White Lilies Creek E-Book

Janina Raven

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 90

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Sparrow thought she was finally coping with last year's events. But when Thorne is kidnapped by a very familiar person, old wounds are reopened and she realises that there's no way to avoid another visit to White Lilies Manor. Together with her mother, the famous assassin Nemo, she makes her way back to the place of doom, only to find the nearby village slowly turning into a Victorian nightmare. As Sparrow is faced with last year's terrors again, she soon recognises there's more behind what happened - and more behind the people she thought she knew...

Leseprobe

Contents

WEIRD THINGS

ANYONE

SLEEP POTIONS

NEVADA MORRIGANE

PLEASE DIE SLOWLY

THE ASSIGNMENT

ARGUMENTS

JOURNEY

CECILY’S PLAN

THE OPERA

WELCOME TO THE FREAK SHOW

NEMO

LIST OF IMPORTANT CHARACTERS

WEIRD THINGS

Sparrow

“Weird things are going on in White Lilies Creek, the village near the estate of White Lilies Manor which came to dubious fame almost a year ago when a teen girl was murdered. This year’s incidents seem to be connected to the same wicked magic, since the whole village, with its citizens, is slowly turning into a Victorian Era English town. So much for the news, here’s the weather…”

I stood in the doorway, petrified, staring at the little radio in the corner of the waiting room of Doctor Mortimer Morrigane’s vet practice, the unicorn squirrel Rain in my hands.

Weird things. At White Lilies.

I had spent numerous nights awake, praying for the nightmare to be over. For the LeDouxes to have learned their lesson and give up their blood thirst.

But it had been in vain, apparently. Now they were back, in May 2021, almost one year after the terrifying incidents. Just last week, Thorne and I had attended our last therapy session to cope with Jasmine’s death, hoping to never hear about the LeDouxes again – the news had lost interest long ago.

I dropped into a chair, ignoring the questioning looks of the other waiting people, and took out my phone to text Thorne.

I'd had to hurry on my way from my job at the bakery to be on time for my spontaneous appointment with Dad, and had not had the chance to message my boyfriend yet.

To tell him that I wouldn’t make it home on time.

To tell him that I was at my Dad’s vet practice to have him look at Rain.

To tell him that I had found the unicorn squirrel unconscious on a table in the bakery after my shift.

And now, I texted him to say that he should not, under any circumstances, open the door for anyone.

ANYONE

Thorne

My phone and the doorbell rang at the same time.

I hesitated, but decided to haste down the stairway to open the door – I wanted to be faster than Cecily, our old landlord from the ground floor flat, who was incredibly curious about anything and anyone who visited us. I sprinted down the stairway, past Cecily Williams’ apartment, to the main entry of the old house.

Sparrow and I had moved here when we realised that the LeDoux family had erased the memories of Sparrow’s existence from all her loved ones – except her parents. When the incidents at the manor had become public, everybody came to the realisation that their memories had been tampered with, but it was hard for them to comprehend. As such, we had moved in together, further away from them to ease the transition of me being back in their lives.

I arrived downstairs.

I was pretty sure it must just be Sparrow, who often forgot her keys. Without a second thought, I opened the door.

But it wasn’t her. A girl, yes, a familiar face, but it wasn’t Sparrow.

I froze. Looked left and right. Took a deep breath. Hallucinations? No, this seemed too real.

“Jasmine,” I finally managed to say.

For a second, we just stared at each other. “I think so, yes,” the girl in front of me replied. “Can I come in?”

“S… sure.” I stepped aside to let her pass and closed the door. Taking another deep breath, I wordlessly led her upstairs. I had accidentally closed the apartment door when hasting downstairs, so we stood in an awkward silence as my shaking fingers fumbled the key into the lock. I turned it and opened the door for us to go inside.

Finally, we sat on the sofa, next to each other but still distanced.

“So, how… how come you are here?” I finally asked without making eye contact.

“I don’t know.” Jasmine put her feet on the sofa and wrapped her arms around her legs. “I don’t know what I am doing here.” She took a deep breath before saying the words that shattered my heart. “I don’t even know who you are.”

SLEEP POTIONS

Sparrow

“Hey, Sparrow, are you two okay?” my Dad asked, quickly looking at Rain and then back into my eyes when I entered his treatment room.

“I am,” I replied. “But Rain isn’t, as I told you on the phone. I’m so worried...”

“Show me,” Dad said, his expression turning grave.

I handed him the small furry bundle I was carrying in my hands. He carefully put Rain down on the table before opening a drawer.

Watching him take out several instruments, I sat down on the chair in the corner. This had been my spot during my childhood, a place to observe him work any time I visited after school.

“How was your day?” Dad asked.

I let out a deep sigh. “Haven’t you heard the news?”

“No.” He didn’t look at me, staying focused while using a stethoscope on Rain’s fragile body.

“I don’t know who I should worry more about,” I replied, “Rain, or myself and Thorne.”

Dad shook his head. “I don’t know what this is about, but maybe both cases are connected?”

“Why?” I jumped up from my chair and stared at him.

“Tell me the news first,” he said, taking a book from a shelf. “I quickly need to look something up, but I’m all ears.”

I shed light on the situation about White Lilies Manor and White Lilies Creek, the village.

“It is turning into a Victorian city?” Dad looked up at me. “It’s clear that those weird LeDoux people are involved, right?”

“Sure.”

“Did anything suspicious happen to you in the last days? You know, the feeling of being watched for example?”

“I’m always watched in the bakery, so… I don’t really know,” I had to confess.

“Well, I found out what happened to Rain.” Dad gave me a serious look. “Someone fed him a plant that is harmless to humans – it reduces stress – but for an animal like Rain, it has an effect like a sedative. This plant is called jasmine.”

Thorne

“W hat do you mean, you don’t know me?” I asked after a second of silence, still in shock.

“I don’t know you, while you seem to know me.” Her hand trembled when she tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear. “I was told to pick you up and travel back with you.”

“Travel?” I got up from the sofa to increase the distance between her and me. “Listen, Jasmine! You are supposed to be dead! And now, one year after this crap happened, you appear in my apartment, telling me you have to travel together with me? I’m wondering whether I’ve gone insane and you are just a ghost of my past, or if there is a real explanation for this!”

Her eyes glazed over. “Dead. Yes, that’s what I’ve been told as well. Obviously, I had a life before this. But I can’t remember a thing – only that I woke up in a stone circle, together with dozens of other teens, two days ago.”

“Together with other teens?” My mind raced. What work of the devil was going on here?

“Yes. Okay, listen. I’m not supposed to talk. I’m supposed to take you on a journey. Here are the train tickets. Are you in?” She showed me two tickets, waiting for my reply.

“Who sent you?” I asked, even though the answer was already clear to me.

“A woman with reddish hair and a beautiful dress.”

“Rosary LeDoux.” My voice broke. “Jasmine, this woman is dangerous!”

“How funny.” Jasmine narrowed her eyes. “That’s what she told me about you. So, will you come with me or not?”

“Obviously not!” I wondered how much of our common past I could tell her to explain why this was absolutely not a good idea, but before I could even start, she reached for something in her pocket again. “Well, in that case, I’m supposed to show you this.”

She gave me two small Polaroid pics that I stared at for some seconds, then dropped them as if I had just burned my fingers. One of them was a picture of Sparrow, working behind the counter of the bakery, with the text “We are watching you” in red letters, and the other one showed Rain lying on a table – unconscious, or even dead?

“If you want to see that thing alive again, you better come with me.” Jasmine picked up the pictures and shoved them back into her pocket.

“I need to call Sparrow first,” I mumbled. “Give me a second.”

“No.” Her hand slid into her jacket and she revealed a small pistol. “I was told that is absolutely forbidden.”

And as I followed her outside, I could only wonder how that girl with a terrible crush on me had turned into a brutal marionette of my former family.

Sparrow

I felt eyes resting on me from everywhere the moment I left the bus with the slowly waking Rain in my arms. Though when I turned around, nobody was there. Had I become paranoid or were the LeDouxes really watching us? If yes – how long had they been doing that? And why? As revenge for us hurting their reputation?

Thorne hadn’t read my messages yet. He usually spent a lot of time on his phone, gaming or scrolling through Instagram, so something had to be wrong here.

The weird feeling didn’t lessen when I entered our apartment. Thorne wasn’t there. A faint scent of perfume hung in the air… perfume that Jasmine used to apply.

I brushed away the thought.

I don’t have hallucinations. There is no perfume here. I’m not paranoid.

“Thorne?” My voice echoed through the empty apartment. My phone rang. I glanced at the display and picked up. “Cecily?”

“Yes. Come down. I know what happened to Fox.”

Two minutes later, I sat in Cecily’s flat at the dining table.

The old woman pushed her big glasses up with her palms and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry to tell you, Miss Morrigane, but your boyfriend left twenty minutes ago, together with another girl.”

I was speechless for a second. “Another girl?”

“Yes. Here’s a picture.” Cecily handed me her phone. “This is what I could get from the surveillance cameras in the stairwell. It’s not the best quality, but maybe you recognise her?”

Yes. I recognised her immediately. But I couldn’t believe it.

“Are you okay, Miss Morrigane?” She took her phone from my hands. “Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes.” I took a deep breath. “Listen to me, please.”

“Always, Miss Morrigane.”

“This girl.” My voice broke and it took me some time to form the words. “This girl is supposed to be dead. It is Jasmine DeLuna.”

“The girl from White Lilies-” Cecily stopped talking when she saw me flinch.