Read Online Forever Between (Between Life and Death Book 2) by Ann Christy - Free Book Online

back on the property. We both slow at the same time, liking the way this house looks. Alone, tall and with nothing inviting about it, it’s just right for us.
    “What do you think?” I ask, stopping my bike when Charlie does. I let out a groan of relief when I lift my butt from the seat. It’s like someone’s had my hips in a vice trying to bend my pelvis into a bow shape. When the pressure is relieved, it’s painful but in a different way. I do not want to get back on that seat.
    Charlie seems completely normal, his body unaffected by the long ride. Still, he arches his back and groans a little as he stands astraddle his bike. That makes me feel a little less like a wimp. He considers the house and then looks around. This is an area thick with kudzu, though it’s still confined to the trees and the areas just beyond the trees. That leaves this house and the majority of the fields around it relatively open, but aside from the road—which is also slowly being consumed—we are in an island of trees and kudzu. No one could walk through those woods without being in real danger of winding up as kudzu food. It is late spring after all, and the vines are going crazy.
    I can tell he’s going to say yes before he does and I have to resist the impulse to throw a fist pump, I’m so glad.
    “Might as well,” he says, a little glumly. I’m not too worried about his disappointment at us not making more miles today. I’ve got cinnamon-sugar and a couple of pieces of Savannah’s delicious flatbread in my pack as a surprise. He’ll cheer up.
    We circle the house in a wide loop, watching the windows for any sign of movement and checking the barns from a distance. There are the bones of some sort of large animal, many of them actually, in a pen by one of the barns, but no people or things that used to be people. There’s an air of disuse, of a place long abandoned and left alone.
    Charlie and I share a nod and we move closer to the house, taking care to ride slowly and carefully, yet primed to take off down the rutted drive and back toward the highway at the slightest hint of danger.
    The paint on the back porch railings is well on its way to peeling away, the gray of old wood peeking out from behind the once white coating. The steps are brick and the porch floorboards still a remarkably bright green, as if to defy the decay surrounding them as the house succumbs to the elements. Drifts of last year’s leaves, or maybe the year before or the year before, are piled up in the corners and against the quaint porch furniture. Just looking at the twin rockers set side by side is enough to bring up a smile. I didn’t know people still did such things. Did they use them or were they just for show?
    The boards creak, so we stop and wait for any response from inside. I think I hear the faint scritching of claws, but they are small claws, like those of a mouse. I’m not worried about a mouse.
    After a few very long minutes standing still while my sit bones ache and complain, Charlie nudges me with his elbow and whispers, “I think we can try to go in. Ready?”
    I nod, reseat my crossbow in my arms, feel for my bolts and take a deep breath. We have a system for clearing, so I know what to do. The catch is that unless we’re in a subdivision with only a set number of house models, each place will be different and until we’re actually inside, we can’t know exactly what steps will need to be taken.
    Of course, we also have to have an unlocked door. Which, in this case, we do not.
    We look at each other and then at the offending doorknob. It’s not like we haven’t had it happen before, but most places we go through have been looted at least once, or were checked and abandoned. Half the time the doors are hanging off their hinges or simply standing open. This orderly locking business is unusual.
    “Windows?” I ask with a shrug.
    We each move to one side of the door toward the windows framing it. At my window, old-fashioned lacy