Atone: A Fairytale (Fairytale Trilogy) Read Online Free

list.”
    “Yeah, my bucket list is pretty dead-body-free, too.” Alex squared her shoulders. “But if poor Nicholas is dead, we need to alert the authorities, so I guess I’ll deal.”
    Becca shook her head at Alex’s use of “poor Nicholas,” and Alex shot her a frustrated glance.
    “That’s not the former crush talking—but if he’s dead I’ll call him poor Nicholas all I want.”
    “Meanwhile, I’m freezing.” Lilia’s teeth were chattering and goosebumps were visible on her legs and arms. “Do not even bring up the shorts again, Becca, it is almost a hundred degrees outside.”
    “The temperature control has to be somewhere on the first floor. Let’s look for that first,” Becca answered. “And let’s stick together—you know, so we can all be equally traumatized by poor, dead Nicholas.”
    Alex smacked her in the arm. “Stop it!” But she laughed as she followed Becca to the opening on the left of the foyer. They walked through three or four rooms, each seemingly larger than the apartment Becca shared with her mom and two younger brothers, and finally found the temperature control on a wall in the shiny, modern-looking kitchen.
    “Fifty-five degrees?” Lilia pushed the up arrow until the digital read out read seventy-five. “This place is huge. I would not want to see that bill.”
    Alex was looking around as she rubbed her upper arms. “It doesn’t look like anyone has used the kitchen recently.”
    “What was that?” Lilia asked sharply. Becca had heard it too, a soft sound from the other side of the kitchen.
    “I don’t know,” Alex looked around, pulling a face. “I don’t see anything. Maybe there’s rodents.”
    Lilia paled. “I hate rats.”
    “I doubt there’s rats. I mean, look at this place, it’s scary spotless. Maybe it was the air conditioning unit being weird,” Becca replied. “It sounded like it came from behind a wall. I doubt Nicholas is hiding behind the cupboards.”
    “Rats could definitely be hiding in them though,” Lilia pointed out.
    “Luckily, for the rats, they’re not on my hit list. The magic is definitely coming from upstairs. Should we go check that out first or check the rest of this floor?” asked Becca.
    “Let’s check all the rooms on this level and make sure no one…and um, nothing…is here, and then we can focus on the magic,” Alex replied.
    The bottom floor of the house yielded neither their former advisor, nor his cold, lifeless body. Becca was beginning to be creeped out by the stillness of the house. The size of it didn’t help either. Every time Alex called out Nicholas’s name, which was about once per room, the sound echoed hollowly around them.
    As they made their way up the front staircase to the second floor, Becca could feel the pulse of the magic more strongly. It was old and heavy. Though it felt similar in ways to what she remembered of the spell entwined in the bed that had kept Lilia trapped, asleep for over eight hundred years, it didn’t seem to have the same dark feeling. It also didn’t feel anything like the good fae magic she’d experienced from either Lilia’s three aunts or anything she and the other girls had done themselves.
    Which is why, when they walked into the large open room from which the magic pulsed, she had no idea what to expect.
    Becca paused in the doorway, blinking slightly against the brightness. The entire wall on the left side of the room was floor-to-ceiling windows. They faced southwest, providing a panoramic view of the city over the tops of the trees on the edge of the property. But the spectacular view only held her attention for moment.
    The room was empty save for a large, ornate mirror almost directly in the center of it.
    The mirror frame was set on top of a heavy, three-footed stand that raised it up off the ground. The surface of the mirror was smooth and slightly beveled at the edges. It was tilted at an angle—Becca belatedly realized that it must swivel at the point