White Lilies Manor E-Book

Janina Raven

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: White Lilies Trilogy
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 76

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Fifteen-year-old Sparrow moved in with her mysterious host family nearly a year ago now. Her time in the Victorian manor with two fellow students is unremarkable until Summer Solstice draws closer and she finds a newspaper article - an article speaking about terrible rites related to the murder of three teens. Here, in White Lilies Manor. From that moment on, nothing is the same. Sparrow barely survives several murder attempts before managing to escape the manor and fleeing into the nearby forest. Together with the two other students - nerd Thorne and drama queen Jasmine - she has to come up with a plan to escape the manor's heavily protected estate and avoid the rite on Summer Solstice at all costs. Even if that means having to go back into White Lilies Manor...

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

A Letter

The Book

A Thunderstorm

Wicked Psychopaths

Murder

Escape

Secrets

Bonding

One Down

The Last Night

The Rite

The End

A LETTER

Dear Mum and Dad,

It’s been almost a year in the Manor for me now, and probably about half a year since we last saw each other? Yeah, on Christmas, I recall.

The situation here is still the same. No change, no development and no news about you-know-what, so I guess that means I’ll be spending another year at White Lilies Creek High School?

Normally I wouldn’t mind, but lately something about the Manor has been feeling… off. Very much so. I don’t know what it is, I can’t quite put my finger on it. There’s no one I can ask – the two other teens who live here still treat me like I’m not even there. Thought that might be a bit my fault.

Ugh, I’m looking forward to leaving this place behind for the summer and I can’t wait to see you guys again! I do hope I don’t have to return here ever again.

Don’t worry about me, though, I’ll survive the coming four weeks somehow, haha.

I hope the cats are doing alright – say hello to them from me, please!

See you soon,

Sparrow

THE BOOK

Sparrow

I trudged up the old stairway of the east wing. Outside, the wind howled and pulled at the roof. Tomorrow there would probably be roof tiles lying on the grass outside the manor.

Lightning flashed across the sky and several light bulbs in the old chandeliers exploded, raining glass shards on the floor in front of me. I sighed and walked on, lighting up the way with my phone’s flashlight. The light was only dim, but a year in the manor was long enough for me to remember the way without too much help.

Finally, I stood in front of my room. Whilst I searched for the key in my pocket, my gaze met the book that was lying on the ground.

“Summer Solstice Traditions in England” was the title. Nobody but the nerd Thorne could have left it here for me. He would be the only one to think of giving me such a book. Okay, maybe it even sounded interesting. Worth looking into.

I grabbed the book, unlocked the door and entered my room. Click-clack. No power here either, and though it was only afternoon, it was dark as night. With a sigh, I lit up the candles on the old shelves and flopped down on my bed with my laptop. I put on my headphones and turned up the volume – Symphonic Metal, perfect for calming down after a long day at White Lilies Creek High School.

I took out my school stuff – if I hurried with my homework right now, I’d probably have time to read Thorne’s book later.

A THUNDERSTORM

Thorne

Ihope Sparrow has found the book. I hope she will read it. I hope- I sighed and looked out of the window. A storm raged above the vast estate. Not really the perfect weather for my plan.

But wasn’t it clear? Murphy’s Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

They would get Sparrow first. Then Jasmine. And then me. Sorted by room numbers, like every year.

I had to prevent that.

Jasmine knew it all. She had believed me immediately. She was seventeen. The oldest of us, and maybe also the most mature. She wasn’t stupid or quick-tempered. She had listened, asked the right questions and then agreed to my plan.

But Sparrow? She was fifteen, a year younger than me, wild and unpredictable.

As if that wasn’t enough, she also considered me an idiot, due to an incident I didn’t even want to remember.

That’s why I thought it would be a better idea to just leave the book, to make sure she had enough evidence to trust me.

I was no longer sure if I had done the right thing. Would she really be curious enough to read it? I should go check up on her.

I grabbed my phone and tried to open the door.

It wouldn’t budge.

Somebody must have locked the latch.

WICKED PSYCHOPATHS

Jasmine

S o this was how the time here at White Lilies Manor would end for me. A crazy plan, led by a nerd named Thorne and a hatchling called Sparrow – a fifteen-year-old, mysterious girl who was distant to everybody and called the whole world stupid. Man, that’s funny.

Honestly, I had been glad when I was able to leave the old youth hostel last summer to move here, but now that I knew why the rooms here were suddenly free, I wished I was still in that smelly bedroom which I shared with three others. Or even better, in an apartment of my own, in the nearby city. With a job and far away from all these weird guys.

This so-called host family was nothing more than a bunch of wicked psychopaths.

Rosary LeDoux was the mother. She and her husband Kyle had a baby, Ethan, who would constantly look at you with his creepy black eyes. Kyle’s sister Estelle and their mother Clarisse lived here too, as well as Thill, Rosary’s brother. However, Clarisse was doubtlessly the scariest of all creatures in this house. Even more so than the other two teens.

Still, I somehow wasn’t able to leave them to fend for themselves. When Thorne had told me everything, for a moment I had thought about simply leaving them. I hadn’t had the heart to do so, though.

I sighed and paused the Netflix movie on my tablet – I couldn’t concentrate on it anyway. Maybe I should check on the hatchling? I wondered if she had read Thorne’s book and if she took things as seriously as you could expect it from a fifteen-year-old. What could you expect from a girl her age? Not much, I guessed. One more reason to look after her.

I stood up from my chair and walked over to the door.

It was latched.

Darn.

MURDER

Sparrow

N o. Bullshit. That was impossible. Darn. Crap. Fuck. Shit. No. Thorne was just trying to mess with me. And still, this whole situation looked pretty real. Everything made sense now.

The newspaper articles that lay between the pages of the book: Children disappeared again; nobody remembers them except their parents.

The explanation from the book’s dog-eared pages: Dark cult on White Lilies Manor kills teens to use their blood for unclear purposes. The dark rite is performed every year on the night of Summer Solstice; with the teens disappearing two nights before the main event.

While I was still thinking about how damn real that sounded, the realisation came to me that tonight was the second last night before Summer Solstice.

I grabbed my phone and looked for the WhatsApp chat with Thorne. Had we ever texted each other? It was unbelievable how little I knew him and Jasmine despite living together for almost a year. But Thorne was always reading or working on his phone or laptop, just like Jasmine. And I? I wandered around the manor. I knew the whole house by heart, even the forbidden places and rooms I wished I had never visited. The burnt-down North Tower. The torture chamber. That one had been pretty interesting. What had been much worse, was the alchemy pantry. Besides the questionable smells and the typical instruments, I had found animals floating around in preserving jars. The stare of their dead eyes had haunted me in ridiculous nightmares the following nights.

THORNE, I texted, hoping that the terrible cell reception would for once work. WHAT IS THAT BOOK? IS IT ALL TRUE?

I had barely even sent the text off when the door slammed open, colliding harshly with the wall.

“Sparrow, would you please come down for dinner?”

“Estelle?” I turned off the music and quickly shut the book that was still lying on my bed.

“Hey, why so nervous?” Estelle laughed like she always did, but I had seen her frown when she had spotted the title of the book.

“Come on now, we are all waiting for you!”

“Sure.” I got up from my bed and shoved my phone and earphones into the pockets of my black denim jacket. Darn, if this all is true, I’m standing next to a murderer! My murderer!

Estelle held the door open for me and I lead the way through the corridor. It wasn’t a good feeling to turn my back on her, but I didn’t want to show her that I knew all about her. No, not all. Rather nothing at all. I only knew that they were a weird family, and that somebody had put a book with some newspaper articles in front of my door and that – darn!

A small nudge in my back had me tripping over my own feet and I tumbled down the stairway. I flailed around, trying to grab on to something until I slammed against the