Free Descendant by Eva Truesdale Page B

windows that reflected an eerie image of swaying trees in the moonlight.
    “Nice place.”
    “We like it okay,” Vanessa said with a smile.
    “Is it just you and Eli?” I asked as we walked the winding stone path to the front door.
    “No, ‘we’ is the four of us—Eli and myself, and Will and Kael, too,” she explained.
    “Seems like an awfully big place for just the four of you.”
    “Well , it used to belong to Eli’s family until...” I glanced sideways and saw that she was frowning. When she noticed my gaze, however, the frown quickly disappeared.
    “Anyway,” she continued in a rush, “I sort of grew up with Will and Eli… so when Eli ended up all alone in this big place, Will and I decided to move in with him. Kael had already been staying with them off and on—he was a good friend of Eli’s dad. Now he pretty much stays here all the time, and we have others who stop by every now and then too, and some of those stay for a while.” Vanessa stopped suddenly and pointed at two people sitting on a bench on the house’s lower porch. “Like those two, for example.”
    The bright moonlight and a nearby lantern helped me make out their two distinct figures. One of them looked considerably small er than the other, with long hair that shimmered in the moonlight like Vanessa’s did. The two of them were hunched over in conversation, studying something on the table that I couldn’t see.
    “Jack Lawing and Emily Vaughn,” Vanessa said. “They travel through these parts a lot.”
    At the sound of their names, Jack and Emily both abandoned whatever they were looking at on the table and looked our direction. I couldn’t stop a shiver from running down my spine when they did so; I suppose I should’ve expected the glowing eyes they stared at us with, since they were just like Kael and Vanessa’s. But I still found them incredibly unsettling.
    “Hel o Vanessa!” Emily called. She seemed a lot more enthusiastic than her companion, who gave us a wary look as he grabbed something off the table and slid it into his pocket in what I took to be a rather poor attempt at secrecy.
    “Hey Ems,” Vanessa said. She smiled warmly at the girl, and then at Jack as he slowly made his way over to us.
    Jack seemed to be purposely avoiding eye contact with me as he approached, but I couldn’t help but stare at him; his face was covered in scars, including one that ran all the way from his cheek down the side of his neck and possibly further—I couldn’t tell , since it disappeared underneath his white t-shirt.
    white t-shirt.
    “This the girl Kael was talkin’ about?” Jack said in a gruff voice. His golden eyes, which were poorly complimented by the dark circles underneath them, darted about nervously as he spoke.
    Vanessa didn’t reply. I glanced over at her, but her eyes were locked with Jack’s, and they stayed there—even when I tapped her on the shoulder after about a minute of silence had passed. It was starting to get creepy, mostly because of the fact that, while every other part of them was perfectly still , every now and then their faces would twist into some sort of expression. I endured about another minute of this before grabbing Vanessa’s arm and giving her a hard shake.
    “Hel o? Earth to Vanessa?”
    She looked over at me, but it wasn’t Vanessa who spoke.
    “The whole thing seems real y suspicious,” Emily said.
    I breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn’t gone mute on me after all .
    “I guarantee you Valkos has got something to do with this,”
    Jack said in his rough voice, his eyes continuing their nervous flittering.
    “We don’t know that, Jack,” Vanessa said.
    “Don’t we? Think what you want, but me and Elias was talking about it earlier and—”
    “Oh!” Vanessa said suddenly. “Sorry Jack, but you’ve just reminded me… Eli will be waiting for us, we should go…”
    And next thing I knew, Vanessa had grabbed my sleeve and was pul ing me toward the house. Once we were