Free Midnight Sky (Dark Sky Book 2) by Amy Braun

“borrow” for my own meager inventions. Snooping in drawers and cabinets to learn my parent’s secrets. Getting caught every single time by my mother and father, who would simply smile and say, “You just needed to ask, Claire.”
    The hurt of their loss drilled into my chest again. I had to close my eyes and will the memories away. My parents were dead. They wouldn’t catch me creeping into their office or smile at me again. They were gone, and their burden had become mine.
    I took a breath, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.
    The light from my torch revealed a sad, broken parallel to the room I used to know. I recognized the wooden worktable, though it was lying on the floor and missing its legs. The fabric from the chairs had been ripped off, only tufts of stuffing remaining. Cabinets were toppled and pulled open, shelves bare of tools. There didn’t seem to be any kind of paper visible. I hurried for the cabinets and started pulling them open, shining the torch inside and feeling around for any scrap of paper. When I found none, I looked behind the furniture, trying to see if a scrap had slipped down and was hiding under the wreckage. It wasn’t.
    I searched the room from top to bottom, hunted for hidden compartments, keys, anything. I came up empty.  
    Feeling defeated, I dropped onto the floor and leaned against the collapsed table, putting my head in my hands.
    “Want some help?”
    I turned and looked at Riley and Sawyer standing in the doorway, watching my slumped form. That they were both standing there without arguing was incredible, though the sympathy in their eyes made me feel fairly pathetic.  
    I pushed myself off the floor and wiped away the dust from my pants. “There’s nothing here,” I mumbled.
    “Maybe you just need a new set of eyes,” Riley offered, stepping into the room. He carefully lifted pieces of furniture, moving them as though they were glass and scrutinizing the floor below. I started to help, stopping when Riley lightly took my wrist. He smiled kindly and plucked the torch from my hands. “I’ll look in here if you want to check other rooms, Claire. Your parents might have moved the books around for safekeeping, right?” I nodded slowly.   He offered me a gentle smile. “I’ll let you know if I find anything, I promise. You can tell me if they’re the books we need.”
    I sighed, not wanting to give up the search, but agreeing with his idea. While I’d been searching the office, I looked in places I knew, hidden nooks that I’d scoured a hundred times before. It made sense that my mother or father would move their notebooks somewhere that even I wouldn’t think to look. I walked out of the room, passing Sawyer as I did. He was leaning against the doorframe with his arms folded over his chest. His body language suggested that he bored, but his eyes were sharp and alert.
    “You’re not going to help him?” I asked.
    He shrugged one of his shoulders. “Don’t think he’d want it. He muttered something behind my back about me having an ego and being a thieving pirate.” He smirked. “I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right.” Sawyer winked, and I felt heat rise to my cheeks.
    I snickered and took out a second torch from my belt. I pulled it apart to start the light, then walked down the hall with Sawyer trailing behind me. I tried to think about possible hiding places, cabinets and shelves where my parents might use to keep their most important documents, but my mind was distracted. Instead, I tried to remember what the hallways looked like when all the windows were opened and the sunlight illuminated the walls with its warmth, or the voices of loving parents and the smell of fresh cooked eggs.  
    I hadn’t eaten eggs in almost five years. The voices I heard now belonged to new friends and strangers. I couldn’t remember a sky that wasn’t filled with grey.  
    I turned on instinct, walking into a room with tossed and shattered