The secret source the bo.., p.1
The Secret Source (The Book of Sight 3), page 1
The Secret
Source
Book Three
Of
The Book of Sight
By Deborah Dunlevy
The Book of Sight Series
by Deborah Dunlevy
The Book of Sight
The Broken Circle
The Secret Source
The Poisoned Cure
Book 5
Coming in 2016…
The Secret
Source
Book Three
Of
The Book of Sight
By Deborah Dunlevy
Copyright @2014 Deborah Dunlevy
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America.
First Printing, 2014
Digital Edition ISBN: 978-0-9847624-9-1
Print Edition ISBN: 978-0-9847624-8-4
Madison House Publishing
www.madisonhousepublishing.com
Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the web-address above or call 317-797-9993.
For Meme and Auntie
You made the name Helen
even more beautiful.
You are missed.
1
Dog Whisperer
If Eve Sloane had known that the neighbors’ Doberman loved mysteries as much as she did, she wouldn’t have been so afraid of him when she was younger.
“The thing is,” she said to her best friend, Alex, who had come over to hear more about Eve’s discovery, “barking isn’t exactly easy to understand. In barks, ‘Hey, let me out of here so I can track down clues,” sounds exactly like, ‘Hey, I want to tear your face off.”
Alex laughed as she leaned her bike against the side of Eve’s garage. “Who knew? And all that time he wasn’t a guard dog at all, just a frustrated detective.”
“Exactly.” Eve led the way around to the side gate and into the backyard.
“So he’s like a little doggy Sherlock Holmes?”
“He’s not little. And he actually learned it from watching Hitchcock, not Sherlock.”
“Ha! Of course he did. And you found this out by talking to him?”
“Yeah. And don’t even look at me like that. I know it sounds crazy.”
Alex just shrugged. Considering that she and Eve had become friends by reading the same magical book and then having two years’ worth of impossible adventures, this didn’t seem that weird. “Would I ever call you crazy? I just came from having a conversation with a tree stump. It only makes sense that a talking dog would be next.”
“He doesn’t exactly talk. I talk. He barks and wags his tail and stuff.”
“So where in there did you pick up on the love for old mystery movies?”
“That was a total accident.” Eve gave a piercing whistle. “I was out here the other day trying to read, and my mom came out all freaking because she couldn’t find her new sunglasses which she claimed she had left on the back porch and now they weren’t there and they cost ten million dollars and blah, blah, blah. Naturally she thought I’d taken them. Which, why would I? But that’s not the point.”
Eve broke off as a scary-looking black dog stuck his head up over the top of the privacy fence. He was standing on his hind legs, and that made him impressively tall.
“Hey there, Prince. How’s it going, boy?” She reached up and scratched the top of his head.
“So, I noticed that Prince was looking over the fence and watching this. He was listening. I could tell. And just as my mom hit full stride, he starts barking, and I knew he was trying to get my attention. Of course, my mom was just ranting on, ignoring him, but I saw that he was looking at the flower beds over there. So I looked over, and sure enough, there were the glasses. Obviously, I knew better than to find them myself because she’d be convinced I’d put them there and probably ground me or something, so I just asked if maybe she’d been wearing them when she was weeding there earlier, and she looked over, and sure enough, she remembered. Crisis averted. All thanks to Prince.”
Eve paused long enough to give Prince another good scratch behind the ears.
“When she left I started talking to Prince. I got up on this chair so we could see eye to eye, and believe me that’s the first time I’ve come close to this fence since they got a Doberman, but I could just tell that he knew what I was saying. I said he was good at finding things, and he got really happy and started running back and forth between the fence and the house, and I knew he was trying to show me something. Inside they had the TV running. It basically runs 24/7. They weren’t even home. Maybe it’s to keep out thieves or something, who knows? Though why they would need that with Prince, I have no idea. They’re kind of paranoid, I think...
“Anyway. The TV was on, and an old Hitchcock movie was playing, and Prince just sat down, watching it through the window and wiggling his little stump of a tail around. I asked him if that was his favorite show.”
Alex laughed again. “And he said yes?”
“Pretty much.”
Prince cocked his head to the side and stared at Alex.
“See!” Eve said. “He thinks you’re making fun of him, and he doesn’t like it. I told you he could understand.”
Alex stepped up on the chair. Eve had to admire her courage, since Prince wasn’t looking particularly friendly at the moment.
“I’m sorry, Prince,” Alex said seriously. “I wasn’t making fun of you. I’m just not used to dogs being detectives. It’s very nice to meet you, though, and I’m really glad you could help Eve out.”
Prince tipped his head slightly. Alex scratched the top lightly. Then Prince jumped down from the fence and frolicked around the yard for a minute.
“Nice work,” said Eve, joining Alex on the chair. “You guys are friends now.”
“I hope his owners don’t see him do that,” said Alex. “He doesn’t look like much of a guard dog at the moment.”
“Don’t worry,” Eve said. “He’s never like that when they’re around. They wouldn’t dream of making friends with him.”
“Not the friendly type?”
Eve snorted. “Let’s just say I’ve known Prince’s name since they got him five years ago, but I still can’t remember their names.”
Alex grinned, but the look in her eye as she stepped down off the chair was serious. “So. You can communicate with the dog. And you definitely knew what that freaky creature in the woods last year was wanting us to do. This has to be the Book of Sight, right?”
Eve had given it a lot of thought. When they first read the mysterious Book of Sight, she and her friends had started seeing all sorts of things in the world around them. Little people that lived in the woods outside of town. Stone statues that moved all by themselves. Pictures in the clouds that warned them of danger. The sorts of things that you really couldn’t miss.
It had taken longer to notice the other changes. It was hard for all of them to admit things about themselves that weren’t quite the way they used to be. Hard to explain how you could know things you shouldn’t have been able to know. How you could receive messages in your dreams or sense when danger was coming or know what other people were thinking?
Seeing Alex’s expectant look, Eve nodded. “Yeah, I think it’s got to be that. I mean, it’s totally weird. It’s not like I’m this huge animal lover. I’ve never even had a pet. Can you imagine my mom letting an animal live in her house? But I just started noticing things, the way everything has a way of talking…I mean not with words but still saying things, you know?” She shrugged again. “It’s kind of like what Logan does with faces, right? He says he doesn’t read your mind, he just notices little things people say without words. Only for some reason, I can’t do that with people, only animals, and not even all of them. Just a few of them…I don’t know…make sense to me.”
“Ben said there were all kinds of special gifts people get from the Book,” Alex said. “This seems like a pretty useful one to me.”
“I hope so,” Eve grinned. “Knowing about Prince should be handy. We’ve definitely got enough mysteries to solve. And he’s really good with clues. I didn’t even get to tell you what he did yesterday, which was when I really knew…” Eve broke off suddenly as Prince began to growl from the other side of the fence.
The girls froze and looked at each other. Prince’s growling got louder. Slowly Eve walked over to the fence and climbed back up on the chair. Prince was standing by the front gate of his yard, hackles raised, body tense, staring intently at something on the street.
Eve felt a tingle of fear shoot down her spine. She couldn’t see anyone out there, but she trusted Prince. If he was worried about something, it was real.
“What is it, Prince? Can you smell something out there?”
Prince’s only answer was more growling.
Eve felt the chair sink a bit as Alex stepped up beside her. “What does he see?”
“I don’t know. He’s looking out front, but I can’t see anything. Maybe he just heard a weird noise…” Eve trailed off as Prince pressed himself closer to the fence, snarling.
A sick feeling twisted Eve’s stomach. She knew from experience that there were plenty of dangerous things th
Alex’s hand touched Eve’s shoulder, and the air flooded back into her lungs. She shook off the terrible memory. She was here, under the sunshine, with her best friend and a dog who clearly meant to protect them. Eve’s heartbeat steadied.
“Something’s out there,” Alex said calmly. “Maybe it’s just a stray dog or cat or something, but I don’t think so.”
Eve nodded.
“A muxen, maybe?”
Alex whistled shrilly, and both girls looked around. On more than one occasion they had been spied on by a muxen, a tiny gecko-like creature that completely blended in to its surroundings unless a shrill noise caused it to turn fluorescent pink. Eve didn’t see any pink now, though.
The whistle hadn’t distracted Prince, either. He was still staring intently at something through the cracks in the fence, low growls rumbling in his throat.
Eve took a deep breath. “Could she be back?”
Alex didn’t ask who Eve was talking about. They all knew that the ruthless assassin who had posed as Logan’s next door neighbor all last year was still out there somewhere. They had rescued Logan from her just in time, but she had gotten away. That had been almost a year ago, but Eve knew the evil woman was still looking for a way to attack them, probably scheming to get one of them alone and vulnerable.
As if she had read Eve’s mind, Alex said, “At least we’re together.”
Eve smiled shakily. “And we have Prince.”
“I’d feel a lot better if the boys were here, though,” said Alex. Eve raised one brow at her. “Just because then we’d all be together, I mean. Geesh.”
Eve laughed. It made her feel more like herself. “Let’s go find them, then. If there’s one thing we know about these…people, it’s that they like to do things in secret. I doubt anything will come at us in broad daylight while we’re together on a public street.”
Alex nodded and immediately hopped down from the chair. Eve stayed a moment longer, watching Prince, wishing there was some way to comfort him, but he wouldn’t even look in her direction. Suddenly, she realized that she was in the wrong place.
Eve jumped down and followed Alex out the front gate, but instead of heading straight to the driveway, she turned toward Prince. Placing herself right in front of where he stood growling, she crouched and held her hand up to the fence where she could just see the dog’s nose pressed to the gap.
“It’s okay, boy. I’m here. You smell me? You know me. Relax. Whatever else is out there behind me, we’re going to take care of it. All of us together. Alex and I are going to go get the boys, and we’ll take care of it. Okay? You’re going to be all right, and so am I.”
The growling stopped, replaced by the sound of Prince sniffing at her hand. He let out a little whine.
“That’s right, it’s me, Eve. It’s okay. I’m going to check out what’s bothering you. You stay here and watch over my house, too, okay?”
Prince gave a short bark of agreement. Eve relaxed.
“I’ll be back soon. I’m going to go get some help.”
As she walked away, Eve heard Prince whine one more time, but the growling didn’t start up again. He had understood.
In the driveway, Alex was standing next to her bike. “Let’s just walk for a minute, okay? Until we get a couple of blocks away? I’d rather have my feet on the ground.”
Eve laughed, but only out of habit. She knew exactly how Alex felt. Flipping up her own kickstand, she wheeled her bike down to the street.
Both girls were looking around on every side, but Eve didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Pretending to be calm, they walked down the middle of the empty street. Behind them, Prince was quiet now, though Eve could feel his eyes still watching them through the fence gap.
When they reached the end of the cul-de-sac, Eve began to breathe easier. She nodded to the left. “I think Logan and the kids were at Maddie’s today. We could head there first.”
Before Alex could answer, though, something moved in the hedges of the house right next to them. Eve only caught the motion out of the corner of her eye, but it was enough to spin her around, heart pounding, hands gripping handlebars until the knuckles were white.
“It’s right there,” whispered Alex. “I saw its head for just a second, and then it pulled back into the bushes.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know,” Alex said. “The face was furry, but I only saw it for a second.”
Eve laughed nervously. “If this just turns out to be a stray cat, I’m going to scream.”
“It wasn’t a stray cat,” said Alex. “It wasn’t any kind of animal I’ve ever seen.” She was walking toward the bushes now.
“Don’t you think we should go get the others before we start investigating strange creatures?” Eve asked.
“I just want to see…” Alex laid her bike down on the sidewalk. “I don’t think it’s…”
The bushes rustled again, and the creature appeared for just a moment. Eve got a quick impression, an animal about two feet tall, standing on two legs, covered in brown fur, intelligent eyes. Then the thing waved them forward with a quick gesture and disappeared into the shrubs again.
“Come on,” said Alex.
“What if it’s dangerous?” hissed Eve.
“I don’t think it is.”
Eve considered for a moment. Alex was usually right about things like this. She was also usually the cautious one. Here she was now, though, already walking toward the thick bushes. Eve followed her. It wasn’t like she was going to get left behind just standing there.
The shrubs stretched around the side of the house, and the girls pushed their way through to find themselves in a small space between the dense branches and the tan siding of the neighbor’s garage. The creature, whatever it was, stood right in front of them. It immediately began talking in a severe voice.
“I am glad to have this chance to speak to you unseen by others, but it was very foolish of you to follow me, unknown as I am, into a place so sheltered.”
“You are not being careful enough.”
The second voice, slightly deeper than the first, was right behind them and nearly made Eve jump out of her skin. She crashed into the bushes in an attempt to look both directions at once. The creature behind them was a mirror image of the first one, except that its fur was a lighter shade of brown.
Eve’s pounding heart settled enough for defensiveness to take over. “Hey, you waved us in here. And it’s not like we’re in the middle of nowhere. This is my neighbor’s house. Plus, we’re bigger than you.” The last argument felt lame even to Eve.
The two creatures looked back at her with identical bland expressions.
“Your neighbor is not home,” said the tan one. “There is no one to help you.”
“And it is clear on your face that you know nothing of us, what we are capable of, what dangers we represent,” chimed in the dark one.
Eve tensed up, ready for anything, but the creatures just stood still and shook their heads like disappointed parents.
“You have much to learn. You have seen many things, but there are many things you still need to see.”
“You would not have noticed us at all if that animal down there had not alerted you.”
The two creatures looked at each other then, and the first spoke softly, “Strange, that. We have not been seen by any wordless creature while attempting to be unseen since we were bonded. We must look into this…”
“Another time, Chala,” said the second creature. “Our task here cannot wait.”
“Who are you?” asked Alex, interrupting their private conversation.
Both creatures turned their heads and looked the girls seriously in the eyes.
