Here They Lie
The Bloodstone Legacy #1
D.K. Burrow
New Adult Southern Gothic
October 5, 2015
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Reese Everett’s aunt picked a bad time to die. Just weeks after a car
accident left Reese’s mother unable to travel, her aunt’s house needs to be
emptied and sold, leaving Reese as the only member of the family who can do the
job. She typically wouldn’t balk at the opportunity to sift through her
aunt’s collection of antiques, but when she arrives in Devil’s Vale, Georgia,
she discovers the family house in a state of disrepair she won’t be able to
handle alone.
Colton Waters is back in Devil’s Vale – whether he likes it or not.
After he loses his acceptance to medical school with no explanation, he’s left
with a single job offer…one that will return him to the hometown he’d hoped to
escape.
When an errand to help his sister ends in a meeting with Reese neither will
easily forget, Colton takes a job as her temporary handyman.
The longer Reese stays in town, the more she realizes the condition of her
aunt’s house isn’t the only thing she hadn’t expected when she made the trip to
Devil’s Vale. Reese isn’t the only gifted member of the family – her aunt
Kate has been practicing the family business…the business Reese has been sworn
never to discuss.
After a ghostly visitor arrives one night, Reese and Colton learn Kate
wasn’t the only one practicing the darker arts. They begin to uncover
secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Here They Lie won the Young Adult Romance Writer’s 2014 award for New Adult
fiction.
Excerpt
“Took you long enough.” I
pointed to the clock on the wall. “I’m pretty sure the words ‘on my way’ don’t
typically mean in two hours.”
“Had a little delay.” Max stood halfway in the door to the
office. When the principal called to tell him to empty his dad’s office or the
janitor was going to do it for him, I’d volunteered to help. But I didn’t know
that meant I was going to be doing the packing while wondering where in the
hell Max was.
I recognized the expression on his face, and it wasn’t one that
said I’m-sorry-for-making-you-do-this-alone. Nope. He had been preoccupied with
something far different than books or yellowed photographs. “Blonde or
redhead?”
“Brunette, if you have to know. But it wasn’t like that.” He
shook his head, using his best innocent expression.
I didn’t buy it for a second. It was hard to be angry with him,
though. He’d spent the first two weeks after our college graduation dealing
with a police investigation, planning a funeral, attending the funeral, and
then messing with financial stuff that required a lawyer.
Being an only child must suck.
Still, I couldn’t let him off too easy. “Sure it wasn’t.”
“Really.” He held up his hands like he wanted to surrender. “I
was driving in from picking up more boxes like you said we needed. I took a
wrong turn.”
“Stop right there.” I held my hand up, shooting him a glare. “You
took a wrong turn? In Devil’s Vale?”
“Not exactly in Devil’s Vale. Right outside town.” Max shrugged
and shook his head in distaste. “I know. I must not have been paying attention.
Lucky I did, though. I ran into a girl having car trouble and had to drive her
into town.”
“You had to, huh?”
“What was I supposed to do? Leave her stranded out by the
bridge?”
He had a point. No one deserved to be stranded out there. Not at
night. “You didn’t tell me that’s where she was. What were you doing out
there?”
“No idea. Like I said. I got confused. Ended up out on 20. When
I came back, there she was.” He ran his fingers through his shaggy, black hair.
In the past, he’d always kept his hair almost military-short, and I couldn’t
get used to seeing him like this. His hair was just another sign of all the
things that had gone wrong since the last week of May. I didn’t think he’d
gotten a haircut since before his dad’s funeral, and he’d needed one back then.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have left you with all this mess.”
Come to think of it, I wasn’t sure if he’d been in the office
since the day the police had called him. I couldn’t say that I really blamed
him for avoiding it. Even after I’d already boxed almost all his dad’s knick-knacks,
awards, and old textbooks, the newly painted wall and the new tiles on the
ceiling made the memory of what happened in this room too fresh, even for me.
Green eyes just a little too wide, Max toed the threshold like
he’d spontaneously combust if he entered the room. That did it. We weren’t
staying here any longer. I folded the panels of the box closed and ran a strip
of packing tape over them. “Tell you what. I’ve been here long enough. Why
don’t we call it a day?”
“No, I can do this,” he protested. But his expression said he
couldn’t.
“Look.” I gestured around the room. Almost everything left was
property of Devil’s Vale Independent School District. “We can come back in the
morning and finish up in an hour. If I pack any more tonight, I’m going to turn
into a box myself.”
I didn’t need to say that the old, empty building crossed my
creeped-out tolerance an hour ago. I’d only stayed because he wasn’t answering
his cell phone, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t try to tackle this himself.
Spend enough time in here alone, and anyone would start seeing ghosts.
“I don’t care what they do with the rest of this shit.” Max’s
voice rose with the same annoyed edge that it always got when he’d had a pass
picked off in an interception.
He was in over his head, and he didn’t have anyone else to help
him. Well, he didn’t have anyone who wasn’t a member of the not-quite-dead-yet
Sunday school class at his dad’s church to help. He didn’t need their whispers
making this any harder. That’s why I was helping my teammate when he was in
trouble.
“I don’t have anything better to do. You know that.”
“Too well. When are you going to talk with your dad about your little
issue?” Max hit upon the topic I’d been trying to avoid.
My little issue. He’d graced my situation with the nickname to
make it seem less important than it was. As I’d driven down the roads leading
from campus to home, I’d barely been able to think of anything else. I’d stayed
behind, waiting to hear word from my interview. I should have known it wasn’t
going to be good news. When the medical school spread good news, it didn’t wait
to call you last.
We’d been dancing around my issue for close to a month. Dealing
with the loss of Max’s dad had almost made things easier. Almost. No one
expected to get the call from the principal yesterday announcing that he had to
clear out the office by Sunday, least of all him. He was also the least
prepared to deal with cleaning up the aftermath of the end of his only parent.
“Honestly, no idea. I’ve been waiting for him to be in a good
mood.”
“With your dad, you’re going to be waiting a while.”
“I know.” I brushed my hands on my jeans. I tucked the worn,
leather chair into its familiar home at the oversized desk before heading
toward the door. “I have one thing my sister needs me to do, but give me an
hour and meet me at my place.”
“You’re Shelby’s errand-boy now?”
“She had to stay late tonight, making sure she was set up for
the festival. And besides, she saw a letter from Augusta.”
“Ah, so she’s blackmailing you. That one’s impressive.”
I didn’t need to see that glint in Max’s eye. I’d seen it plenty
of times when we were partying at a sorority house. The last thing any of us
needed was Max turning his bad-boy vibe on Shelby.
“Just bring the beer.” The discussion was over.
“Your mom will kill you if she finds us drinking.”
“My mom never wanders down to the cabin. Not unless it’s
daylight.”
He didn’t pretend like he wasn’t relieved we were heading out of
the office. For a while we just walked, and I let myself relax with every step
we took.
But I could sense a question hanging in the air. As we passed
the humming water fountains, he finally gave up and asked it. “Do you think
your dad’s going to let you stay here?”
“Mom’ll probably make him. At least for now. He’s probably going
to want me to come to work on the ranch.”
“You’re going to love that.”
I let out a long breath. “Yeah. Not exactly what I had planned.”
“You. On the ranch. That’s…that’s kind of funny.”
“Sure it is. It’s freakin’ hilarious. Dad’s going to be thrilled
to trap me in the business. He didn’t want me to go to med school in the first
place.” A lifetime of smelling like horses. Exactly what I’d always wanted.
Exactly why I’d tried to escape.
Max laughed for the first time in weeks. I didn’t even have to
look at him to know he was shaking his head, but I did. Sure enough, he had his
best you-have-to-be-fuckin’-kidding-me expression on his face while he ran his
fingers through his hair as if someone had dumped a cup of spiders on top of
him.
We’d been friends since before either of us could pronounce the
word friend. I didn’t remember a time that he wasn’t seated at our family’s
table for Sunday dinner. We could finish each other’s sentences, but there were
things that even Max didn’t understand. Things I wasn’t allowed to explain.
“That’s going to go well.”
“Tell me about it. I’m not sure if I really have a choice.” With
student loans already begging to be repaid and parents who’d given the We’re
Not Paying for Your College lecture not quite four years ago, I never really
imagined myself in this scenario.
High school valedictorian. Captain of the football team. Member
of the right fraternity. Getting into my choice of med schools should have been
a breeze.
Should have.
Seems like I had a whole lot of should-haves lately.
“So you’re just staying here?”
Being a Waters in
this town carries a responsibility. Even without my dad in the room, I could hear his voice echoing
in my head. “Until I figure something else out, yeah, I’m staying here. I don’t
really have much other choice.”
“Sure you do.” He shrugged, and his collar pulled back just
enough to reveal the crow tattoo he’d recently gotten. “There’s always a
choice.”
“Speaking of choices, you’re still taking that job in Seattle?”
“Money’s great.” Max pursed his lips and nodded like a dashboard
bobble head. “It’s a great job. I can’t turn it down.”
He sounded like he wanted me to believe he was excited, but
something in his voice was forced. He needed
me to believe he wanted to take this job, even though he’d never mentioned
applying for it. One day he was the last one standing next to the freshly covered
grave in Devil’s Vale’s cemetery, and the next he’d taken a job out of state.
“You ever going to tell me what it is?”
“If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”
I waited for him to laugh, but it didn’t come. “Never really
figured you for one of those kind of jobs.”
He swallowed, and a hard edge came into his voice. “Maybe you
don’t know me as well as you think you do.”
Was that why couldn’t he look me in the eyes?
“You know, you don’t have to go. Hell, you can stay with me.” I
pushed open the heavy doors leading to the locker rooms. Our footsteps echoed
through the empty, tiled hallway. I was surprised to realize I was happy not to
be alone. The place was filled with spirits of football players past. Even in
the dead of summer, the locker rooms never lost their odor of sweat, grass,
mud, and teenage hormones gone wild.
“Look, there’s nothing here for me. Except for you, of course. But
bro, I just don’t roll that way.” Max half laughed and shoved his hands in the
pockets of his jacket. It shouldn’t have been cold enough for jackets. Not in
June. Not in Georgia.
“You don’t know how lucky you are to be getting out of here.”
“Trust me, Colton, I do.” He hit the crash bar to the door
leading outside. He took a deep breath, and I could almost see the relief
spreading across his face. I hadn’t realized how badly he wanted to move, to
leave Devil’s Vale and its memories behind. Max had always been a guy of few
words. Since he’d taken the job in Seattle, he’d become a man of even fewer.
We descended the steps without talking. We’d been down this path
more times than I could count: pee wee football players leaving high school
camp; middle school teammates when our school’s field was damaged after a wave
of vandalism hit the town; finally, championship co-quarterbacks from the first
team to win state. Everyone predicted the guys from our team were destined to
do great things.
Destiny was a funny thing.
About the Author
D’Ann
Burrow once told her preschool teacher she wanted to be a witch when she
grew up. That simple comment signaled the start of a life-long fondness of
things that go bump in the night. As she grew older, she could most often
be found with her nose buried in a book, and she was especially fond
of the Nancy Drew series as well as anything by Christopher Pike or
Stephen King. Occasionally she’d take a trip to the world of the
classics where The Scarlet Pimpernel and A Little Princess reigned
among her favorites. She’s lost count of the times she’s read Little
Women.
Today, D’Ann enjoys the world of Supernatural, stories about guys with
fangs, and she’s seldom met a disaster film she hasn’t liked.
When she grows up, she’d like to work at the Haunted Mansion.
Until then, watching Ghost Hunters will have to count as research.
D’Ann writes about secrets people keep. Even the bravest heroine or
a guy with a heart of gold has a few skeletons in the closet
they’d rather not share with the world. When those secrets get out,
things get interesting.
A Texas native, she knows making great guacamole is an art form. As
a theater mom, she’ll happily chat about Broadway musicals by the hour.
Molly and Lizzie, the family furry ones, are frequent stars of
her Instagram account.
Author links:
https://twitter.com/DKBurrow
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Phillip W. Simpson is the author of many novels, chapter
books and other stories for children. His publishers include Macmillan,
Penguin, Pearson, Cengage, Raintree and Oxford University Press.
