Labyrinth: The Keeper Chronicles, a prequel Read Online Free Page A

washed up using the bar soap on the side of the tub. Not using body wash felt strange, but it was better than going back to her dorm. Anything was better than that. She dried off with his blue towel, getting as much moisture out of her hair as she could without using her hairdryer. It wasn't easy with long hair. Maybe she should get it cut.
    The scent of sautéed onions and peppers drew her from the bathroom and back to the kitchen where she sat on a barstool. “Smells good.”
    “I made your favorite.” She held a plate upside down over the sauté pan, flipped the omelet on top of it, then slid it back into the pan to brown the other side. “The toast just came up. Butter yourself a slice if you want.”
    Rebekah grabbed a slice and pulled it to her napkin, cutting a square of butter from the stick and rubbing it around the toasted bread more out of a desire to do something normal than any real hunger. As a girl growing up in a bed-n-breakfast, she'd learned there's no real point to trying to spread natural butter the same way as the fake margarine some guests demanded. Real butter was meant to melt, not be scraped roughly around a perfectly browned piece of bread like some a logger sawing at a tree trunk with one of those old hand-held saws. Instead, the butter should guide around the toast as it melted, settling into the nooks naturally.
    “What am I supposed to tell the police today?” Rebekah didn’t look up from the golden glob on her bread.
    “The truth, princess. Of course.” Her mom set the plate down in front of Rebekah and then leaned on the counter, head resting on the palm of her right hand. “Want to talk about what you saw?”
    She cut into the fluffy, perfectly folded egg and pushed it around her plate. “No.”
    “Why don't you give it a try anyway?”
    Rebekah sighed and the fork slipped through her feelings to clatter onto her plate. “I didn't see much. Blood mostly. And…body parts.” She rubbed the tears out of her eye. “That's it.”
    “Nothing else? Did you see anything on the beach,” her mom turned back to the stove and cracked an egg to make herself an omelet. “Feel anything?”
    Rebekah thought back to the night and forced herself to relive everything that led up to finding bits of her friend, but the details were hazy. “No, not really. But Jason seemed a little anxious about getting caught in the lightning.”
    The egg mixture sizzled in the pan. “Well, that doesn't seem unusual.”
    “Yeah, I'm used to being kept inside during storms.” Rebekah snorted, picked up her fork, and took a bite of eggs. She closed her eyes, relishing in the comfort food. No matter that it was a school day or if she woke up late, her mom always served a hot breakfast every morning growing up. She took a deep breath. “You and dad kinda drilled that into me. I still don't know why.”
    “Hundreds of people die every year due to lightning strikes,” her mother said as if that was a perfectly reasonable explanation. She started to slide the omelet off on a plate, getting the careful fold so both ends were tucked beneath the central piece. “There.” With a flick of her wrist, she turned the gas off on the stove. “All done.”
    Rebekah cut another piece of omelet with her fork, placed it on the edge of her toast, and took a bite. “What'd you do to your arm?” she asked, pointing to the small burns spattered across her mother's forearms.
    “Cooking accident.” Her mom shrugged and grabbed the second piece of toast from the toaster. “I was making some bacon on the stove when one of the guests called me away. By the time I came back, it was popping like crazy and got me as I tried to salvage the meat.”
    “You should be more careful.”
    “Yes, mom,” Rebekah's mom said, a wry smile twisting the corners of her mouth. “Speaking of being careful…how long have you and this Jason person been seeing each other?”
    Heat warmed Rebekah's face. “Just since last night, really, though