Free The Crimson Brand by Brian Knight

could sleep in, so she usually took advantage of it. 
    Penny dressed quickly and put her mirror in her pocket.  Bright sunlight outside or not, the second floor hall was always dark; the fixture on the landing between floors only ever succeeded in throwing long, creepy shadows.  Penny descended quickly and quietly, peeking first into the kitchen, then into the living room for signs of life from Susan. 
    Both were empty, but something in the living room caught her eye.  Sitting on the end table next to Susan’s chair lay the package her sister had dropped off during the party the day before.  It was open, the flaps sticking up at jaunty, inviting angles.
    Come here, Penny .  See what’s inside .  You know you’re curious .  You know you want to .
    Penny was curious but turned her back on the package and walked to the mostly unused utility room.  It was one thing to search the basement of her own home, her mother’s childhood home, even if she wasn’t sure that Susan would approve; but she had no right to see what was in that box.  That was Susan’s business, not hers.
    The utility room was narrow, running almost the entire length of the house.  At one end sat an old washer and dryer, with an odd assortment of soaps and arcane laundry-related products on a shelf above them.  A door opposite the hallway led to the back steps.  At the other end stood a second door, one that she had never opened.  If it turned out to be a closet, then she’d have to search the rest of the house for clues to her past.
    It wasn’t a closet. 
    There was a small, square landing with a light switch and a set of steep, narrow steps that led downward.  Penny tried the light and, almost to her surprise, found that it worked.  A weak, dusty glow filled the narrow staircase.
    Penny closed the door behind her and descended.
    The basement felt like a dungeon. Air ducts ran overhead like thick metal snakes, and the hot-water heater huddled in a far corner, next to an ancient, unused wood-burning furnace.
    The walls weren’t concrete or brick but stone and crumbling plaster.  The floor was ancient, with creaking planks, some sagging slightly under Penny’s light frame.  A heavy man might fall right through.  Who knew what might wait beneath the old boards. 
    Rows of sturdy wooden shelves covered one wall, and perhaps a hundred old boxes—some cardboard, some wood—filled every inch.  The top two rows were too high to reach, but a quick search revealed an aluminum ladder leaning against the wall next to a small army of rusty garden tools. 
    Penny walked along the shelves, inspecting the lower rows.  The thick dust covering most of the basement was disturbed in places, a sign, she thought, that some of the boxes had been moved fairly recently.  Susan, maybe digging up a few old photos of Penny’s mom.
    No way to know until she looked for herself; and there was time probably to check a few of the lower boxes before Susan woke.
    She scanned the row before her.  None of the boxes seemed likelier to yield answers than any of the others, so she chose one at random and slid it from the shelf.  It was big and heavy.  She was able to lower it to the floor without dropping it, but there was no way she’d be able to lift it back up to the shelf.
    It contained old paperback books and mason jars full of rocks, from exotic to ordinary: crystals of different colors, agates, chunks of common brown and green opal, fools’ gold, and more.  Penny remembered the old guy at the rock and jewelry shop telling her that her mother used to buy rocks from him. 
    Must have had quite a collection of pretty rocks, all the time she spent here .
    And it was quite a collection.
    Penny screwed the lid off one of the jars and tipped a handful of stones into her open palm.
    She could name a few of them—a brown opal, one that was either jade or jasper, a piece of white quartz—but most were alien to her.
    “Zoe would know them,” she said aloud and