with goat entrails.
    Kami really didn’t think what she’d seen was Satanism. Satanism seemed to involve a lot of specific symbols, and there hadn’t been any of them at the hut. This left Kami with absolutely no idea what was going on, her hair frizzed up in the sticky heat of the stuffy room, and a printer coughing and stealing the last of her money.
    It was closing time at the library. Kami gave up her day as totally unproductive. She gathered her giant stack of paper and the few books that seemed helpful, and decided that she would rather risk the creaky lift that was a fire hazard than the dark steps that might break her neck.
    This meant, of course, that when she walked out of the nonfiction room, she saw the lift doors closing. “Hold the lift!” Kami yelled, and charged forward.
    The guy inside pulled the little trick of punching the air as if it was the button to open the lift.
    Kami shoved her stack of paper and books between the closing doors. “I said hold the lift,
asshole
!”
    The doors opened, giving a low whine as they did so. Kami knew just how they felt.
    “Oh, is this the lift?” the guy said in a bored voice. “We call them