Echoes by Michelle Rowen Read Free Book Online Page B

Cole was going to avoid me until he had no other choice but to talk to me.
    But I needed answers. I was desperate for them.
    Which left me with only one viable solution, in my humble opinion.
    Grabbing my house key and running shoes, I slipped out through the front door, closing it behind me as quietly as I could. Then, apprehension thudding in my chest, I quickly jogged down the street and around the corner to the house where Ethan lived.

 

Chapter 4
    Only one room on the second floor still had its lights on. The window was open a crack and the thin blue curtains blew in the warm breeze.
    That
was my target.
    The last thing I was going to do at this time of night was knock on the front door. Ethan’s mom would probably think I was completely crazy then.
    Maybe I was.
    There was a wooden trellis built up over the side of the house under the window. It was exactly like the one at my house—maybe it was installed by the same landscapers. I’d used the one under my window to sneak out and back in a couple of times when the situation called for it and I’d wanted to attend an after hours party.
    I grabbed the trellis and tested it for strength. Felt okay to me. I put one hand over the other, making sure I had a secure hold before bringing up my foot and wedging it into the next sturdy spot. It took a few minutes to climb up, but before I knew it my hands curled over the ledge on the second floor. Then I hoisted myself up until I was sitting on Ethan’s windowsill.
    Only then did I have second thoughts about what I was doing.
    Ethan sat on the edge of his bed wearing light gray track pants and a white T-shirt, watching me attempt to break and enter his bedroom.
    “Okay,” he said. “Have to say I didn’t expect this.”
    Climbing up the wall hadn’t been without effort, so now I was a little winded. “I
knew
you were awake.”
    “If I hadn’t been, I would be now. It’s not every day a girl climbs in through my window. Actually, it’s not
any
day.”
    “It’s not day,” I said, finally recognizing the ridiculousness of what I’d just done. But desperate times called for desperate measures. “It’s night.”
    “Touché.” He didn’t look amused by this situation in the slightest. “Look, Olivia, I really don’t think—” Then he swore under his breath as I ignored his attempted protests, pushed the window completely open, and swung fully into his room. I looked down at where I’d come from. Now that I was up here, it seemed to be a very long drop to the ground.
    Ethan’s room was pretty much what I’d expected: a bed with a rumpled blue and green bedspread and pale blue sheets, a desk with an older model computer on it, and a scuffed hardwood floor with a large shaggy throw rug. Concert posters of a few old bands—one for The Rolling Stones, one for Led Zeppelin—both of which were taped to the dark blue wall. A bookcase with textbooks and paperback novels crammed into it.
    Finally my gaze landed on the seventeen year old boy who looked seriously annoyed with me. “Want the guided tour?”
    “No, I’m good.”
    “Why are you here, Olivia?”
    “Gee, why don’t you take a wild guess? I’m freaking out about what happened earlier,
that’s
why I’m here.” He opened his mouth but I held up my hand. “And don’t you dare try to deny that anything happened.”
    His dark eyebrows went up. “Wouldn’t dream of it. It happened. You were attacked.”
    “By a man who died of a heart attack. Mr. Watkinson was
dead
, Ethan.”
    His lips thinned. “Okay.”
    I put my hands on my hips and stood there in front of him, ready to unleash every question that bubbled up inside me. “It was an Upyri, right? Some sort of...of bodiless vampire that takes over dead bodies?”
    Ethan hissed out a long breath, and then raised his gaze to mine. “Upyri is the plural. What you saw earlier was an Upyr. Just one.”
    To finally have it confirmed without further argument was a shock and I suddenly felt