Forevermore Read Online Free PDF

with her.
    I’m just thinking about how nice and normal our conversation is compared to my life the past few days when Emma casually asks, “So, seen anything weird at the castle?”
    I pause midbite. “Um … why do you ask?”
    “What’s weird besides you, Emma?” a stocky boy asks as he approaches the table. He’s joined by a girl who looks like a shorter version of him, with the same wavy brown hair and brown eyes.
    Emma rolls her eyes. “Right, you’re full of chuckles today, eh, Big D? Ivy, this is Cameron and Derek MacLeod,” Emma announces. “They shared a womb.”
    Fraternal twins. Derek, the boy, flicks Emma on the ear, then smiles at me. “You’re the only Yank in the school,” he says. “Nice to meet ya.”
    “You must be Laird MacAllister’s stepdaughter,” Cameron, the girl, says. “I hear that place is wicked spooky.”
    “We were just getting to that, isn’t that right, Ivy?” Emma urges. “So come on. Anything?”
    I squirm, not wanting to sound insane. I can’t tell them about the moving vines or my dancing violin. Orthat voice. “The castle’s … dark,” I answer. “Not too bad, though.”
    Now that’s an outright lie. I glance at all of them. “Why? What’ve you heard?”
    Emma leans forward, lowering her voice. “My great-auntie, who died many years ago, worked as a maid there once. She swore that rooms turned icy cold, and that things wouldna be where she left them last.”
    “As in things moved around?” Cameron asks.
    “Aye,” Emma confirms. “She said her cleaning supplies, which she kept in one specific closet, would disappear and turn up in a strange place, like an upstairs bathtub. She could have sworn there was a dark spirit at work. She also says a young man was murdered there, countless years ago. ’Tis his ghost who haunts, I bet.”
    I find myself trembling but I try not to let my fear show. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. “I hadn’t heard anything about that.”
    Emma regards me. “Never know, Ivy. Keep your eyes peeled.”
    “So have you seen anything?” Cameron asks.
    “I have heard some things,” I answer hesitantly. I’m careful about what I say. I don’t want to come off as freakishmy first day at school. “Could be the wind, though. It whips through that old castle like something out of a horror movie.”
    “It’s rare that the wind isna roaring in the Highlands,” Derek says with a grin. “It can play tricks on ya, though. Dunna let your imagination run wild.”
    “True,” his sister chimes in. She gives me the exact same smile as her brother. “But the Highlands are full o’ magic, too. No telling what’s going on for real.”
    “Aye,” Emma says, but she’s looking at me more seriously than the other two. “No telling at all.”
    The bell rings, and the twins gather their stuff. They wave to us and head off. As Emma and I gather our book bags, she looks me pointedly in the eye.
    “You can tell me,” she whispers. “What’s really happening in the castle?”
    My heart skips a beat. I’m surprised by her insight. “I didn’t want to make a big deal in front of everyone,” I explain.
    “You can trust me,” Emma offers. “Swear.”
    I look at her for several seconds. I have no one else to confide in. No one my own age. I like Emma already. There’s a blatant honesty about her that I relate to.
    “Okay,” I whisper as we walk out of the Common Room. “I know it sounds nuts, but there’s this … voice. Someone keeps telling me to leave the castle. And,” I go on, “there’s a heavy, I don’t know, presence in the air. It’s not always there, just sometimes.”
    “Like what?” Emma asks. Her face is drawn in concern. No mockery at all.
    I think. “It feels like someone is watching me. Also, my new step-grandmother isn’t the sweetest of old ladies,” I add. “I mean, she is in her nineties, but boy, she really doesn’t like me.”
    “Do you think it’s her?” Emma asks. “Maybe