Read Online Bound In Blue: Book One Of The Sword Of Elements by Heather Hamilton-Senter - Free Book Online Page B

a thrashing sea passed over my eyes.
    Beside the imprints of my hands in the soggy carpet, and all around the room, were the distinct marks of paw prints.
     
     
     
     
    The smell of the carpet didn’t seem to bother Peter at all. Years of mucking out the horse stalls had probably burned off the first layer of cells in his nose. 
    “Why’d you come in here anyway?” he called through the open door.
    “I told you, the horses were acting weird.”
    Peter came out onto the porch and looked down the path to where Doll and Galileo were again happily munching grass. He snorted, but didn’t comment.
    “There was a weird smell too,” I added. He cocked an eyebrow at me and I amended the statement. “Weirder than that.”
    Peter crossed his arms and ran the thumbnail of his right hand up and down the groove between his bottom middle teeth, something he did when he was thinking and a habit both his mother and his dentist hated. Coming to a decision, he walked back into the house and kneeled down in the muck to measure one of the prints against his hand.
    I stayed on the porch. “Should we tell your Dad or Old Tom?”
    Peter shook his head as he stood and wiped his hands off on his jeans. “I don’t want to pull them into this.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It might be something like that thing you killed, the Coowinanoon.”
    “Cŵn Annwn,” I corrected, “and I’m not sure I killed it.”
    “Well it isn’t a coyote or a stray dog; the prints are too big.” He pointed to some smaller marks. “And it has six claws on each paw.”
    Breathing through my mouth to keep out the smell, I took a step inside. “That’s weird, right?”
    “Yup.” Peter walked over to the kitchenette and opened a bottom cupboard, then quickly slammed it shut.
    “What is it?”
    “I think I found its lunch.”
    “What?”
    “Raccoon.”
    “Recent?”
    “From the amount of maggots in it, yeah. But something was chewing on it first.”
    We both turned and looked at the first closed door. Mrs. Larsen was a huge X-Files fan and used to say Peter and I were proof ESP really existed, but we just knew each other so well that sometimes saying things out loud wasn’t necessary.
    Peter stepped lightly across the soggy carpet and I squished after him. Twisting the doorknob carefully, he opened the door to a bedroom. It was empty. I caught the smell again—a whiff of salt air—and pointed to the bathroom door. Peter nodded and padded over to push it open. He stood there, staring.
    “What? What is it?” As I approached, I tried to ignore the disgusting slip and slide of my running shoes on the carpet; it was like walking through sewage.
    When I was ten, I went through a major Little Mermaid period—the original story, not the sappy cartoon. I collected all the storybook versions I could find and one of my favorites had an illustration of the Little Mermaid diving through waving kelp with her hair streaming out behind her. So I knew what I was looking at. Peter reached into the tub and pulled out something wet and slimy.
    A long strand of rotting seaweed.
     
     

 
    CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Peter was pre-occupied and tense as we drove to the mansion.  Except for a puzzled question about my now working air-conditioning which I dodged, we were silent. I didn’t mind. It had taken over half an hour to shower off the stink of mildew and seaweed and my head hurt.
    When we pulled into the driveway and parked, Lacey was waiting for us beside a rusty old hatchback. Her cheeks went bright pink when Peter gave her a quick hug.
    Peter knocked on the front door and a middle-aged man opened it.
    “Yes?”
    “Mr. Taliesin?”
    The man laughed, his tanned skin wrinkling into deep lines. “Heaven forbid, no. But I’ll get him for you.”
    “We’re actually here for Ty and Daley.”
    “Oh I see, the new recruits. C’mon in.” The man disappeared down a hallway as we stepped inside.
    Lacey frowned. “What did he mean by ‘recruits’?”
    I