Stolen Away Read Online Free PDF

back to the computer screen. “There’s no Lucas Richelieu anywhere. Certainly not in Rowan, anyway.” She spun in the chair. “Something really strange is going on. Mom called Antonia and told her to come home because, and I quote, ‘It’s starting.’ And now she’s avoiding me.”
    “So what do we do?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Have you ever googled your aunt?”
    She spun around without a word and started typingfuriously. Devin and I got up to lean on the desk on either side of her. We scrolled through pages and pages of links.
    “That one.” Devin stopped us, tapping the screen. “School yearbook picture.”
    I whistled. “Did no one in the eighties own mirrors? I mean, seriously.”
    “She dropped out when she was sixteen,” Eloise said. “And then it’s like she disappeared. Her cell phone’s unlisted, and she changes the number every year. She’s never had her own apartment. She just lives in her van and drives around.”
    Devin looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “Did she gamble or something? Maybe she owed people money.”
    “Maybe. But for over seventeen years?” Eloise rubbed her temples. “I’m getting a headache.” She turned away from the computer. “I’ll keep searching later.”
    “Are you okay?” I asked. “You’re a little pale.”
    “Yeah, it’s just the glare off the screen. And stress, I guess.”
    “You know what solves all problems, including stress?” I asked, slinging my arm over her shoulder when she stood up. “Picking apples.”
    She snorted.
    “I think you’re confusing picking apples with chocolate.”
    • • •
    I went to the café the next morning with my laptop and tried to research water witches. I was convinced Granddad was starting to go senile. But after following a few links, I foundanother name for a water witch: a dowser. Which was really only half-helpful. I didn’t fancy calling up some crazy person with a bent wire hanger to walk the fields of the farm, trying to psychically commune with the groundwater. But I read so many testimonials about their accuracy that I phoned the local dowser anyway. Granddad was right; she was fully booked until the first frost, whenever that might be.
    “You look organized,” a voice like warm chocolate said over my shoulder. “And rather fierce,” he added when I tossed the phone aside, frustrated.
    I glanced up and immediately had to remind myself not to purr. It was the guy from the party, with the ripped jeans and the great butt. His smile was dark and positively wicked. “Hi.”
    “Can I sit with you?” Eloise was right, there was something of the rock star about him. He was beautiful, with moody eyes and a sullen mouth.
    “Sure.” What kind of an idiot would say no to that? It just figured that there wasn’t a single person I knew here to see this totally hot guy asking to sit with me.
    He raised his eyebrows at my laptop. “School paper?”
    “Helping out my grandparents, actually.”
    “Are they looking for a water witch, then?”
    “You know about this stuff?” I asked, surprised.
    “Some.” He accepted a tall coffee from the waitress, then added three sugars. The music from the speakers behind us was slow and peppery. “What’s your name?”
    “Jo.” I took a sip of my own drink, wondered if he was going to ask me for my phone number or if I should ask for his. Eloise got all flustered around cute guys and blushed and stammered. I didn’t have that problem. “You were at the party on Friday night, weren’t you?” I didn’t mention that I’d followed him into the woods.
    He leaned back in his chair, his legs sprawled out. His boots nudged the bottom ruffle of my skirt. “Aye.”
    Aye. Seriously? Could he be hotter?
    Unless he had been looking for his girlfriend at the party.
    Not hot.
    “I was supposed to meet my cousin,” he elaborated. “But I couldn’t find her.”
    Hot again.
    “Does she go to school around here?”
    “The high school