Read Online Blackfin Sky by Kat Ellis - Free Book Online Page B

because she saw what happened that night, and it scared her. Now that doesn’t sound like she just saw you fall, does it?’
Sky swallowed hard, breathing through her nose. ‘How do you know all this?’
Jared shrugged. ‘It was all anyone could talk about when I arrived in Blackfin. And some I guessed when I spotted an old woman walking stark naked near the old church in the woods.’
‘There’s a church in the woods?’ Curiosity overcame the unsettled feeling this conversation had given rise to, and Sky found herself stepping closer to him once more. ‘Nobody goes into Blackfin Woods.’
‘I did. And the old woman does, too. I’m assuming she must be the gypsy who disappeared from the hut – I mean, unless you know of some other old lady who’d be living in a ruined church?’
Sky shook her head. Madame Curio was well known in Blackfin, even though she was avoided by most.
‘How did you even get in there?’ The woods had been well secured against intruders for as long as Sky could remember, the talk of roaming wolves and lightning-trees that electrocuted passing children not enough to keep out idle teenagers.
‘I have my ways. I could go with you to talk to her, if you like? I mean, you want to find out what happened to you, don’t you?’
One second turned into several, and Sky realised she’d been staring at him.
‘I should really be heading home. I have … I have to go.’
‘Don’t you want answers, Sky? Hey, where are you going?’
Sky ran down the length of the pier, not pausing as she passed the fortune-teller’s hut with its gaping, empty windows.
Do I really want to find out what happened to me?
She kept going along the promenade and up the hill, until she had to either stop or risk throwing up in her own front yard. But as the Blood House came into view, she knew she didn’t want to be there on her own, either. As much as she loved her house, she couldn’t face pretending not to see the strange things she always saw in the Blood House, the whispers and creaks and shifting wood grain which sometimes, sometimes, resembled a face.
She didn’t want to deal with anything mysterious for just a little while. So instead, she headed for Gui’s Garage.
‘Hi, coco, ’ Gui slid out from under the car he was working on, having seen Sky’s heeled boots crossing the garage floor. Then he saw her face. ‘What on earth is the matter?’
Gui wiped his oil-blackened hands on a rag before guiding his daughter to sit on one of the workbenches. Sky looked up at his worried expression and debated whether or not she should tell him about all the craziness – the old fortune-teller living in the woods, Jared’s weird interest in what had happened to her, what Bo had said about someone digging up her grave… But at the same time, she felt almost certain that her parents were keeping things from her. They’d been tiptoeing around her like she was terminally ill, whispering behind closed doors and trying to keep her from talking to Officer Vega.
And despite her mother’s maidenly wilting on the day she had supposedly reappeared, they weren’t exactly acting like a couple whose daughter had miraculously returned from the dead. In fact, they were doing everything they could to act as though nothing at all had happened.
Maybe Officer Vega was right, and I should ask Mum about what happened that night. Confront her, maybe.
But Sky knew she’d have no luck tackling her mother head-on. If Lily Rousseau wanted to keep something a secret, it stayed a secret. That was why they hadn’t wanted her to speak to Officer Vega, she was sure of it. But what didn’t they want Sky to know?
The unanswered questions remained a cold, hard wall between Sky and her parents, and it meant that telling her dad what was happening in the hopes he’d fill in the blanks was only going to leave her feeling hurt and disappointed when he didn’t. Fighting with her dad was about the last thing Sky could deal with right now.
‘Nothing,