Whispers of Fate: The Mistresses of Fate, Book Two by Deirdre Dore Read Free Book Online Page A

family had opened that witchcraft store and launched the tradition a little over a decade ago, a few of the local church leaders had taken it upon themselves to hold protests. Tyler tended to side with the Havens even though he thought they were mostly insane. When he’d been growing up and getting the shit kicked out of him by his father, the local churches hadn’t done anything to help, even when he’d passed out on their doorstep when he was twelve.
    Tavey’s family had helped, though, he acknowledged with grim recollection. Her grandmother had taken him in on one memorable occasion, Tavey a pale ghost watching him, her eyes fastened on him, unblinking and solemn.
    He scrubbed a hand over his face and straightened in his seat. He used yet another key to open the bottom right drawer of the desk. He pulled out a thick reddish-brown file stuffed with documents and held together with a rubber band. It contained the main pieces of evidence and his notes about the disappearance of Summer Breen Haven.
    He’d been working on the cold case—on and off—over the past five years or so after inheriting it from the original investigator, Jimmy Daughtrey, his mentor. He’d been tracking down whispers mostly, hoping that something would break in the case, something that would clear his uncle, who had grown increasingly agitated as Tavey continued to wage her campaign against him.
    Tyler curled the thick file almost into a C, his knuckles white. If she wasn’t after his uncle, he’d be impressed by her decades-long dedication to finding her friend.
    Sighing, he uncurled the file and tugged off the rubber band.
    He pulled out a sheaf of freshly printed pages, conspicuous in comparison to the yellowed edges and colorful triplicates of the old files. Removing the jaw clip, he folded aside the first page, which was a copy of the email Ryan Helmer, the FBI agent who had worked the serial killer case last fall, had sent with the files.
    The second page of the document was the cover page of a report, describing the evidence gathered at the old paper mill when the girls and Chris had been rescued. He flipped past it, not wanting to read the descriptions of the human remains that were found at the bottom of the old millpond. Most had been young women, but several men had also been found, one of whom had been the father of the serial killer who’d kidnapped the girls.
    He skipped pages until he was nearly to the end of the stack, where incidental findings were detailed. He pulled out the photographs and pieces of the report that dealt with a small leather-bound book that had been found. Though degraded and badly damaged by being exposed to the elements, the book had survived. In the inside cover, written in crooked, heavily slanted letters, in what looked like red crayon, was the name Summer.
    Below that, in a stiff, formal cursive, was the quote that Tavey was convinced his uncle had written:
    But in a story, which is a kind of dreaming, the dead sometimes smile and sit up and return to the world.
    Tyler’s hands, which had been stroking the file, paused. He’d been there when they’d questioned his uncle about the book. His uncle had said no, that it wasn’t his. Tyler had tried to talk to him about it as well, but Abraham had gotten pissed off and asked him to leave. Tyler wanted to believe him; his uncle certainly seemed to be telling the truth, but he wasn’t sure the old man knew what was true anymore—he lived inside his head, inside the memories of a war that wouldn’t leave him. Tim O’Brien was his uncle’s favorite author—said he was the only one who wrote what it really had been like. The book could have been his, but Tyler didn’t know why he’d give it to a blind girl, or help her write her name in it. It didn’t make any sense.
    Stroking his lower lip, Tyler thought of Tavey’s face when he’d confronted her this morning, her brown eyes flashing, cheeks red. She was the loveliest woman he’d ever met,