Between the Spark and the Burn Read Online Free PDF Page B

taken a good look at this picture. The abandoned mansion was full of dust and dirt and cobwebs, but you could still see it, see its grandness, like the Citizen’s. The way it stood arrogantly at the other edge of town, near the sea, like it had been cast off by Echo but couldn’t have cared less, hadn’t even noticed, in fact.
    Yes . . . I was sure. That was the attic. The pointed roof. The heavy wooden beams. The air of architectural confidence.
    One of the boys in the painting was Chase Glenship. Tall. Delicate, aristocratic features. An unruly look in his eyes. He was the boy that River and Neely’s grandfather Will Redding had wanted Freddie to marry . . . even though Will Redding had been in love with Freddie himself.
    Chase was also the bright-eyed eldest son who had killed a girl in the Glenship cellar with a knife. That girl had been Rose Redding, Will’s sister. River and Neely’s great-aunt. She was only sixteen when she died.
    Rose was buried in my family’s mausoleum in the Echo cemetery. That had been Freddie’s doing.
    My grandmother’s life had more twists and turns and tangles than even I’d guessed. And I’d known her better than anybody.
    Hadn’t I?
    I leaned over the painting, so close that my nose almost touched Freddie’s bare torso. A lean boy with wavy brown hair and brown eyes stood next to Chase. Will Redding. He had a straight nose and a crooked smile and he looked so much like River that it made me feel melancholy.
    It had all happened before. And it would all happen again.
    Where had I heard that line before?
    Some fairy tale, maybe.

Chapter 5
    T HE NEXT MORNING I told Luke and Sunshine that Neely and me were going Devil hunting in Virginia.
    â€œDevil hunting. Right.” Luke smirked at me and sipped at his cup of steaming espresso. “As if that devil-boy story is true, sister. You just want to go on a road trip with Neely. Well, I want to go on a road trip too. Don’t you, Sunshine?”
    Sunshine’s eyes went from Luke, to me, to Neely. And then she . . . fidgeted. Sunshine never fidgeted. But here she was, shifting from one foot to the other. “A winter road trip sounds fun. But I . . . I don’t want to hunt any devils.”
    Luke set his cup down, reached forward, and pulled Sunshine into him. “There aren’t any devils. Vi is being melodramatic and paranoid and we are all humoring her because that’s what you do to crazy people.”
    I opened my mouth—
    But Neely put his hand on my arm, and shook his head.
    Sunshine was looking up at my brother, her eyes wide instead of hooded and sleepy like usual. Then she smiled her old, lazy smile. “All right,” she said. “A road trip does sound like fun. And I’ll do anything to help out my poor, mad friend Violet.”
    And even though Sunshine was smiling, I still saw it. The flicker behind her eyes.
    I had a feeling Sunshine would regret her decision to come with, down the road. But it was her choice, and I let her make it.
    It was fourteen hours to Virginia and we would take Neely’s car. We would avoid the cities and spend one night on the road in the cold wilds of southeastern New York.
    I wasn’t even worried.
    About what we would find, I mean.
    I just wanted to do something. Go somewhere. Anywhere.
    That’s the kind of person I’d become.
    â‰ˆâ‰ˆâ‰ˆ
    I stood outside in the snow as Luke and Sunshine loaded Neely’s new BMW with gear cobbled together from the Citizen’s cellar and Sunshine’s house. I slipped in my brown suitcase—an old one of Freddie’s—and a snow shovel, and a filled-to-the-brim picnic basket. We were going to camp. Yes, camp. Neely’s father had frozen his credit cards and checking account in a failed attempt to get him to come home, and all I had was the origami money River had left me for a rainy day. There would be no