Kiss of the Silver Wolf by Sharon Buchbinder Read Free Book Online Page A

English. Did Rebekkah leave these here? She wiped her fingers on a napkin and flipped through the Koran, examining the bookmarked and heavily underlined chapters and verses—"The Cattle— And they make the jinn associates with Allah, while He created them, and they falsely attribute to Him sons and daughters without knowledge; glory be to Him, and highly exalted is He above what they ascribe;" “The Ant— And his hosts of the jinn and the men and the birds were gathered to him, and they were formed into groups;" “The Jinn— And that some of us are those who submit, and some of us are the deviators; so whoever submits, these aim at the right way: And as to the deviators, they are fuel of hell;” “ The Saba— And (We made) the wind (subservient) to Sulaiman, which made a month's journey in the morning and a month's journey in the evening, and We made a fountain of molten copper to flow out for him, and of the jinn there were those who worked before him by the command of his Lord; and whoever turned aside from Our command from among them, We made him taste of the punishment of burning ."
    The only name she recognized was Sulaiman—King Solomon. What the heck did this stuff have to do with the people of Eden?
    She placed the Koran back on the table and gently turned the onionskin pages of the Bible—careful not to get food on them. A hand-written family tree was inside the front cover in beautiful calligraphy. She sat up straighter when she read her mother's name.
    "Joanna Abigail, daughter of Jethro and Rebekkah Carter. Joey, son of Oblis and Joanna Abigail Carter. Charlene, daughter of Fred Johnson and Joanna Abigail Carter."
    Her brother had a different father? No. That couldn't be. Fred adored Joey. Worked tirelessly to find a cure for him.
    Her head spun trying to connect the pieces. If it was true, it would mean Jethro was her grandfather. Why didn't he tell her? And he's Joey's grandfather. None of this made any sense.
    The clocked chimed twelve times. Too late to call now. The next time she saw Jethro, she'd make him explain—especially the part about Joey.
    After she found the medicine in Joey's room, along with directions on how to give it, she had tried to get more before she left Baltimore. But the pharmacists just gave her strange looks and told her they'd never heard of the drug. Joey seemed to be fine—or was she kidding herself? What if he died?
    Her mother called him her Sweet Joey, and told Charlene he'd been born with a thick pelt of baby hair that never went away—despite the doctor's assurances.
    When she was a little girl, she asked her mother why her older brother couldn't talk. Mom said it was his disease, and her Daddy was going to find a cure for it.
    Grief welled up in her chest—captured her heart in its iron fist, and wrenched sobs out of Charlene's most guarded memories. Overcome by sorrow and terrified by the knowledge that she teetered on the edge of an abyss of secrets within secrets within secrets, she clutched the Bible in her arms and wept.
    Unbidden, her mind returned to the night at the morgue. Her mother, neck broken, but face intact. Her fingers and nails covered in blood. Her father, eyes bloodied, face shredded with what appeared to be claw and bite marks— Stop going there! She had to forget the medical examiner's questions about her mother's nails—and teeth. He must have been watching too many horror movies. Shame on him. He was supposed be a scientist. The marks were from the accident. Nothing more. Her mother was not some kind of mutant.
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    Chapter Seven
    The Route
    "Good morning, Mrs. Jones!” Charlene called out her first greeting of the day. Joey sat behind her in his wheelchair, clapping and signing, “Good morning! School!” over and over again.
    "Morning, Miss Charlene!” Mrs. Jones led a boy in denim overalls down the rocky driveway. He took halting steps, and his hands flopped as he walked. An oversized baseball cap