Free Shadow Burns: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Preternatural Affairs Book 4) by S.M. Reine

fog.
    There wasn’t a plant on this Earth that should have grown that fast.
    I made sure to watch the ground so that I wouldn’t get confused by the turns this time.
    Pops used to take my siblings and me to a corn maze every Halloween. The biggest damn corn maze that you can imagine. It had been so labyrinthine that the Minotaur would have gotten lost in it. Pops thought it was funny to drop us in there and let us try to figure it out on our own, while he drank with the farm’s owner.
    It pissed me off at the time, but now I understood it was good parenting. What else do you do with three unruly kids on a Halloween sugar high? Throw ‘em in a maze and go drink hard cider until they’re exhausted.
    Anyway, I’d quickly learned a trick to escaping that corn maze: just stick to the right-hand wall.
    No matter where you’re going, if you follow the same wall, you’ll always get to the exit sooner or later. It worked on labyrinths of corn. It should have worked on the road, too.
    Easy as pumpkin pie.
    I followed the right wall of the canyon for ten minutes, according to my watch. Ten minutes alone in the fog with just the two of us.
    Then we turned a corner.
    My knee bumped against the Paradise Mile sign. I almost fell over it the way that I’d fallen over the sawhorses.
    I definitely hadn’t gotten turned around that time.
    Isobel had been right. The road kept dumping us back there, right in front of that house.
    She didn’t rub it in. Judging by her expression, she’d wanted me to prove her wrong. Now we were back at the house and she was on the verge of tears, twisting the car antenna between both hands. “We’re going to die here.”
    “No, we’re not,” I said. “Just because the road’s gone crazy doesn’t mean there isn’t a way out.”
    Vines groaned, creaking as they shifted.
    I glanced over my shoulder. They were crawling across the road now, forming a wall that blocked the exit. They didn’t move when I looked at them, but every time I blinked they were a few inches longer.
    Little by little, the road beyond vanished.
    It felt like those vines were mocking my forced optimism.
    Isobel hadn’t noticed yet. I kept my tone casual as I said, “Let’s try to go in the other direction. Maybe there’s a way out through the back.”
    She stiffened when I tried to walk her toward the house. But she was a good foot shorter than me and her resolve wasn’t strong. I practically had to lift her off her feet, but we walked.
    There was no sound as we passed the house, keeping our distance from the windows decorated by tattered curtains. The weeds grew long on the left side of the building. They climbed around our ankles, scraped the calves of my slacks.
    Call me crazy, but it felt like the house was watching us as we passed. It made no sense—the windows were empty, nobody should have been inside, nothing was moving in the fog.
    But someone was watching us.
    I stayed out of arm’s reach of the house’s walls. Just in case.
    During my earlier visits, I hadn’t had cause to go behind the house to look around. I knew it was a retirement “village,” not just a home, but I was still surprised to see how many cottages occupied the rear of the canyon. Little ones. Didn’t look like they’d been used this century. The windows were boarded, the doors padlocked.
    That was also where I found a garden. At least, I was pretty sure it was a garden. I could make out knee-high wrought-iron fencing and some trees that looked disturbingly human-shaped in the fog.
    And were those tombstones hanging out between the trees? I didn't want to find out.
    I steered clear of the garden, too.
    When we passed that low fence, I could feel that we weren’t alone anymore. The hollowness of the fog had vanished. Isobel’s footsteps and mine were no longer the only noise.
    Someone was following us again.
    “I hear it, too,” Isobel whispered.
    “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “I’ve got you.”
    A shadowy figure appeared from