A Shade of Vampire 27: A Web of Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

slippers, her curly rich brown hair trailing down her shoulders.
    Her face immediately took on a scowl when she laid eyes on me, though it wasn’t a real scowl. There was a smile behind her eyes.
    “Don’t tell me you’re still in a huff with me and Heath,” I said.
    “That was a really crappy thing to do,” she replied.
    I rolled my eyes, even as I invited myself inside and closed the door behind me. I wasn’t in the mood to start bantering about her and her lover boy Brock. I had much heavier thoughts weighing down my mind.
    “Arwen,” I began, “seeing as you’ve obviously taken the day off school, I guess you don’t have much to do.” I didn’t give her a chance to confirm or deny as I steamrolled on. “I would be really grateful to you if you could take me to Bristol, in England.”
    She furrowed her brows. “Why do you want to go there?”
    I groaned internally. It was such a long story to tell given that she probably hadn’t heard anything about the Lawrence saga yet, other than perhaps that he’d left the island. But I sat down with her and started from the beginning, from the time I’d met Lawrence to everything that had happened while I was with him and all that I had discovered since. By the time I was finished, her jaw hung open.
    “Of course I’ll take you,” she said. “I don’t know how to get there, though… But I’ll check my mom’s maps.”
    She gripped my hand and pulled me out of the living room where we had been sitting and into her mother’s study. It was so crowded with books, there was hardly room for anything else. Arwen moved to one of the teakwood cabinets and drew open the glass doors. She took down a huge pile of world maps from one of the shelves and laid them down on Corrine’s desk. She found one of England, and I helped her pinpoint the city.
    I reached into my backpack that I had brought with me from home and pulled out my trusty notebook and a pen. I turned to the page where I had noted down the address of the pub.
    Once Arwen had studied the map for several more minutes and seemed fairly confident about where we were heading, she looked up at me. “Okay,” she said, resolute. “I'll get dressed, and then… we'll go, girl.”

Grace
    A rwen naturally wasn’t as experienced a traveler as Shayla, but since we weren’t trying to locate a place in the middle of nowhere, we located the pub fairly easily. The sky was gray and rainy as we found ourselves standing outside a small cozy-looking pub with old-fashioned single-glazed windows. We stepped inside to find it mostly empty. A young brunette stood behind the bar, sifting through a pile of bills.
    “Excuse me,” I said, clearing my throat.
    She glanced up at us, her eyes widening. I guessed Arwen and I were rather a strange pair to arrive at the pub. Arwen especially looked out of place. Although as a witch, she was practically indistinguishable from a human, she looked rather otherworldly with her exotic features.
    “I’m here to see Mr. and Mrs. Hulse,” I said.
    “I’m Emily, the manager,” she said. “May I ask why you’d like to see the owners?”
    I glanced around the pub uncomfortably. “It’s a rather, uh, personal issue. I don’t mean to take up much of their time but… it really is quite important that I speak to them.”
    Emily eyed the two of us a moment longer before saying, “All right. They live in the flat upstairs. I’ll call up and ask.”
    She moved away from the counter and through a door into a back room. Arwen and I waited tensely in silence before she returned a few minutes later. “Okey-dokey,” she said with a bright smile. “They’re up to visitors.”
    She led us into the back room with her, in the corner of which was a narrow staircase leading upward. We climbed the stairs and arrived outside a green door.
    “I’ll leave you to it,” Emily said, before returning downstairs.
    I wet my lower lip before raising a fist and knocking gently. Footsteps shuffled, keys