Free Blackfin Sky by Kat Ellis

don’t worry. Just had a crappy day.’
Sky sighed and closed her eyes as her father kissed her forehead. ‘I don’t have any hot chocolate, but I can easily go to get some if it will make you feel better…’
She laughed. Gui’s solution to most problems was hot chocolate, which Sky would have found ridiculous if she didn’t also grudgingly admit that it worked. Most of the time.
‘No, I’m fine. It looks like you have work to do, and I just kind of wanted to come and sit here for a while, if that’s okay.’
Gui disappeared into his office at the back of the garage for a second, then came back with his big old sheepskin coat. He wrapped it around Sky over her own coat, and nodded in satisfaction.
‘Sit as long as you like, coco. But it gets draughty dans le garage, and your mother will strike me down if I let you catch a chill.’
They both burst out laughing at the unlikely image. She might loose the occasional string of expletives into the ether, but Lily would never raise a hand against her supersized husband.
‘Thanks, Dad,’ Sky muttered softly, then watched her father get back to work on the new Chrysler which she recognised as belonging to Miss Schwarz, her science teacher.
Her thoughts whirled with too many questions, and she couldn’t decide where to start asking for answers. Blackfin was fit to burst with secrets, but which ones did Sky really want to unearth?
Before long Sky felt her head sinking towards the metal workbench, and she was gathered up in Gui’s colossal arms.
‘Time to go home, I think,’ he chuckled, and Sky let herself drift off to sleep while her dad buckled her into the cab of his truck.

7
‘ You knew she … like him, Lily .’
‘But I never knew Severin … his gift was … how was I to know? ’
It was not the broken whispers drifting from her parents’ room that woke Sky, but the shifting groans of the old house. It was as though the Blood House wanted Sky to hear, carefully coaxing her from sleep to listen. She rolled to face the wall, fully expecting the grain of the wooden panelling to have shifted with the shadows. The Blood House did not disappoint her.
The friendly face of an old man held a finger to his lips, there and yet not when she concentrated on the texture of the wood. Nevertheless, Sky listened.
‘…makes sense … never asked Severin … the circus burned …’
Unable to understand the snatches drifting through the old walls, Sky crept from her room, keeping to the edges of the floorboards to minimise the creaks. But the Blood House wanted her to hear, and so its boards made no sound as she carefully leaned against the door to her parents’ bedroom.
‘I thought we had left all this behind us the night of the fire.’
Sky’s father moved across the room towards the wardrobe, the sound of the floorboards giving him away.
‘The woods can’t hold our secrets forever, no matter how hard we try to keep them hidden. But how can we make Sky … how can we help her understand, Gui, if we don’t know how it works ourselves? Severin only told me bits and pieces, and I could never tell when he was being truthful.’ Sky’s mother sighed. ‘It’s a miracle she came back to us at all.’
The woods again? First Jared, now my parents…
Gui made a deep noise of agreement in his throat. ‘I wonder why she doesn’t seem to know she left, and yet she is aware that three months have passed since that night. It’s just … c’est de la folie .’
Lily made no audible response, though Sky pressed her ear tighter to the wooden door to try to discern her movements. When a few seconds had passed and she still heard nothing, Sky began to suspect her mother’s light-footedness was about to expose her in the act of spying. She crept away, back to her room. But she didn’t stay there long.
The brief snatches of conversation she had overheard had confirmed something, at least. If Sky wanted answers, she would have to start looking for them in the woods.
Blackfin Woods