House of Darken Read online

  House of Darken

  Secret Keepers Series #1

  Jaymin Eve

  Contents

  Stay in touch

  Note from author

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  House of Imperial - Secret Keepers#2

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Jaymin Eve

  Jaymin Eve

  House of Darken: Secret Keepers Series

  Copyright © Jaymin Eve 2018

  All rights reserved

  First published in 2018

  Eve, Jaymin

  House of Darken: Secret Keepers Series

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 1719114307

  ISBN-13: 978-1719114301

  Created with Vellum

  Stay in touch

  Stay in touch with Jaymin:

  www.facebook.com/JayminEve.Author

  www.jaymineve.com

  Cover: Alerim

  Editor: Lee from Oceans Edge Editing

  For Regina, my great-nan.

  She read every single one of my books. Right up to the age of 95.

  I wish I told her more often how much her support meant to me.

  It was everything.

  I miss and love you, Great-nan.

  Note from author

  I had to change some locations, schools, and landmarks of the town used in this book. To fit with my world building. I did thoroughly enjoy my research of Oregon, though, and hope to visit one day. :)

  1

  “Are you okay, Emma?”

  Turning from the window, I was more than happy to get out of my own head. The endless forests of the Pacific Northwest were keeping me somewhat entertained, but I couldn’t wait to finally arrive at our new home and escape this car. Let’s just say it had been a long trip from Roswell, New Mexico.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” I said, my lips curving up. “Just over-thinking. You know me.” My smile was still a little shocking – to me and Sara both judging by her widened eyes. Until recently I rarely smiled.

  As she reached back to give my hand a squeeze, I took a closer look at her and felt concern tinge my emotions. She was pale, eyes puffy, and her normally rich brown skin was washed out. Her dark corkscrew curls were a mess.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, leaning forward in my seat as she let go of my hand.

  She nodded, and I was relieved as her weary features relaxed. “Just ready to get out of this car. We’re close now. Only another twenty or so minutes.”

  Leaning back, I wrapped my hands around my necklace, the only thing I still possessed from before the fire. It was an opal … maybe. No one actually knew what the oddly shaped and textured stone was, but it had faint opal coloring, so that was what I went with.

  It had been my mom’s. She gave it to me on my seventeenth birthday; I still couldn’t believe that had almost been a year ago. I remembered the day so clearly, each moment as it flashed across my mind was sharp and biting. We’d gone to the beach and gotten ice cream. I’d picked out my first car later that afternoon.

  A perfect day.

  Next month I would turn eighteen. The first birthday without my parents. I was dreading it with every fiber of my being. Flames tore apart my world last New Year’s Eve – a time for new beginnings, but for me it was the end.

  Eight months since the fire and I was still haunted … tormented. Summer was almost over and I was moving to a new town. Again. Sara and Michael, my guardians, were the only two of my parents’ friends who gave a damn about anything to do with me after the fire, and since I had no other family to speak of, I was grateful to them. They took in a grieving, broken mess of human and somehow provided me with what I needed to claw my way from the darkness.

  Space, then support. Warmth and love followed.

  I’m not sure I would have survived without them, which, frankly, scared the hell out of me. I didn’t want to rely on anybody anymore. Knowing they could be gone in an instant was terrifying, and there were plenty of days I was tempted to run from them, to escape their cheerful faces and happy world. But as those moments of panic passed, I remembered how lucky I was. I was not in the system. I was not alone.

  Michael shifted forward, squinting through the front window, focused upwards for a minute. He was very Irish in coloring: pale skin, hazel eyes, and carrot orange hair. He only had to walk across the yard and he burned, unlike his wife who could sunbake for hours. I loved the diversity between him and Sara. Not to mention how epic their love was.

  In a world of broken people and marriages, those two gave me hope.

  “Hopefully we’ll beat this storm,” Michael finally said as he straightened. “I don’t like the thought of moving in during a downpour.” Dark, angry clouds were awash in the sky, which had been blue not ten minutes earlier. The turbulent masses swirled and dotted about, trying to eclipse the last light of the afternoon.

  Storms never bothered me. I quite enjoyed the heavy crash of thunder, the spark of lightning, the soothing pitter-patter of rain as it washed across the land. It felt like the earth was cleansing, a new start.

  Michael turned a worried look toward his wife. “Think we’ll make it in time?”

  Sara began reassuring her storm-hating husband that we’d have plenty of time, and I had to hide my smile. We had a box and a suitcase each. Even if a hurricane sprang up it really wasn’t going to be a huge problem to move in. Except, of course, there was no chance any rental we could afford would be able to withstand a swift wind, let alone a serious storm.

  I had already moved twice in the eight months I’d lived with the Finnegans, and both times our furnished rentals were one step up from slums. But hey, it was a roof over our heads. Growing up I’d lived solidly middle class, always thinking my parents had plenty of money. After they died, I learned there was only enough left to cover their bills. After losing your only family, though, being poor was sort of insignificant. When I was hungry, I put things into perspective and dealt with it like an adult.

  “What’s in Astoria, Oregon, anyway?” I asked, dropping my necklace back beneath my tank and pushing my wavy hair behind my ears. Already the humidity from the storm had my hair going haywire. It was long, a mixture of curls and waves, in a rich auburn color. The red explained my temper; the curls were from parts unknown. My parents were both straight-haired brunettes.

  Michael’s freckled face lit up, hazel eyes shining with excitement as he shifted to see me better. “Astoria is it … the one! I think we really have something this time, Em. There have been multiple eyewitness accounts. Multiple. And they’re from legitimate sources.”

  My guardians were two of the nicest people I’d ever met, but they were crazy. Complete batshit crazy. They believed there was something other than humans o
ut in the world. They referred to themselves as supernatural chasers. I had no real idea what exactly they were searching for, but they spent their lives scouring the internet, hunting down leads, and moving all around the country. Which was why we had no money for a new car. Michael was very good with computers, and had an online tech-support business that made just enough to sustain their lifestyle – but their focus was definitely not on making money or settling down in one place.

  I had been born and raised in California. At the time of the fire, Sara and Michael were living in Vegas, so my first move was to their small place there. Then we moved to New Mexico for five months. And now to Astoria. I hadn’t been back to school since the fire, having taken some time off to grieve before eventually homeschooling to finish my junior year. Astoria would be my first new school ever. Senior year. To say I was nervous was an understatement, but I was a tiny bit excited about it too.

  I returned Michael’s grin, trying to adopt some of his enthusiasm even though I didn’t believe a word of his insane theories. “I still don’t know how you guys have moved so often. Was there ever a time you just stayed in one place?”

  I leaned forward, elbows resting on my knees. Sara’s smile was gentle as she exchanged a lingering look with her husband. “When we first got married, we lived in California for five years. That’s how we met your parents.”

  My heart tightened. Sometimes the pain just hit me like a bullet. Grief was a strange thing, ebbing and waning without any reliable pattern. Some days I was okay. I could talk about them, think about them. Other days I was a mess.

  Today was somewhere in the middle, so I was brave enough to push for more information. “I know Mom and Dad missed you both when you started moving around. Your visits were always a highlight in our house.”

  Sara’s light brown eyes got shiny then; her throat worked as she swallowed hard. “It was a highlight for us too, honey,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “We miss Chelsea and Chris so much.” She cleared her throat and spoke again, louder this time: “And this time we will be staying in Astoria for your entire senior year. We promise. It might be nice for us to have some stability for a while too.”

  That was a relief. I didn’t want to have to navigate two schools during my senior year. Still, Astoria seemed like an odd choice.

  “It’s a fairly small town, right? Are you sure there could really be much supernatural activity?” It was hard to phrase these questions without letting my skepticism show. Even the word “supernatural.” What did that refer to? Was it ghosts? Vampires? Werewolves? What exactly did they think was out there? Any time I asked they just said, “Other than human…”

  So basically it could be anything.

  Michael lifted one hand off the steering wheel, waving it animatedly. “I can’t wait to find out, but so far all the signs look really positive. Unusual activity is picking up in the area. Reports of energy spikes. Missing people. Strange occurrences with natural landscape formations. This is definitely the one!”

  I smiled, but internally I was shaking my head. It was hard to actually believe that my accountant father and science teacher mother had put aside their level-headedness to become best friends with the Finnegans. That in itself was bordering on the crazy, but I wasn’t going to complain. This kooky pair had saved my life and I would owe them forever.

  Turning back to the window, I let the scenery capture me again. I expected the natural landscape to really thin out before we hit Astoria, alert me to civilization approaching, but one minute it was trees and the next … we were in the town. I sat up in my chair, moving closer to the window. The back seats were old and threadbare, springs digging into my spine if I shifted too far out of the center, but it was worth it to catch a glimpse of this picturesque little place. Despite the grumbling skies and rolling clouds, there was something truly beautiful here. Something which almost felt familiar … homey.

  “What do you think, Emma?” Sara twisted again, her teeth bright against the dark of her skin. She looked happy and more energized already.

  I didn’t reply straight away, choosing to focus on the world flashing by the window. Tiny fishing shacks gave way to large mansions scattered along the water. A huge bridge could be seen far off in the distance, looking like it disappeared out over the water. Fishing boats shared the water with huge barges. And so much greenery. Everywhere I looked it was lush and natural, pockets of forest scattered among the city. Eventually I had to say, “It’s perfect. Just perfect.”

  From the corner of my eye I could see the Finnegans exchange beaming smiles, but I was too enthralled to care. I never believed I’d ever feel at home anywhere again after losing my parents. They had been my home. But Astoria was definitely special; maybe this was the place to heal a little of the heavy ache in my heart and soul. It would be nice not to hurt so much all the time.

  When we were passing through what looked like the main town of Astoria, Sara started trying to direct her husband toward our new house. She was terrible with maps, which was comical considering how much they traveled. I’d asked them if they’d ever like a navigation system in their car. I had gotten a solid no from both of them. Apparently they trusted their paper maps more, saying electronics could be manipulated.

  After about thirty seconds of her rotating the map, I leaned over her shoulder. “Do you want some help?” I asked.

  Without hesitation, she thrust the paper toward me. “Yes, please, this damn thing makes no sense. It’s upside down or something.”

  Michael chuckled, very used to his wife’s lack of map-reading skills. “We’re on Marine Drive,” he told me, before pulling out a piece of paper from his pocket. “And our house is on … Daelight Crescent.” He squinted in the dim light, repeating it: “Fourteen Daelight Crescent.”

  I scanned across the map, searching for both streets. I found the one we were on easily enough, but the other was not jumping out at all. After a few minutes I was about to tell them they had the wrong address when I finally noticed it. The name was tiny, almost unreadable.

  It was across the other side of town, near the water. I figured out the quickest route from where we were and directed Michael. The storm was hanging lower now, which gave me almost no visibility in the back seat, and since there were no interior lights I had to hold the map very close to my face while lifting it up near the window to capture the final rays of the dying light. I memorized the route as best I could.

  After driving for about fifteen minutes I leaned forward. “Should be around here somewhere.” I had abandoned the map. It was way too dark to see.

  “There!” Sara gave a shout.

  She must have picked up the flash of a sign in the lightning sprinkling the sky, because there were very few streetlights out this far. Michael and I had missed it completely; he had to swing the car around and go back again. This time he approached slowly, indicating to turn before we realized that Daelight Crescent was actually barred by a huge, imposing wood and iron gate. The design was intricate and expensive: shiny wood, polished metal accents. It towered into the sky, making me feel small and insignificant.

  We all stared in silence. Michael and Sara exchanged a look.

  “This can’t be right,” Michael murmured, turning from his wife and leaning forward to see better through the front windscreen. “This was the cheapest rental we could find here. It’s only seven hundred a month. They didn’t mention security gates. There’s no way we can afford this street.”

  Michael wasn’t kidding. Our place in New Mexico barely had a front door, let alone something that resembled the sort of gated community movie stars hid away in. A tap at the window then made us all jump. The man standing outside of Michael’s window had taken us by surprise.

  He was a large, imposing guy, holding what looked like a heavy-duty LED camping lantern. Michael slowly rolled down the clunker’s old sticky window. It stopped about halfway, unable to go any lower.

  The man inclined his head toward Michael and I caught
a glimpse of dark skin and eyes, and very white teeth flashing as he spoke. “Can I help you, sir?”

  His accent was mild, hard to place, and his tone very polite. I studied his dark uniform, trying to make out details in the light from the high-tech-looking lantern he held. The word “security” was finely stitched in white across the pocket, and it all clicked into place.

  Apparently this was a compound for movie stars, and somehow we had scored a place in there for seven hundred dollars a month. No catch either, no doubt. I slumped back in my seat as I waited for the guard to tell us we were in the wrong place.

  Sara spoke up, answering his question from before – which she often did when her husband got flustered. “We arranged to rent a house, 14 Daelight Crescent. We might have the wrong street, though. We only have an old map to navigate from.”

  “Who did you rent this property through?” the guard asked. Hmmm … curious. I expected him to immediately usher our old clunker away, lest it taint the rich folk.

  Michael, who no longer looked flustered, leaned over the back seat and yanked up a folder from the floor. Riffling through it, he pulled out a few pieces of paper and handed them over to the security guard. “This was the site,” Michael said. “We’ve already paid first and last months’ rent.”

  The man took a step away and I saw a flash of light as he lifted the lantern closer, reading over the documents. He stepped back to the car window a few minutes later, just as the first drops of rain started to hit. The storm was about to rage at us.