Brightly (Flicker #2)
Read Brightly (Flicker #2) Online
Authors: Kaye Thornbrugh
Tags: #Fantasy, #faerie, #young adult, #urban fantasy
(Flicker #2)
All Rights Reserved
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or the author has used them fictitiously.
“Flicker was a definite love for me. It had plenty of action, magic and gorgeous descriptions, as well as a FANTASTIC group of characters that made me so happy at every page.” –
My Life is a Notebook
“The world building was incredible…. This is definitely one to check out if you liked the Iron Fey series.” –
Hey, Tara!
“A wonderful debut novel…. full of heartbreak, adventure and romance…. If you’ve never read a book about faeries, maybe you should start with this one.” –
Owl Read It
“Kaye Thornbrugh describes everything so clearly and vividly…. I can’t wait to see what is in store for Lee and her friends in the next one! A captivating read with fantastic characters and a well-developed world.” –
Novel Nerd Bailey
“Superbly plotted and vividly descriptive, this book captivated me from the very beginning…. This book is the total package: intriguing, fast-paced and peppered with both humor and sadness.” –
Girls Heart Books
Table of Contents
Chapter 7: To the Waters and the Wild
Chapter 8: In a Crooked Little House
Chapter 9: The Kingdom of the Shore
Chapter 18: Break, Break, Break
Chapter 34: Till Human Voices Wake Us
Reaching up to knock on the door, Lee Capren froze. Anxiety roiled in her chest. The June sun pressed uncomfortably against her back, but her fingers were cold with nerves.
In the nearly nine months since she first came to Flicker, Filo had never brought her along for a job quite like this, and she knew he expected her to be able to handle herself. For the first time, he trusted her to take the lead.
“Go on, then,” Filo urged, elbowing her lightly. “We haven’t got all day.”
“I know that.” She flashed him an irritated glance. “Don’t rush me.”
Filo gave her a skeptical look, but didn’t say anything. They stood on the porch of a small, well-tended house in the middle of a small, well-tended neighborhood, nestled in one of the nicer suburbs on the outskirts of Bridgestone City. The lawn was freshly mowed, the walkway swept clean. It seemed like the last place in the world that would have problems of the magical variety—but if Lee had learned anything since last fall, it was that things were rarely what they appeared to be.
At last, Lee took a breath and rapped on the door.
When it swung open, an older man in his fifties or sixties stood before them. He was dressed in a button-up shirt, khaki shorts and sandals.
“Mr. Dawson?” Lee asked.
The man nodded, peering at them through his bifocals. “Yes.”
“I’m Lee Capren,” she said, as confidently as she could. She’d practiced this little speech before. “This is Filo Shine. We’re from Flicker. We’re here to help with your problem.”
“
You’re
the Filo I corresponded with?” Mr. Dawson asked, squinting critically at Filo.
“Yes, sir.”
“I thought you would be older.” His eyes narrowed further. “How old
are
you?”
“Twenty,” Filo lied smoothly. That was about as far as he could push his age; if he claimed to be much older, nobody would believe him. Filo was really only seventeen, the same age as Lee, but Mr. Dawson didn’t need to know that. Filo had explained this to Lee in no uncertain terms:
Never tell them you’re underage. Nobody wants to send a couple of kids into their basement to fight a monster, and glamouring them into forgetting your age or thinking you’re older isn’t worth the effort. Just say it like you mean it.
“All right, then.” Though he was frowning slightly, Mr. Dawson opened the door wider and let them inside.
He led them through the living room, into the kitchen. Through a window over the sink, Lee spied a vegetable garden in the backyard. An older woman—Mrs. Dawson, Lee presumed—was sitting at the kitchen table, hands folded in her lap.
“Irene,” said Mr. Dawson, “these are the people we hired. They’ll be fixing our… problem.”
Before Mrs. Dawson could speak, Filo spoke up.
“Don’t worry ma’am,” he told her. “We’ll be in and out, no more than an hour. Nobody has to know we were ever here.”
The older woman looked troubled, but she nodded.
“Now,” Lee said, “could you describe the problem for us one more time?”
“It started about two weeks ago,” Mr. Dawson explained, a little hesitantly. “We started hearing noises coming from the basement—thumping, shuffling. There’s a cellar door that leads into the back yard. We figured some raccoons had gotten in through there. Then we noticed the smell. There’s a terrible smell coming from down there, like blood and rotting things.”
“Have you tried to deal with it yourself?” Filo asked.
“Yes, once—last week. I went down there with a flashlight and I saw… something. I don’t know quite how to describe it. It looked sort of like a dog, but like no dog I’ve ever seen.” He paused, then continued, his voice lower, “It didn’t have any skin. Just exposed muscle. It ran at me, and I got out quickly and locked the door. I locked the cellar door from the outside, too.”
“And how did you come to contact us?”
“A friend of our daughter,” Mrs. Dawson chimed in. “I mentioned the problem to our daughter, Sandra, and she knew someone who had used your… services before. That person gave us your address, and I wrote to you.”
“And here we are today,” Filo said with a nod. “May we see the basement?”
“Of course.” Mr. Dawson pointed across the kitchen, where a set of stairs led down to the basement door.
When he offered Filo a jangling key ring, Lee noticed that Filo was careful not to make skin contact. A Sighted human’s touch granted a normal human the same quality of vision for the duration of the contact. Lee knew firsthand how startling, and even painful, it could be, especially with someone whose Sight was as powerful as Filo’s. Touching Filo’s skin was like going from a pitch-black room to a blindingly-bright one; for that reason, Filo avoided contact.
Lee and Filo descended the stairs, where Filo unlocked the padlock on the basement door. He tossed the keys back up to Mr. Dawson and slowly cracked the door open.
Hot, stinking air gushed out, nearly doubling Lee over. She clamped one hand over her nose, but Filo pinched her arm, hard, and she dropped it to her side.
“Hands down,” he instructed. “You’re going to need them.” He looked up at Mr. and Mrs. Dawson. “It’s definitely a Bloody-Bones. That’s what they smell like.”
“Can you… handle it?” Mr. Dawson asked uncertainly.
“Absolutely,” Filo assured him. “Bloody-Bones are nursery bogies, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. Now, you’re going to hear some funny noises,” he continued lightly. “Crashing. Screaming. But no matter what you hear, you can’t open the door until we’ve dealt with the problem. I don’t care if we’re shouting that our legs have been torn off, begging you to let us out. I need to know that, no matter what,
you
will not open that door
.”