The Shade Amulet Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  About the Author

  The Shade Amulet

  Koven Chronicles Book One

  Copyright © 2018 Andrea Pearson

  Book design and layout copyright © 2018 Andrea Pearson

  Cover copyright © 2018 Andrea Pearson

  Series by Andrea Pearson:

  Kilenya Chronicles

  Kilenya Stories

  Mosaic Chronicles

  Koven Chronicles

  Ranch City Academy Series

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be 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, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction, and the views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author. Likewise, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are represented fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  To

  Travis Butler

  Chapter One

  I’d been looking forward to sleeping in all week. Fridays tend to be quiet—let’s be real. Most days are—and as I hadn’t been contacted about a potential job by Thursday evening, I enjoyed a late night with Little Caesars pizza and House re-runs.

  Getting rudely awakened at seven in the morning, especially by a cat, wasn’t on my to-do list. But then, neither was a bomb threat at one of the local high schools. Unfortunately for me, both ended up happening that morning.

  Sia jumped on my chest, mrowling in my ear and repeatedly rubbing her face against mine.

  “Mmmffm,” I mumbled at the not-usually-this-insistent feline. “Get off.”

  I rolled over, pulling the pillow over my head, but she persisted. After pushing her away a few times, I realized she wasn’t going to leave me alone. “Fine! I’m up.”

  She whacked me once as if chastising me for not obeying sooner, then scrambled off as I stretched. I ignored her glare, refusing to apologize to a cat, and got up, heading for the bathroom in the hall.

  I loved my little house. It had been built in the mid-eighteen hundreds and was pretty much an antique where everything was concerned. Original crown molding, doorknobs, and hardwood floors had totally won me over. No garage and only one bathroom were minuses on a long list of mostly pluses. Sure, the hallway-bathroom thing was inconvenient, especially when someone came to visit, but I was the only person living there, so it wasn’t like it was an issue regularly.

  Sia followed me, curling around my ankles and generally making a nuisance of herself. I pinned my dark, messy curls out of the way before brushing my teeth and taking care of business. After a quick glance at myself in the mirror on the way out, noting the smudges of mascara under my eyes that made me look like a heroin addict, I headed to the kitchen. I’d take care of the makeup mess later. I wasn’t in the mood to break out the remover, and Sia definitely wasn’t in the mood to wait for her food.

  While Sia ate, I slipped into a chair at the table and contemplated going back to bed, absentmindedly watching my cat. Despite her forcing me awake, warm fuzzies for the furball rose in my chest. I would have gone insane if it hadn’t been for her. Most extroverts don’t last very long living completely alone, and I’d been in the house for at least a year when I caved to both my mom and my best friend’s insistences that I get a pet.

  I’d gone to the local store with plans to buy a dog—a big one with scary teeth, good for protection and company—but when I saw Sia, my heart melted. She was so scrawny and scared.

  “I want the Siamese,” I’d said to the owner.

  He chuckled. “She’s not really a Siamese. She just looks it—must have had one a long way back in her ancestry, but the only thing that’s still there is the coloring.”

  Sia had looked up at me with those big blue eyes, and I felt an instant kinship with her. I knew what it was like to feel like an imposter. For years, I hadn’t been able to do much with the magic that surrounded me. I was an Arete, just like every other fourth-born child in every other family, and as such, I supposedly had special powers. But those powers had always refused to let me control them. In college, I’d watched my friends develop their abilities and excel in magic, and felt like I’d never get the chance to do the same. It had taken a ton of time and lots of help from my professors before I found a topic that I thrived in and which excited me and made me feel useful and needed.

  I’m a professional Fire Impeder—a Fire Arete who focuses on micro magic instead of macro. I learned Fire down to the individual molecules that control it. The impeding part comes when I stop sparks from igniting. It’s grueling, exhausting, and frequently dirty work that I’d been doing for a few years now, but the jobs, though scarce, pay well, and I love serving the community.

  I’m still not as good at what I do as I’d like to be—even after all the training I’d received, mistakes still happened occasionally—but Fire Impeders are extremely rare, especially in states like this one where the population isn’t as dense as it is in places like California or New York.

  Sia’s full name was Siamese, Sia for short. It’s pronounced “see-uh” like the singer, not “sigh-yuh” which would be silly. And while we’re at it, Arete is pronounced “ah-reh-TAY,” not “uh-reet,” which would also be silly.

  I really hadn’t planned on living in Lehi for more than a year, as I was only filling in for the last Fire Impeder while she healed from a broken hip. But when
the ninety-year-old woman realized just how much she loved not being called out for every emergency, she asked me to take over permanently, and I’d been here ever since.

  Sia finished her food and looked up at me expectantly.

  “I know, I know,” I said, stepping to the fridge. I opened it and pulled out the Ziploc bag of raw, open-range chicken liver I kept there.

  Why any living creature would want to eat liver, raw or otherwise, was completely beyond me. But Sia loved the stuff, and the pet-store owner recommended it after several months of my cat getting sick. I put it in her bowl, telling her not to drag it off—because yuck—then I poured myself some cereal and sat at the table to eat, resigned to the fact that I was officially awake for the day.

  Only three spoonfuls later, my phone rang from inside my bedroom, and I sprang to answer the call. It’s not that I’m super lonely—okay, fine, I am—but jobs don’t happen often, and I can’t exactly drum up business by encouraging hostage situations and active shooters. Not only that, but starting forest fires is still illegal, regardless of how much I get paid for stopping them.

  “Hey, Chief.”

  “Get dressed, Lizzie,” Lehi City Chief O’Hare said. “There’s an emergency out at Lake Mountain High School. A police escort is on the way.”

  “Ready now.” As I said the words, I grabbed my purse, socks, and shoes, and rushed to the living room.

  “Good.”

  He hung up, and I tossed my phone into my purse and slipped my feet into my socks and shoes before sending a regretful glance at the cereal. Sia would probably devour it after I left. Sigh. I headed outside to wait for my ride.

  Summer break was starting in a couple of days, and I knew the kids would be excited. Who would want to ruin the students’ freedom from what they viewed as enslavement?

  I’d only been outside for a couple of moments when four cop cars pulled up, their lights flashing. I dashed to the front car, pulled the passenger door open, and slid inside.

  Chief O’Hare himself was driving. He glanced over at me. “Buckle up, Lizzie,” he said unnecessarily. I was already doing so.

  “What’s going on?” I asked as he pulled onto Center Street and headed south. “And why are you going out personally?”

  “Bomb threat at Lake Mountain High. We think it’s real this time.”

  Lake Mountain had a couple threats in the first few years after it opened, back before I moved here, but from what I’d heard, none of them had been real.

  “What’s different this time?” I asked.

  Chief turned right on Pioneer Crossing and said, “Lots of witnesses. Some kid called in, saying there was a bomb in the school. Officials followed protocol—put everything on lockdown and called the cops. By that time, they’d already received three more calls about the bomb.”

  “Is there more than one student in on it?”

  “Don’t know.” He glanced at me. “Is this a new trend you’re starting?”

  “Huh?”

  “Pajamas, raccoon eyes.”

  “Oh, oops.” I rubbed the black out from under my eyes. “How do we know it’s an actual bomb?”

  Chief gripped the steering wheel. “The first kid who called acted like he knew more than he was telling. They searched his locker and found a suicide note. He didn’t say where the bomb was located, but it didn’t take long to figure out, as he had gym first. They found him in the boys’ locker room with the explosive device strapped to his chest.”

  “So, what’s the kid like?” I asked, pulling out the state-issued ID that would get me into pretty much any crime scene. I wanted to be ready to hop out of the car the moment we pulled up in front of the school.

  Chief O’Hare glanced over at me. “Not a stereotypical suicide bomber, if that’s what you’re wondering. He’s popular and well-liked in school. Good grades, one of their best athletes.” He turned onto Redwood Road in Saratoga Springs, the neighboring city on the west. “I’m not sure which sports team he’s on. If that’s important, I can find out.”

  Whether he played basketball, football, or croquet didn’t matter so much when it came to stopping bombs. “I don’t think I need the info, but I’ll let you know.”

  We were silent as we approached the high school. The moment Chief pulled up at the curb, I bolted from the car and fled across the pavement toward the nearest entrance.

  Chapter Two

  A Saratoga Springs cop I didn’t know glanced at my ID and pulled the door open for me.

  When dealing with bigger things—like forest or house fires—I can be within even a mile and still do my job decently enough. But bombs are tricky. They’re sensitive. Very sensitive. I’d only been wrong once, and I didn’t like thinking about what had happened. It made me feel panicky, and right then was not a good time for me to be panicking.

  Another cop was waiting inside for me. “He’s in the boys’ locker room. Do you need to actually see him to deactivate the bomb?”

  “I don’t know. Depends on how close to a wall he is and whether or not I can access the other side of that wall.”

  We stopped just outside the boys’ locker room. Murmured voices filtered through the cracks—probably counselors talking to the kid—and I rested my hand on the door, closing my eyes. I pushed outward with my magic, searching for things I knew could possibly be in a bomb. The imprint of black powder screamed out at me like a punch to the face, and I opened my eyes. “It’s the real thing. There’s a ton of black powder in there.”

  The cop swore, pushed the button on his walkie-talkie, and relayed what I just told him. “What now?” he asked me.

  I raised an eyebrow. Every cop from every city I’d worked with so far had been grilled on what to do in a situation like this. This guy had to be new. “Take me to the office. I need to see plans of the school.”

  The cop nodded and led me at a brisk pace to the main office. Inside, they already had out maps of the building and surrounding fields and edifices—apparently, school officials knew what to do.

  The school principal looked up at me, her hair falling out of her bun. “Oh, good, Miss Ashton.” She pointed at a spot on the map. “He’s huddled in the corner here. On this side of the wall is the gym. The other side is the coach’s office, accessed only through the boys’ locker room.”

  “Take me to the gym, then. Should be close enough.”

  The principal issued orders to her staff, then she and the cop jogged with me back the way I’d come.

  “I heard voices in the locker room,” I said to her. “Is someone in there with him?”

  “Two counselors.”

  I nodded. “Good.”

  Once there, we slowly eased the gym doors open so they didn’t creak and alert the boy. The police officer closed the doors behind us, and the principal led me to the corner that was closest to the locker room. I turned to her. “You should probably leave. If anything goes wrong . . . if I make any mistakes . . . well, we want to have as few casualties as possible.”

  She hesitated before saying, “I’d rather stay. I need to know what the process is in case this happens again.”

  Fair enough.

  I placed my cheek on the cold wall closest to where the boy was and shut my eyes, trying to find the black powder again. It was harder to grasp through the thick wall than I’d expected it to be. Once I had a hold of it, I turned my back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor, taking care not to lose track of the explosive. I leaned my head on the cold surface, my eyes still closed.

  I already knew that the previous Fire Impeder preferred to crouch in a position that allowed her to pounce, if needed. I had found out pretty quickly that if I didn’t relax as soon as possible after getting a mental grip on the explosive device, I more easily made mistakes. If the principal was caught off guard by my casual position, she didn’t say anything.

  And then the waiting began. Either the counselors would talk the boy down, or I would have to stop the bomb the moment it went off.

  I pu
shed out with my magic, sensing the ingredients the boy had used to create it, outside of black powder. It wasn’t as powerful as some I’d seen while interning in Washington D.C., but it would damage the locker room and definitely the people in it.

  It took me a few moments, but eventually I was able to sense exactly where the spark would originate. The boy held a dead man’s switch in his hand, with the switch already depressed. It was connected to a blasting cap, which was right next to black powder. Once he released the button, the cap would send a spark to the powder, and the bomb would go off—at least in theory. The whole thing was crudely designed, and the chances of it malfunctioning were pretty high. I didn’t want to rely on chance, though, and judging by how close the powder was to the cap, it probably would ignite eventually.

  Besides, if it didn’t go off immediately, the boy would most likely push the switch again. And again. Until it did go off.

  The wait wasn’t long. Screams sounded from the boys’ locker room and I sensed the bomb moving. I open my eyes, glancing at the principal. “What’s going on?”

  She shook her head, her face pale, obviously having heard the screaming too.

  I jumped to my feet as the boy stepped away from the wall. I couldn’t sense the bomb anymore. “He’s moved—I have to go inside.”

  The principal stared at me for a moment, not understanding. “Inside the boys’ locker room? Why?”

  “We don’t have time to find a new location.”

  Once people started screaming, emotions were too high and chances of the bomb going off—especially accidentally—were much greater. The best bet was for me to get into that room and as close to him as I could, as quickly as possible. It was a tricky situation, since getting close would panic him, and if I wasn’t at the right spot, he would ignite the bomb before I was near enough to stop it.

  We rushed across the gym floor back the way we’d entered. The cop must have heard our conversation because he was already opening the doors for us.

  The principal and I slipped through, and I turned to her. “You have to stay in the hall. It’ll only upset him more if you enter with me.”