The Blood Keeper (The Blood Journals) Read Online Free PDF Page A

doughnuts would push him over the edge. And Mom liked them enough she might not mind missing church. My truck filled up with the smell of sugar instead of mud, and the alt station I’d been listening to went to commercial. I flipped over to classical, turning it as loud as it could go. I’d left the prairie and river valley mostly behind. Newly built houses popped up in identical cul-de-sacs on both sides of the road.
    Our neighborhood was the color of a wasps’ nest, and justas uniform. Every house was one of five basic designs, with differences that didn’t go beyond certain paint colors and allowable yard art. Clean. Sterilized. Not the kind of place I could even think about a mud monster. Or a very, very weird girl. Who’d put her bloody hand on my chest and said,
It’s not important
.
    The more I thought about it, the less it seemed to matter. Like they say: out of sight, out of mind.
    I turned the music even louder. Everybody on our block was used to me bringing the bass, but not on a Sunday morning. I didn’t cut the sound down until I rolled into the driveway. The front door opened the second I turned off the car anyway, as if Mom had been stalking at the window.
    She waited for me on the small porch, in pressed slacks and a violet blouse.
    All I could smell was mud and sugar, sticking to my sweaty face. I plastered on a smile, hoping to charm her so that I didn’t have to lie.
    “Hey, Mama!” I said as I opened the door, and I charged at her, arms spread as if I’d grab her up in a great big, filthy bear hug.
    Her eyes widened and she held out her hands. “Oh no you don’t! William Sanger, stop!”
    I froze with my hands up and curled into claws. Slowly, I lowered my arms and tilted my chin down so that, from the height of the front steps, all she could see were my big brown eyes.
    Mom rolled hers. “Oh, Will, what have you been doing?” She glanced over me at the truck.
    “Out getting doughnuts?” I offered. “They’re fresh and hot.”
    “Did you have to ford a river?”
    “To the land of King Donutus, where Val and Havoc fought valiantly against the … um … Evil Lord Food Pyramid.”
    Laughter slipped out of her, and I relaxed. If she laughed five times a day, I was winning. Today, my goal would be ten, one for every month Aaron had been gone.
    She said, “Well, Sir William, get yourself cleaned up.”
    “Yes, ma’am.” I jogged back to the car and dragged out the flimsy pink doughnut box. “I need to take the dogs around back and hose them down.”
    As I gave the doughnuts to Mom, she carefully avoided the mud smears my hands left. Her eyelashes fluttered, and she glanced down at the cartoon doughnut printed on the box before drawing herself up and smiling. “Oh, Will. I suppose we have time for doughnuts, too, if you hurry yourself up with the dogs. Church starts in forty minutes.”
    “I thought it started ten minutes ago?”
    “We’re going across to Reformation instead, since you’re so late.”
    “Why bother?” I glanced at the house like it might tell me what was going on.
    She put a fist on her hip. “To thank God your brother’s home safe.”
    I marched the dogs through the garage to hose them off before herding them to the fenced-in kennel that took up one quarter of our backyard. Tried not to think about Ben coming home. I wanted to see him, sure, but I’d have almost rather been as far away as I could get. High overhead with a bird’s-eyeview for real, watching from where I couldn’t be seen so that if the phone rang and it all went to shit I could fly away.
    Val ran for a blue and black rope she kept in her empty food bowl. She batted it against my hand and I grabbed it. We tugged for a moment. The strain pulled at the bruise hardening on my chest. An unfortunate reminder of the impossible thing I’d seen this morning.
    Havoc pushed Val aside, and they snapped at each other. I wished I could ask them if they remembered the creature, too. If they could