Mystics #1: The Seventh Sense
The Seventh Sense, Mystics Book 1:
Copyright © 2013 by Kim Richardson
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More
books by Kim Richardson
SOUL
GUARDIANS SERIES
Marked
Book # 1
Elemental
Book # 2
Horizon
Book # 3
Netherworld
Book # 4
Seirs
Book # 5
Mortal
Book # 6
MYSTICS
SERIES
The
Seventh Sense Book # 1
This one’s
for
Simba
TABLE O
F CONTENTS
Chapter 5
-
The
Sevenths’ Academy
Chapter 7
-
Attack
of the Killer Fairies
Chapter 13
-
Troll
City, Louisiana
Chapter 14
-
Gangsters
and Leprechauns
Chapter 16
-
Attack
of the Fat Vampires
1
Zoey
Z
o
ey rounded a
corner in the alley, and something moved along the wall in front of her. She
could see green and red scales glinting like jewels in the soft light as the
head and body of a giant snake crossed the alley
behind Poo Ping Palace Thai Cuisine, blocking her
way
. It had a second head, instead of a tail, and both heads
licked the air with their gray forked tongues and spoke together.
“We are
not
going back. You
can’t make us. We will rip your heart out if you try,
human
.”
She had no idea what it was talking about. It was the third creature
that she had seen today, and the nastiest. Foamy white venomous spit puddled on
the ground below its heads.
Zoey swallowed her fear.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she answered, her voice steady. She
measured the alleyway for an escape and made sure no one else was watching her.
“I’m just on my way home,” she continued, “and I don’t want any
trouble, Mr. Snake—or is it Mrs. Snake? I can’t really tell since your back-end
has a head—or is
that
the head, and
your
other head
is your back-end? How
do you even go to the—”
“It lies!” Hatred flashed in its yellow eyes.
Both heads opened their maws to reveal teeth like rows of kitchen
knives.
“It wants to kill us! It’s trying to trick us.”
The heads spoke to each other, “You can never trust a human—they are
all liars and tricksters! It wants to send us back! But we won’t go. No—we will
never go back!”
It turned both heads back toward Zoey, “We won’t let you!”
Zoey wasn’t about to be squeezed to death by the Mr. and Mrs. Snake
Freak Show—she had big plans for her future. She had to do something right now.
The snake recoiled to strike.
She didn’t even have enough time to rummage through her backpack for
a weapon when the giant snake shot up in the air, just like a jack-in-the-box, and
soared towards her.
A door burst open, and a dark-skinned man in a stained apron rushed
out. “Hey! What are you doing there?” he yelled angrily.
The creature slumped to the ground and retreated into the shadows
with a hateful hiss, faster than Zoey thought possible for such a large snake.
The man tossed two large black garbage bags on the ground and waved
his fist furiously at Zoey. “You’re the one who’s been spraying graffiti on my
walls, aren’t you? Get out of here kid, before I call the police!”
Zoey smiled and sprinted away down the alleyway, but not before she
caught a glimpse of the giant snake disappearing through a basement window.
With the angry man’s voice still ringing in her ears, she reached
the end of the alley and turned right onto Wade Street. The old maple trees that
lined the street on either side were the only visible vegetation. She ran through
the orphan district and passed a series of rundown buildings and boarded up
factories, relieved to have escaped.
It would have been too good to be true—to have had an entirely uneventful
day. The monsters always found her.
Number 85 Wade Street was a ghost-gray, crumbled old house with a lopsided
roof, a large, rotten wooden porch, peeling window panes, and a chipped beige
door that had once been painted white. The front lawn was a mess of dandelions
and knee-high straw grass. Zoey ran up the stairs, pushed through the front
door, and dashed straight through to the kitchen at the opposite end of the
house. She slipped her backpack off her shoulders, and it dropped to the floor
with a soft
plop
.
“You’re late.”
Foster mother number 28 had a huge, purple vein that throbbed on her
forehead as she spoke. She reminded Zoey of a gorilla in a tight workout outfit.
She was thick and beefy, with a mess of black hair on the top of her large head
and dark facial hair that sprouted from her chin like grasses. She could easily
have passed for a man. Although she usually frowned like this, there was something
different about her today. Her eyes were dim, as though she was in a trance.
Zoey’s skin prickled with icy goose bumps.
“How many times have I warned you, Zoey? Late means
no
supper. You’ll just have to starve
until tomorrow.”
Zoey forgot about the eerie feeling she had just felt in an instant.
“But it’s only ten past six,” she protested as her stomach gave a
rumble.
She looked down at herself. Her shapeless sweater hung loosely over
her skinny frame, and her blue jeans were two sizes too big. The only things
that fit properly were her black and white
Converse
sneakers.
Foster mother number 28’s upper mustache twitched as she examined Zoey.
“It’s your own fault, rules are rules. If you’d pay more attention
to them and spend less time in that library looking up God knows what on the Internet,
you’d be on time like the rest of us.” Her voice rang out in the small kitchen
like a bullhorn.
“You can sit beside Thomas and watch him and the other children eat.
Sit!” she ordered.
Zoey staggered towards the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and
sat. She knew arguing was a losing battle, so she looked around the table
instead.
Thomas was an eleven-year-old boy with large front teeth and a nervous
laugh. His brown eyes widened, and he gave her a quick smile before returning
to his supper. Isabelle and Andy sat across the table. Isabelle was a thirteen-year-old
girl with a sponge cake of curly, brown hair and a fondness for makeup and
large costume jewels. Andy sat beside her. Although he hid his face behind
layers of black hair, Zoey could see red around his eyes. She guessed he was
about ten. He had only been with them for a few days and hadn’t said a word
yet.
“How you feeling today, Andy?” whispered Zoey.
She edged closer trying to get a better look at his face.
“You haven’t touched your supper. Aren’t you hungry?”
But Andy didn’t answer. Instead he stared gloomily into his bowl of stew,
not really seeing it. His sad eyes were somewhere far away.
Zoey knew that look. The foster system had that effect on children. They
were lonely and abandoned, never to be found or loved again. It was a horrible
prospect. They were society’s rejects, throwaways—even their own families wouldn’t
take care of them. Every foster kid she had known had counted the days until
their eighteenth birthday—the day when they would be considered adults, when
they would be free.
Zoey had four more years to go.
“What were you doing in the library?” whispered Thomas, careful not
to attract foster mother number 28’s attention. And when Zoey didn’t answer, he
sighed heavily and went back to his stew. He seemed to be the only one
interested in eating the gluey, brown clumps.
It’s not that Zoey didn’t
want
to tell Thomas what she’d been reading on the net; she just couldn’t bring
herself to tell him. Relentless research on the Internet about demons and the
occult wasn’t a normal thing for a fourteen-year-old girl to do.
And Zoey was far from normal.
In fact, she was the complete
opposite
of normal. Instead of drooling over boy bands, makeup, and clothes—like normal
teen girls—she’d use every free moment to investigate supernatural phenomena. She’d
be all over anything to do with monsters and the supernatural. It was like an
addiction. She was a walking supernatural Wikipedia.
Zoey was afraid of how people would react to her if they knew that
she could see monsters. She knew she wasn’t normal. And she was desperate to
find the truth about who she was. She’d kept her abilities a secret and had
done her best to blend in with the normal kids. The problem was, trouble always
seemed to find Zoey.
She slouched in her chair and sighed. “Well, I guess I’m not missing
much. I’ve eaten so much beef stew in my life, it’s a miracle I haven’t grown a
pair of hooves.”
Isabelle looked over at Thomas, and both were suddenly overcome by
fits of giggles.
“BE QUIET!” Foster mother number
28 slammed her fist on the table, sending cups, knives, plates, and spoons
spinning on to the floor.
“I’ve had just about enough of you, you little delinquent. Think you’re
above the rules, don’t
ya
? Well you’re not! You
ain’t
nothin
’ but trash, Zoey; miserable
leftover trash.”
She gripped the sides of the kitchen table, and beads of sweat
rolled down her fat face. “We should have left you to rot in that orphanage,” she
said with a nasty smile.
“Well, maybe you should have.”
Zoey glanced casually at her dirty finger-nails. She picked at them
and shrugged. “But I guess the government’s checks helped you make that
decision. I mean—let’s be real here—it’s the only reason why we’re all here,
isn’t it? All of us cramped up in one room? I don’t know about the rest of you,
but I don’t feel any
love
.”
Her foster mother frowned sourly and examined Zoey as if she were contagious.
“With that cheeky attitude, no one will ever want you. You’ll never belong
anywhere. You’ll never have a
real
family. You’ll be stuck in this system forever.”
Although Zoey felt a pain in her chest, her expression remained stone
cold. “Not forever. I’ve got four more years to go, and then I’ll be kissing
this system
good-bye
.”
“They told us you were
different
back at the orphanage—”
Her foster mother pointed her stew-coated spoon at Zoey as though it
were a sword. “—but except for that awful red hair of yours that looks like a
forest fire and your disregard for rules, I’ve never seen anything different or
special about you. You’re just like every other foster kid that comes through
here…
nothin
’ but garbage that won’t amount to
nothin
’.”
Zoey saw the pain flash on each of the other children’s faces. She
cracked her knuckles under the table and wanted nothing more than to punch the
smile off the woman’s face.
“If you’d been pretty like Isabelle here,” said foster mother number
28 as she licked the spoon, “then maybe we’d have something to work with—”
“She can see
monsters
,” interrupted
Isabelle innocently.
She smiled at Zoey like she was doing her a favor and twirled her
large, green necklace around her wrist. “She said there was a monster in the
backyard last night. I couldn’t see anything, but she said she could. So I
guess that makes her special.”
Zoey’s secret was out.
All eyes rested on her. She could already see them making up
scenarios in their heads. She’d seen that nervous look before.
Isabelle met Zoey’s angry stare and lost her smile. As her face
paled, tears brimmed in her eyes, and Zoey immediately felt ashamed. It wasn’t
Isabelle’s fault. She was just trying to help.
Foster mother number 28 stepped forward triumphantly, as though she’d
been waiting to hear this all her life. A weird noise escaped her throat, like
the growling of a wild animal. Sweat dripped from her nose and onto the table.
Zoey looked away and shifted uncomfortably in her seat. Why was her
foster mother staring at her like that? Usually when people learned of her
ability, they
avoided
her.
And then she felt the goose bumps again.
An uncontrollable shudder rippled through her, as though thousands of
ants were crawling all over her skin. She always reacted like this around
demons and monsters. She had felt it when she had first stepped into the
kitchen. She called it her
creeps
. It
was like a warning, and she had no idea where it came from, but it had kept her
alive.
But why was she feeling it now?
When she looked up, foster mother number 28’s eyes had gone
completely black, like the eyes of a shark. Her clothes had become soaked in
sweat, and the smell of body odor intensified. The woman started to tremble and
scratched at her arms feverishly until blood oozed from the deep gashes she had
made in her flesh.
“Uh…maybe you should stop doing that,” said Zoey.
She watched her foster mother without blinking, preparing herself
for any sudden moment. A strange smell came off the woman, like rotten eggs mixed
with wet earth. Then she grunted hungrily, as though something inhumane lived
in her throat.
Zoey felt a chill roll down her back.
Great, here we go again,
she said to herself.
And I
didn’t even get to eat anything.
The woman leaned forward on the table, her black eyes gleaming with
spite and hatred. “You thought you could hide in this place, away from the
others, so we wouldn’t know who you were.”
Her hoarse voice sounded like a different person.
“Clever—but not clever enough. You
Agents
are all the same—meddlers—control freaks.”
Zoey straightened in her seat and readied herself.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not hiding from anyone—and
I’m too young to be an FBI agent. I just turned fourteen last week.”
An evil smile materialized on the woman’s face.
“Do you imagine that we mystics would ever obey your rules? Ha! You
creatures are made of soft flesh and blood—you are not
our
leaders. You are too weak. We will
never
go back to the Nexus. We enjoy living here amongst you humans,”
she hissed.
White foam formed at the corners of her mouth like a rabid dog.
“I will kill every last agent that tries to send me back!”
A string of spit flew out of her mouth, landed on the table and
immediately burned holes into the wood.
Zoey jumped to her feet and turned to the others. “Get out of here!
Now! Quickly!”
The children scrambled to their feet, terrified, and started to move
away from the woman. But they froze at what they saw next.
