This is the book I had originally called Grimm... but there's a popular tv show called Grimm, so I'm trying to find a new name. Have you ever seen shadows shift, and thought they were more than they really were? That's where the idea for this book came from. I hope you enjoy it! Feel free to comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Jesse
1
She was lost. Completely and utterly lost as she stood in the mall as people flooded around her and Tank. Everyone stared at her and her dog. It was either her looks, long wavy blond hair, fair face, black eyes, or the way she dressed, tight jeans, tall-laced-up-beaten-up boots, tattered leather jacket, duffel bag, or it was Tank, her big, black, bearded, pointy eared, imposing, Giant Schnauzer that they stared at. She stared defiantly back. Challenging everyone who looked at her for more than a glance.
She clutched onto an empty duffle bag as if her life depended on it. The old Speed-o bag reminded her she had been normal, had a normal life, at one point in time. Five years ago. She had had a family. A mom, dad, little brother, and Tank. It all had been ripped away in an instant. Only Tank survived and she snuck him along, wherever she went, to whichever foster home she bounced to next.
Paige grabbed the duffel off the front stoop of her foster parents house earlier in the afternoon when she got back from school. It was sitting there with Tank, his leash, and a handwritten note saying “Happy 18th Birthday.” She took everything except the note and stormed off. No family. No friends. Nowhere to go.
She knew why it was sitting there when she got back to the house. She was too different. Too defiant. Too resistant. Too bent on not changing who she was. Too strong to let anyone, let anyone know how much she still hurt. But there were other things too. Things all seven foster families tried to have her heavily medicated for. But now she was eighteen. A woman. Out of the system.
Paige sighed and pulled her long hair into a messy bun to give her something to do as a sense of loss overcame her again. She didn’t know what she was loosing. None of her foster parents ever wanted her. She never wanted them either. She wanted her old life back. Her mom. Her dad. Her brother. Her house. All the memories. But fires had a way of taking all that away from a person. The only reason she and Tank were still around was a fluke walk in the middle of the night after pizza, too much CocaCola, and a steady sugar high from her thirteenth birthday cake.
She remembered rounding the corner to go home, running with Tank, smiling down at him, thinking about how, in the morning she would drag her little brother out of bed to fly the model airplane she had gotten before they ate a breakfast of cold pizza and cake, to see her home ablaze. Paige had sprinted, releasing Tank’s leash as she screamed for her parents and little brother. No one answered. As she ran toward the burning building Tank had clamped onto her pant leg and pulled her back. She sat on the ground screaming, sobbing into Tank’s fur as firetrucks pulled up to the blazing house. They milled around her after draping a blanket over her shoulders and pulling her and Tank away from the fire.
She felt chilled as she watched her home burn down, then fold in on itself with her family inside. One fireman walked past and called it a ‘total loss.’ Paige couldn’t have agreed more. She remained there, numb, absentmindedly petting Tank, digging her fingers into his black hair. She felt an odd emptiness in her chest as she looked at the house, she thought she should feel more than the nothing she was feeling, but nothing was all she got.
The last wall tumbled upon itself, flames licking up to the sky, embers climbing higher and higher. She watched embers fall back to the ground, her eyes gliding down to where the embers burned the leaves on the trees. Then she saw something in the shadows. She could have sworn someone was watching her, but by the time she looked again whatever it had been, whoever it had been, was long gone.
Paige shook her head, bringing herself back to the present, and looked into the milling crowd. She nodded to Tank. “Lets go Tank.” The giant black dog looked up at her with amber eyes and his black eyebrows rose as he cocked his head. They walked into the throng. People stared warily at the huge black dog, but a service vest and well placed smiles and glares from a confident owner staved off any remarks or reprimands.
They walked over the gleaning white tiles and past people absorbed in holiday shopping. Christmas was less than a month away. Paige paused in front of a shop where a warm winter jacket was on prominent display. She ran her long fingers through her hair, pushing a few rogue strands out of her face.
“That looks nice,” she said to Tank who looked up at her expectantly. Paige smiled and scratched his beard. “Nice and warm.” She had had nothing remotely nice since she went into foster care. When the social worker took her away asking about family, friends, and wills Paige had shook her head, then the woman handed her some too big clothes and took her away from the burned out house.
She felt the familiar sense someone watching her, it had happened before the fire, it had happened that very night, and it was happening now. It was just an inkling, a strange sixth sense, a tingle at the nape of her neck. Paige turned to the shadow near a pillar. That’s where they were. They were always in the dark shadows or in the brightest chinks of light. Nothing was there. As she turned away Paige saw a figure folded out of the shadows cast by the pillar. On instinct she flipped her butterfly knife out and Tank growled at his master’s sudden shift in mood.
Paige had seen the Shadow Walkers and Light Walkers, people appear from shadows and light, since she was little. When she told her mom she smiled and said she had a beautiful imagination. When she told her dad he scoffed at her and patted her head patronizingly. When she told her brother he nodded silently and pointed to the same thing she was seeing. None of the Walkers had ever approached her. This one felt different. Something was off. It felt like he was familiar. He knew her somehow.
to be continued...
