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    Afterlife (A Shadows Series Novella)
    Afterlife (A Shadows Series Novella)
    Afterlife (A Shadows Series Novella)
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    Afterlife (A Shadows Series Novella)

    By Cege Smith

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    About this ebook

    Twenty years ago, her parents changed the course of their destines. Now their daughter may have to pay the price for those decisions. On the eve of its demolition, the Bradford mansion is calling out for those who escaped to come home…


    It's Thanksgiving vacation, and Morgan Mitchell returns home from college unexpectedly to find her parents, David and Ellie Mitchell, are mysteriously missing. Thinking they have taken a holiday trip and forgotten to tell her, Morgan settles in for a quiet vacation break alone.

    When some friends suggest exploring an old, abandoned mansion due to be torn down the following week, she doesn't think there's any harm in going with them. But this seemingly random invitation is one that proves not to be so random at all. Shadows from the past are coming for Morgan, and soon she discovers that she is the only one who holds to a message that affects everything, including David and Ellie's happily ever after..

    Afterlife can be best enjoyed after reading the complete Shadows trilogy:

    Edge of Shadows (Shadows, Book 1)

    Shadows Deep (Shadows, Book 2)

    Veiled Shadows (Shadows, Book 3)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShadow Creek Press
    Release dateApr 25, 2016
    ISBN9781524204389
    Afterlife (A Shadows Series Novella)

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      Book preview

      Afterlife (A Shadows Series Novella) - Cege Smith

      Chapter 1

      Morgan Mitchell was cold. She guessed that’s what she got for not taking the money her parents offered her to fix the heater on her car. And because she had decided to travel home late at night in a snowstorm. That was probably the dumbest thing she could have done, but Morgan was ready to be home.

      Her fingertips gripped the wheel of the car. Outside the windshield, she could only see a few hundred feet in front of the car. To say visibility was poor would have been an understatement. The meteorologist on the radio that morning had warned against any travel anywhere across the state that day, but there was no way that Morgan was staying at school any longer than she had to. She wanted to get home, and she wanted to get away.

      How ironic. Until she graduated from high school, she dreamed of finally getting out of the house and being on her own. She couldn’t wait to leave. Now that she was in her first year of college with a mere three months under her belt, she wanted nothing more than to go home. The worst part was it was for the dumbest reason ever. A boy.

      Josh Kramer. She had always told herself that she wouldn’t get so wrapped up in a man that he could upend her life. She had prided herself on her ability to remain independent and seemingly unaffected by that thing that turned other girls her age inside out. But Josh Kramer had blown that smug self-confidence to hell with his charming smile and a face that always caused the girls to pause for a second look.

      Morgan had been smitten with Kramer, as all his friends called him, since the day she met him. That he had wanted to date her at all was shocking. She was a freshman, and he was a senior. He was a jock, and she was a bookworm. He had a large circle of friends and a charismatic personality. Morgan’s small circle of friends had labeled her the Ice Queen in junior high, and the label stuck. She had seen the old adage of ‘opposites attract’ up close and personal.

      She shook those thoughts away. She needed to put Kramer out of her mind for good. It was over. No harm, no foul. That’s what he had said, anyway. It wasn’t until that moment that Morgan had realized how she had become the epitome of every other whiny, self-loathing girl with a broken heart. That’s why she needed to go home. She needed to get her shit straight and remind herself of who she had been before Kramer.

      Morgan felt the steering wheel lock as the tires slipped on a patch of ice. A bolt of fear ran up through her body. Falling for Kramer might top the list of the stupidest things she’d ever done, but deciding to drive eighty miles in a Minnesota snowstorm in the middle of the night was a close second.

      She needed to focus on the road in front of her. She had thought taking the back roads was a safer bet than the interstate, but now she wasn’t so sure. The snow flew across the road, and several times she had to pull over because it was a complete whiteout.

      Morgan might have considered stopping somewhere for the night, but once she left the outskirts of Mankato, there weren’t a lot of options until she reached the outskirts of the metro area, and by then she was practically home. She just had to buckle down and bear it.

      Kramer’s face blossomed in her mind. A picture of the last day that they had spent together when she thought they were happy. They had gone to a bookstore in town because she had ordered a special edition of Pride and Prejudice, and even though he poked fun at her, he had willingly gone with her to pick it up. They had malts at the malt shop next door and then caught a movie at the small theater in downtown. The day had been perfect.

      Perfect until they had fallen asleep that night. It was the first time she had slept over at Kramer’s apartment. First and last, but not for the reason most people would think of if she told them the story.

      Morgan forced those thoughts from her mind. She closed her eyes to will them away. When she opened her eyes again, there were two bright headlights directly ahead of her.

      Morgan screamed.

      The car spun in several wide circles and came to rest against a barricade on the side of the road. It was the only reason she hadn’t gone into the ditch.

      Morgan barely saw the back of the semi as it barreled past her car on its way.

      You lunatic! You could have killed me! she yelled at it. Her heart pounded painfully against her chest, and her breath came in quick gasps. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, but it wasn’t from sadness but the adrenaline overwhelming her system.

      You could have at least stopped to see if I was okay! she called out more weakly, this time to the empty road. She felt goosebumps flash across her arms. She knew without a doubt that she had just had a very close call.

      Eventually, it was the bitter cold that caused her to assess her options. She had to get going before she froze to death. It took ten more minutes before she felt as if she could put the car back in drive. She turned the nose of the car back toward the city and gently pushed the accelerator.

      You can do this. It’s not far now. Just keep your eyes on the road, she repeated to herself. It was the mantra that she focused on as tightly as the road. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

      She felt a tug of relief in her chest when she saw the light posts on the side of the road spaced closer together. She was on the outskirts of the city. The snow had receded. Now that she was seeing signs of life on either side of her on the highway, the tight binds of fear that felt as if they had been suffocating her ever since the close call with semi started to loosen. She checked the time. A trip that should have taken less than two hours had taken almost four.

      She berated herself again. She was nineteen years old. She had her whole life ahead of her. She had almost ruined it. Hadn’t she listened to that rhetoric often enough from her parents?

      You’re young, smart, and capable. The world needs you, she said, mimicking her mother’s voice out loud.

      Now that she had reached civilization again, the roads were considerably clearer, and she didn’t have to stress so much about staying on the road. She just had to take it slow. She wasn’t in any hurry.

      Thinking about her mother reminded her she still needed to rehearse what she was going to say to her parents when she got home. She had several variations of the same excuse, and she tried her favorite out again.

      Hi, Mom and Dad. Surprise! I know I said I needed to stay at school for Thanksgiving break because I had a couple of big finals to study for, but I was further ahead than I thought. It felt like it had been forever since I’ve come home. I missed you and just wanted to see you.

      She kept practicing the words out loud because she hoped that at some point they would start sounding genuine. Morgan wasn’t coming home because she had gotten ahead on studying for her finals. The reason that she had made the excuse to begin with was because she had planned to spend Thanksgiving break with Kramer. He was from a small town just south of Mankato and mentioned that if Morgan didn’t have anything to do, she could come with him to his family’s Thanksgiving dinner.

      Morgan hadn’t wanted to hurt her parents’ feelings, especially since she hadn’t been home since September. She knew how badly they wanted to see her. So she promised them she’d be home for Christmas break, and they had grudgingly given in and not pushed her to come home.

      There she was, thinking about Kramer again. She focused on her speech, and the remaining miles seemed to fly by. The snowstorm had been unexpected, but she was out of the weeds now. It was time to put all of that bad stuff behind her.

      It was well after midnight when she pulled into the driveway of her childhood home. The snow had completely stopped now, and it looked like her suburban neighborhood had only gotten a few inches. Morgan had grown up with this kind of weather, and while it bothered many people, she thought the snow was pretty. She enjoyed doing outdoor activities year-round. She didn’t let a little snow slow her down, as evidenced by the fact that she drove straight through a blizzard.

      As she contemplated the house in front of her, she chewed on her lower lip. Morgan loved the house. She thought it looked like the house in the movie Father of the Bride. It was a charming two-story with large rectangular windows that faced the front yard. There was a two-car garage in the back of the L-shaped concrete paved driveway that framed one side of the house. She turned the lights of her car off as she skimmed past the house and pulled it to a stop on the apron that made up the third stall.

      Morgan knew the security alarm code, so she figured she could just

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