Wolf Moon Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

would look up and smile, but her pale eyes were bloodshot,
    and he could see she had been crying. He knew she and her
    mother argued a lot, and lately her mother had been furious with
    her over a missing painting. Her mother thought Jackie had
    misplaced it when they were working on the restoration of the
    old house.
    As soon as he had seen her, David killed the engine and
    climbed off the sled. He walked over, brushed the snow off the
    step, and sat down close to her. He could tell by the way she was
    picking at the rip in her jeans that she was upset. She slid her
    thin ballet slippers under the icy grass and he realized his breath was cloudy. It was cold, too cold for anyone to be outside for any
    reason other than escape.
    Her dark hair was pulled into a loose bun, wisps of curls fell
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    across her forehead, and she tugged her sweater around her and
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    Lara Parker
    looked over at him, smiling briefl y before drawing her knees to
    her body. Finally, he had broken the silence.
    “You haven’t found it yet, have you?”
    She shook her head. “I can see it,” she had said softly, “a
    dark place, hidden, with a dirt fl oor.” Th
    en she had made an
    odd sound, like a puppy whimpering, and covered her face with
    her hands. His heart swelled with a desire to help her.
    “Tell you what,” he had said, hesitant. “Maybe we should
    look for it, in those old buildings behind Collinwood.”
    She turned to him and seemed to search his eyes, her own
    darting back and forth as if to question him, and he added, “Th
    e
    workers who rebuilt the Old House carried all the stored furni-
    ture and belongings from the basement to one of those build-
    ings. Trunks of old clothing. A piano. Boxes of law books and
    maritime rules, fi nancial rec ords from the running of the cannery, anything that didn’t burn up in the fi re. It makes sense that the
    painting was part of that stash.” He gave her arm a gentle bump
    with his fi st. “What do you say? Want to look around with me?”
    “Okay.” She sounded doubtful, and then after a long mo-
    ment she said, “I guess I should go back inside,” but she didn’t
    move. He had been stealing looks at her and then looking away
    so as not to stare. Th
    e shadows beneath her eyes were smudged
    mascara— she had started to wear make- up and then leave it for
    days without washing it off . Th
    ey were both quiet before she
    asked, “Do you remember when we were studying mythology,
    and we tried to choose our favorite god or goddess?”
    He nodded. For a while her mother had let her home school
    with him. He had always had tutors since his father thought the
    high school was inferior. But it had been hard for him to actually
    pay attention to the lessons with her there in the room.
    “Didn’t we decide to be followers of Dionysus?” she said.
    “Yeah. We wanted to lie around and drink wine all day.” He
    remembered the idea had made him dizzy with longing.
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    “His portrait in the book was so beautiful,” she said. “Th
    e
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    one by Velázquez.”
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    Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising
    “With all those seedy men.”
    Jackie laughed. “Didn’t you tell me he was gay?”
    “Well, he was kind of pudgy, and he always sore a crown of
    grape leaves.”
    She smiled. “Not thorns?”
    He was concentrating now on a freckle, not really a freckle,
    but a very small mole on her neck, a fl aw that somehow made
    her more beautiful, and he studied the place at her temple where
    the fi ne hairs grew singly as if they had each been drawn there
    by the point of a pen. She looked up suddenly at a bird high in
    the sky, then over at him, and smiled again. “And you said that
    Ares was gay, too, didn’t you?”
    “Doesn’t it make sense?” he said. “He was the god of war.”
    She grinned and nudged his arm.
    “But Aphrodite loved him, didn’t she? Remember the