Read Happily Never After Online
Authors: Missy Fleming
Tags: #romance, #thriller, #horror, #suspense, #mystery, #spirits, #paranormal, #gothic, #revenge, #savannah, #ghost, #fairy tale, #shadow, #photography, #haunted, #georgia, #attack, #stalking, #goth, #actor, #stepmother, #complications, #missy fleming, #savannah shadows
Happily Never After
The Savanah Shadows
Series
Book One
by Missy Fleming
Published by
Fire and Ice
A Young Adult Imprint of Melange Books, LLC
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
Happily Never After, Copyright 2013 by Missy
Fleming
ISBN: 978-1-61235-560-3
Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this
book are products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of
this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America.
Cover Art by Caroline Andrus
Table of Contents
Happily Never After
Missy
Fleming
There’s no such thing as happy endings.
Savannah, Georgia is rumored to be the most
haunted place in America. Quinn Roberts knows it is. She's felt the
presence of spirits her entire life. Only none of those encounters
ever turned violent, until now. The same darkness feeding off her
stepmother has promised she won’t live to see her eighteenth
birthday and each attack is more terrifying than the last.
Not one to rely on others for help, Quinn
reluctantly lets actor Jason Preston into her life which has
complications of its own. Together they try to figure out what
exactly this ghost wants from her and how to stop it. What they
find is the ghost doesn’t just want to hurt Quinn, it wants
revenge.
It wants her life.
This book
is dedicated to my family, who never stopped believing or
supporting me. And for reading drafts when I needed another set of
eyes. I love you guys so much.
I also have to thank TL Tyson, the best friend,
critique partner, and writer I've come across. Tee, you have been a
great teacher and you'll never know how much its meant to me.
And for all the ghost hunters out there...you all
have the best job in the world.
Prologue
Mama always told me Savannah was home to more
than just the living. I remember her telling me stories of ghosts
and magic, and things that normally belonged in fairy tales. Her
rich, syrupy voice would wrap round me with a magic of its own,
making me believe. She said all you had to do was step out onto any
street and you could feel it in the air, tickling the edges of your
imagination, inviting you in.
We lived in one of the oldest houses in the
historic district. A tall, proud home fronted with white columns
standing like guards against the unrelenting Georgia humidity. Mama
said that besides her, Daddy and me, we also lived with a little
boy and a soldier from the War of Northern Aggression. They crept
through the house at night, moving furniture or crying. She said
they even stood guard at the end of the bed. I never saw that. For
me, it was always a flicker of an image, a brush of wind on my
face, or the glimpse of something from the corner of my eye. I
never gave them a second thought. In Savannah, you were only
considered odd if your house didn’t have ghosts.
I was seven when Mama died of an aneurism.
She once told me our loved ones never truly left us, and those
words were a comfort to me during that confusing time. At least
they were until late at night, when Daddy was already asleep, and
the shadows pulsed around me in their silent dance. Those shadows
made me wonder what happened to her.
One night, as I watched the shadows dance, I
wondered where she truly went. To my child’s mind, if the city were
as haunted as she said, she must still be there somewhere. All I
needed to do was find her.
The following mornings, on my walks to and
from school, I searched for her everywhere. I investigated the
slightest breeze or tiniest movement of the bushes. Every night,
when my house fell silent, I wandered through the rooms asking for
her. When I saw something out of the corner of my eye, I begged
them to find Mama and bring her back where she belonged. Each time
I felt cold fingers walking up my spine or the hair on my arms and
neck stand up, I whispered ‘Mama’ into the darkness.
In all my years
of searching, I never found her.
Chapter One
When the principal called for ‘Quinn
Roberts’, I walked across the stage to accept my diploma and
expected to feel some kind of accomplishment. All I got was an
overwhelming sense of relief.
Graduating high school should’ve been one of
the happiest days of my life. Not only was I leaving behind the
snake pit of hormones and torture they called a high school but,
like any kid, I dreamed of this day. I was supposed to be on the
verge of having all my dreams come true, surrounded by family and
looking to the promise of the future. Instead of dreams and
rainbows, I stood in the sweltering heat with my classmates and
feeling more alone than ever.
My stepmother, Marietta, hadn’t bothered to
come or at least pretend to care.
“I’m so glad it’s finally over.” Abby, my
only friend, came over to stand by me after the ceremony. “If I
never see the walls of that hole they call a school again, I’ll be
the happiest girl alive.”
This made me smirk. Anyone looking at Abby
wouldn’t think ‘happiest girl alive’ as a first impression. Her
long blonde and pink hair fell in a straight shot down her back but
it was her heavily lined eyes, the nose and lip piercings, and
black fingernails that set her apart from the hordes of perfect
little Southern belles roaming Savannah High.
I wasn’t much different, only my hair was
black with some recently added purple accents and I had no facial
piercings. Abby and I bonded over our uniqueness in our freshman
year and stayed friends through the endless taunting and teasing.
Our loner status wasn’t the only thing we had in common. We were
also both being raised by single parents. The only difference was
her mom actually cared.
I draped my arm over her shoulders and said,
“Yep, today we can officially begin life in the real world. No more
nasty things written on our lockers.”
“No more stupid rumors spread by your lovely
stepsisters.”
“I thought the one about how we put a curse
on the basketball team was pretty inventive.”
“Yeah,” Abby snorted, “especially considering
we’ve never even been to a basketball game. That team could have
used a little magic.”
My stepsisters, who were juniors, ran with
the typical ‘popular’ crowd. Their favorite thing in the world was
to make my and Abby’s lives miserable. From spreading rumors about
us being lesbians or devil worshippers to spray painting ‘witch’ on
our lockers. Those kinds of things happened every single week. We
were smart about it, though. We kept our heads down and counted the
days until graduation.
I shrugged my shoulders, put on my heaviest
Southern drawl and said, “What will we ever do without them?”
“Get on with our lives, like normal
people?”
We turned from the hugging and picture taking
and walked away. I felt out of place, and enormously sad, in the
midst of everything I’d lost. I glanced over my shoulder at the
happy families and found myself suddenly envious of the kids I
spent the last four years avoiding and fearing. They were
surrounded by families who actually loved them and they could think
of the future and those stupid rainbows. I was grateful I’d been
allowed a mere two hours of freedom to come to my own
graduation.
Abby’s mom came for a while, but had to leave
for her second job. I considered her more of a mother to me than
Marietta. She tried to help as much as she could, but to be honest
I’ve never told her how bad things really were. I wasn’t sure she’d
believe it. I didn’t think anyone would.
“Do you really have to go back to work,
Quinn? Can’t you blow off the wicked witch for a little while
longer?” Abby whined as she picked at her black and pink fingernail
polish.
I grimaced at the thought of going back to
Baubles, Marietta’s over-priced and overly pretentious beauty salon
in the Historic District. “Remember what happened last time I
disobeyed a direct order.”
Abby flinched without saying another
word.
She believed I had every right to contact
family services, but I didn’t see the point. Marietta had never
done anything physically to me. Her specialty was making me feel
less than human. At least I only had to wait until the end of the
summer to be done with them. The second I turned eighteen I planned
to move out.
“So anyway, I heard this story the other day
about a guy up in North Carolina who caught an image of Bigfoot on
his thermal camera. It belly crawled into his camp and stole a
candy bar. It’s a true story, I swear. Although, I’m not sure what
confuses me more; the fact there was a Bigfoot in NC, crawling
around on his belly commando style, or that he’d take a candy bar
of all things.”
Abby never failed to distract me with her
strange and random stories. In the last few years, she'd become a
master at it. We parted ways a block from Baubles and I hadn’t even
gone fifty feet before I recognized a familiar stirring beside
me.
Cold breath surrounded me but instead of
frightened, I felt comforted. In the five years since Daddy died,
I’d come to rely on the strange presence more and more, especially
since it seemed to take pleasure in tormenting Marietta and her
daughters whenever I was punished. Unlike the other spirits who
seemed confined to the house, this one followed me everywhere. Even
with all my research, I had no clue what it was or what it
wanted.
The presence left before I entered through
the back door of Baubles. I took a couple seconds to revel in the
blast of air conditioning but it didn’t take long for my peaceful
moment to be interrupted.
“What took you so dang long?”
Marietta’s high, annoying drawl always made
my heart beat a little faster. Lately, I’d sensed a strange dark
presence around her, a clinging shadow. It ebbed and flowed, and
even pulsated with her moods. What disturbed me the most was how it
seemed to be getting worse, darker somehow. That, and the feeling
it had something to do with me.
“I finished Suzie’s talent costume,” she
continued, “so I need you to go over it. Snip off the loose threads
and check the seams. Then, you’ll cut out the pattern for Anna’s
costume. Also, the floors need sweeping and wash the towels. Oh,
and restock everything for tomorrow. I’ve left you a list for home,
too.”