: I loved reading this book!! Ghost stories are pretty neat, and this one takes it to a new level! Poor Jade. She has a talent that no one in their right mind would want. As you read Ever Near, you get different feelings than watching The Sixth Sense - which this book is similar to. Jade has to learn who to trust, and how to get the ghosts to stop interfering with her life. Perfect book for Halloween!
Chapter 1
A cloudless sky stretches above me. Daisies clutter the
field, bobbing their white and yellow heads in a soft breeze.
She strides up the path, her legs straining against the
long skirt of her dress. High cheekbones, dark curls, eyes as green as spring
grass. Her human face. “Finally, you are here,” she says.
She extends her arms, reaching for me. I do the same. A
sense of peace fills me. She wants me.
She wants me to be here with her. But
just as we’re about to connect, our hands inches apart, she transforms. Her
face wrinkles and cracks, chunks of flesh dropping to the ground and exposing
her skull. Fear grips my throat like a giant hand. Seizing me. Unwilling to let
me go even as I try to get away. To run. To move. Her face is nothing more than
a skeleton now. Her pristine dress and lace bonnet shreds into tattered rags
billowing around a formless body. I gasp, but my lungs can’t seem to take in any
air. I’m tied to a weight, sinking to the bottom of the ocean. The field and the
daisies and the sky all melt away, a vanishing backdrop. I’m drowning. Lost.
Gone.
~~OO~~
“Jade—sshhh—it’s okay.”
Charlie. He’s holding me by the arms. What the hell? And then I know. The
realization comes quickly. I’m at Fair-Ever. My first night in my new home. I
wheeze and pant and try to bring myself back under control. Was I screaming? I
must have been, and it must have been loud.
“What happened?” Charlie
asks once I’ve calmed down.
“Bad dream,” I whisper. His hands are hot against my
skin, so hot I think he might have a fever. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m burning
up with some kind of ghost-induced illness. “Sorry I woke you.”
“It’s okay. I’m a
light sleeper.”
Our eyes meet, and I can see he wants to know more—like
if this happens a lot and what the nightmare was about—but I’m not going to
tell him any of that. Instead, I avert my eyes. Looking at Charlie for very
long is a bad idea. We don’t generally look at each other in the light of
day—never mind in the middle of the night in my bedroom—because locking eyes is
something that could lead to kissing. That’s how it feels to me at least, and kissing
would be so very wrong now that we’re going to be steps.
Wrong Wrong Wrong.
I have to keep telling myself that, but right now, all my brain seems to be
registering is his scent—faded cologne and soap with a tinge of sweat. Middle-of-the-night
Charlie smells and looks like a good dream, nothing like the nightmare I just
emerged from.
As he gazes down at me, his lips press together, and his
jaw clenches. His usually tousled brown hair is extra messy, and he wears only a
pair of boxers. I wish I could say I wasn’t noticing his muscular biceps
hovering on either side of my prone body, but I most definitely am. And for the
record, this is a much better first night moment than Lacey’s ghost-attack
nightmare.
“Thanks for coming
in,” I finally say, still a bit short of breath.
“Yeah. Sure. Want some water or something?”
“No. I’m good.”
“Okay.” He removes his hands from my arms, stands, and
walks out the door.
Once he’s gone, I flounce back on the bed, kicking off the
comforter and pulling just the quilt and sheet up to my chin. What’s happening to me? Lacey. That’s
what I call the ghost in the lace bonnet living here at Fair-Ever. I knew she
was here. I’ve encountered her before, but I didn’t know she could enter my
dreams. I’ve never lived with a ghost before—never fallen asleep where one
dwelled. Now, it’s unavoidable.
I
trace the outline of a stitched circle on my quilt
with my finger—the center point of one of
the colorful wheels. Violet and Fuschia and Chartruese spinning in a
continuous collage. For
some reason, touching the bumpy lines soothes me. Grandma Irving made the quilt
for me when I was little, and I’ve had it on my bed ever since. Some Grandma
quilts are lame, but mine is definitely not.
And then there’s Charlie. Geesh. Half naked and touching
me with his giant, hot hands. What the heck am I supposed to think about that?
Where do I store that little tidbit of goodness? We learned in freshman biology
that girls are programmed to want boys who are strong and tall because we’re
really cave women at heart. We perceive they’ll protect us from saber-toothed
tigers and make nice babies or something like that, so that’s how I rationalize
my crush on Charlie. My hard wiring renders me powerless in the face of his primal
charm.
I decide I need that glass of water after all, and
luckily, I don’t have to go down the hall to get it. I have my own bathroom
here at Fair-Ever. Just call me a spoiled rich girl now because my room at
Fair-Ever has everything a girl could ask for—a queen-sized bed, a private
bathroom, central air, and wireless internet for the brand new iPad Mom and
Mike gave me for my sixteenth birthday last month—my own private palace. Too
bad about the ghost clogging it up with her paranormal dysfunction.
In the bathroom, I snap on the lesser of the two lights
and see myself in the mirror. Ugh. This look is not what I’d call sexy. My
curly brown hair is mounted on top of my head in a very untidy bun. My usually
caramel-colored skin looks yellowish, and my hazel eyes droop with sleep. Super
hot, right? I shouldn’t be worried, though, because it’s wrong-wrong-wrong to
crush on your almost-stepbrother, no matter what your cavewoman brain tells
you.
Frustrated, I grab the glass and let the water run. The
counter of my bathroom, although less than twenty-four hours under my domain,
is a mess of cosmetics and hair and skin products. The water gets cold fast
because Fair-Ever has shiny new plumbing. The Dowlers spared no expense in updating
the insides and restoring its historic charm on the outside before Mrs. Dowler
got sick and died. Too bad they didn’t know about Lacey, or maybe they would
have ousted her along with the nasty old pipes.
The fact that my step-family’s house has a name probably
makes it seem like I’m some Brontë character who’s going to be swept across England
on some gothic journey, but in reality, that couldn’t be further from the
truth. Me being here in this million dollar home on Nantucket Island is a
strange twist of fate or destiny that started when my mother divorced my dad
and took this soon-to-be a step-family turn, somewhere about the time Charlie’s
mom died. My mother was one of Mrs. Dowler’s nurses in her final days. The
rumor around the island is that Rebecca Dowler picked my mother for Mike, as
though she wanted him to be happy and thought my mother was perfect for the
job. Weird and creepy but whatever. People love to gossip.
So that’s how I ended up moving into this house today,
having my dreams invaded by a nineteenth century ghost, and seeing my half-naked
hottie stepbrother in the middle of the night. I guess that does sound sort of
like a Brontë novel.
But when I step back into my room, all thoughts of gossip
and Charlie and Brontë fly out of my head because Lacey’s waiting beside my
bed.
Out for Blood by Brenda Pandos
