He’d studied a map of the town, after all, and had known what areas to avoid. We’ve been in worse situations.” More than leaving the iPod at home, he mused, he should have been paying attention to the world around him. Some sensed him faster than others, but they all eventually rose. Which, like now, usually involved Aden accidentally placing his foot on their land. The dead had only to sense him to awaken.

Deep down, though, he’d known carrying them was worth the risk. If he were ever caught with them, he’d be tossed back into juvie, where fights erupted as regularly as lunch was served and making a trustworthy friend was as impossible as escape. Sighing, Aden dropped his backpack, bent down and palmed the daggers he kept anchored in his boots. Most times, I only know when someone’s gonna die. In the distance, in front of a tombstone, the ground was already shaking, cracking.ĭon’t blame me, Julian replied. Starting a war with the undead was not what I wanted to do today.” As he spoke, Haden Stone-known as Aden because, as a kid, he apparently hadn’t been able to pronounce his own name-backtracked, removing his foot from the graveyard’s property line. I’ve been screaming for you to turn around for, like, ever. Immediately the very people he’d been trying to drown out with so-loud-your-ears-bleed Life of Agony clamored for his attention.įinally! Julian said from inside his head. He was sixteen years old, but sometimes he felt like he’d been around forever, and every one of those days had been worse than the one before. “This sucks,” he muttered, pulling the buds from his ears and shoving the shiny green distraction into his backpack. If only he’d left the Nano at the D and M Ranch, a halfway house for “wayward” teens where he now lived. Especially since Crossroads, Oklahoma, perhaps garden gnome capital of the world and definitely hell on earth, was so small it was practically nonexistent. No, no, no! How had he ended up here?Ĭlearly, wearing his iPod while exploring a new town had been a mistake.

Intertwined by gena showalter