Wraiths of Winter (The Haunting Ruby Series Book 3) Read Free

reply.
     
“No—well, yes, I guess. He was standing beside a beat
up old Mustang. He waved when we drove past him.”
     
“Really. That makes sense though because he loved
that car and the night he died—”
    “Stop! Stop right there!” I held up my hand in protest.
“I don’t want to know anything more about him. The less I
know, the less chance there is of me getting involved. There’s
something more important to focus on.”
Zach gave me a big smile. “I was starting to think you
forgot all about that.”
     
“Forget? Lee’s clone knocked on my door today and
you thought I would forget about it so quickly?”
    Zach’s face fell. “Yeah, you’re right. How could I think
you would forget about something so important?” He pushed
his plate away from him leaving half of his food uneaten. “So
how exactly do you plan to find Lee’s family? Lucas may not
even know he’s adopted. You don’t even know him. You can’t
just go up and tell him, you know.”
    “I know that. Don’t forget—I saw what it did to Lee
when his mom dropped that bomb inappropriately. I’ll
definitely have to make friends with him first, gain his trust.”
    “Friends,” Zach said quietly. “Just don’t forget what I
told you.
Be careful—he’s not Lee and you know nothing
about this guy.”
    “Don’t worry, Zach. I’ll be fine.” I slurped the last of
my soda through the straw and tossed my napkin on the table.
“Are you ready to go? There’s still something we have to do
before Dad and Shelly get home.”
“Yeah, there is.” Zach’s mood brightened. “We still
have enough time before they’re due home.”
     
“I hope so but we have to leave right now because The
Village closes in an hour.”
     
He gave me a strange look. “The Village?”
    “Yeah. We have to replace the glasses we broke
before Shelly notices they’re gone. I can’t remember exactly
which store she bought them in but I think I can narrow it
down to one or two possibilities. We’ll still have to hurry,
though.”
Zach nodded his head in agreement and dug his keys
out of his pocket. “Let’s go then.”
    The fortune cookies our waitress gave us lay on the
table untouched so I tossed one at him and said, “Here—I
know you never eat them, but you at least have to see what
your fortune is.”
    We cracked them open simultaneously. Zach chuckled
as he read his fortune aloud. “Everyone has a photographic
memory. Some people just don’t have film.”
    “That’s for sure,” I said as I looked down at the tiny
slip of paper in my hand, fully prepared to recite its words of
wisdom back to him—until I read what it said.
What I found
inside that cookie was something Zach would surely take the
wrong way.
So instead, I repeated the strangest saying I’d
ever found inside one.
    “Even Popeye didn’t eat his spinach until he had to,” I
said, crinkled it into a tiny ball, and threw it onto my plate.
“ Now we can go.”
    I laid down enough money to cover the check and slid
out from behind the table. “What did you think I was talking
about earlier when I said there was still enough time?
You
seemed confused when I said we needed to get to The Village
before it closed.”
“Me? Nothing,” he replied distractedly. “Let’s go get
those glasses.”
    My rough estimate of how many stores we would have
to go into was far rougher than I realized. With only minutes
to spare, we found the exact set of glasses we needed to
replace the broken ones—the one Zach dropped in shock
when he saw Lee/Lucas at the door and the one I broke when
I fainted.
    Once back at the mansion, Zach helped me clean up
the mess.
We rolled the broken shards inside the paper
towels we used to mop up the wine and threw all of it into a
plastic bag. Zach placed the bag inside his car and promised
to throw it away somewhere that neither of our parents
would find it. With a few sprays of air freshener, there was no
trace of what we’d done. When I said that I