Blood Moon (Book Three - The Ravenscliff Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

mother.”
    “But that was what she meant.”
    “You don’t know that,” Cecily said, grasping.
    “Come on, Cess—I’ve suspected your mother was my mother before!”
    “Yes,” the girl said, “and each time you have you’ve decided it was ridiculous. I mean, look at us, Devon. We look nothing alike!”
    It was true: Cecily with her fair skin, green eyes and red hair, Devon with his olive complexion, brown eyes and hair so dark it was almost black.
    “Different fathers,” Devon said in response. “We probably had different fathers.”
    “But we’re the same age. You were born in March and I was born in August. Sorry, but that’s not quite enough time for Mother to have had you and then had me. Check Biology 101 if you’re still not sure.”
    Devon had an answer for that, too. “Who’s to say that I’m not already sixteen? I might be a year older than you are, Cecily. There’s never been any birth certificate for me, remember. Your mother could’ve had me a year before you were born, and given me to Ted March to raise, and for whatever reason they decided to tell me that I was a year younger than I really was.”
    “And why would they do that?”
    “I don’t know. To throw us off the track.”
    Cecily sniffed. “Now you’re just talking stupid. I won’t hear any more of it. And who is she anyway, that crazy sobbing lady? Why should we take her word for anything? Until I know who she is, I’m not believing anything she said.”
    “Cecily, I believe her …”
    “Why? Did the Voice confirm it?”
    She meant Devon’s Nightwing intuition. “Well, it’s not telling me she’s wrong.”
    Still Cecily refused to accept it. “Well, I have my own intuition, and it’s telling me she is. I don’t know if it’s some Nightwing remnant of my own family sorcery, but it’s just as real as yours, Devon. And mine says we are not brother and sister.”
    “I don’t know,” Devon said, and his heart broke. “I can’t take that chance any more.”
    She looked at him. “What do you mean?”
    “What I said before, Cecily. We can’t go on together. Not like we were. Not until I know for sure …”
    Cecily looked aghast. “Are you breaking up with me, Devon March?”
    He felt worse than he’d ever felt before. Even worse, if that was possible, than the day Dad died.
    “Yes,” he managed to say. “I guess I am.”
    Cecily grabbed her pillow from her bed and threw it at him. “Then get out of my room! You have no business being here! Get out!”
    He did as he was told.
    When one goes seeking answers , a voice told him—Sargon’s? Dad’s? His own?— one has to be prepared for what those answers might be .
    Of course, back in his own room, he couldn’t sleep. He lay there staring up at the ceiling.
    Mrs. Crandall is my mother. A woman who has shown such little regard for me that when the demons have struck, she’s barely lifted an eyebrow. A woman who has tried to bully me into forgetting my past and renouncing my powers. A woman who has kept secrets from me, lied to me, discouraged me in everything.
    This was the mother that Devon had looked for all his life? This— ogress ?
    He couldn’t even begin to process the horrible sensations roiling through him . Worst of all—he had lost Cecily.
    I’ve kissed her. My own sister.
    Devon felt as if he might be sick. He tried to push the memory far out of his mind.
    He had to stop thinking about Cecily and Mrs. Crandall and instead concentrate on the mystery of the woman who was now running around inside the walls. With his sharply attuned Nightwing hearing, he could hear her scuttling from room to room and floor to floor. Who was she? Why did Mrs. Crandall—his mother!—keep her locked away?
    Suddenly he heard a sound from outside. It pulled him away from his thoughts and focused him on the present. Lying in the dark, he listened for the sound again, and finally it came: a long, low howl. The sound of some animal. A cry of agony, Devon thought.
    He