Shadow Breakers Read Online Free Page B

vague but also as if I’ve given her a full and complete answer.
    It’s not easy, lying to Mum.
    â€œWell, okay,” she says, but she gives me a strange look.
    I rush upstairs, my feet thumping on the steps, crash into my room, and flop onto the bed.
    Then I pull out Ollie’s phone, thumb it on, and start checking the texts. It’s intrusive. I feel guilty. But I’m a detective now. Pretty soon, he’s going to notice it’s missing, and he’ll do what I’d do — phone his own number and see who answers. I’d like to think I wouldn’t be daft enough to answer, but you never know.
    Five minutes later, I’ve got the information I need. I change into a top and leggings, grab my favorite leather jacket. I thump down the stairs again.
    In the hall, I lace my Doc Martens. I pause, grab my battered old skateboard. Why not? I need to travel quickly.
    â€œSee you later, Mum!”
    I slam the front door behind me and I don’t hear what she says in response.
    For a second I look out across the crooked, tiled roofs that sweep down toward the harbor. From up here, the sea is a vast blue-gray monster fringed with white, like lace, and the calls of gulls echo up in the clouds as if mocking me. The place seems colder today, more threatening somehow. Like the harbor is a trap.
    Shivering, I banish these thoughts, zip up my jacket, and hop on the board, then skim toward the shore, the opening blast of “Emotional Vandal” (first track on the JumpJets’ debut album
We Will Be Back After This Short Intermission
) pounding through my headphones.
ESPLANADE: THURSDAY 16:31
    It doesn’t take long to find the Seaview Hotel.
    I’m amazed the text on Ollie’s phone mentioned it by name, but here it is, and here I am. I check my watch, pull my scarf up over the bottom half of my face, and crouch behind a builder’s dumpster opposite the front of the hotel. I hide my skateboard in the dumpster, as I don’t want to be encumbered with it when I get inside.
    The hotel looks as if it was grand once. It looms above the seafront like a castle, towers and crenellations reaching up into the sky. It’s old and battered now, though, and covered in moss and lichen. Seagulls whirl around it like castle ravens. Some windows are covered with metal grilles; others are boarded up and defaced with rude graffiti. Across the front of the building are faded iron letters saying “SEA I W HO EL.” (Someone wanted to make a sign saying “VET,” then.) There’s litter in the doorway — Coke cans, candy wrappers — and the door itself is battered and peeling.
    Someone’s striding along the Esplanade in my direction. It’s Josh.
    I duck behind the dumpster and watch. He’s got his collar turned up against the cold wind, and he checks quickly behind him before hurrying up the steps of the hotel. I think he swipes some sort of card in the lock and the door clicks open. I wait two seconds, watching as the old wooden door starts to swing shut behind Josh. Then I quickly look up and down the seafront road, dash across to the hotel, and scamper up the steps.
    I don’t make it in time. The door clicks shut.
    â€œD’oh!”
    Okay. I think for a minute, and then I have an idea.
    I get my library card out and slip it in between the catch and the door frame. I jiggle it up and down, ear to the door like a safecracker. I listen for Josh’s footsteps receding and, when I think it’s safe, I twist the card, press the door lightly — and it opens.
    Cool, right? I got that from
Burgle My House!
There’s a reality show for everything these days.
    I slip inside and pull the door closed behind me.
    It slams shut and I jump, wincing. Did anyone hear?
    I wait. Silence.
    I’m in an old-fashioned hotel lobby, dimly lit and covered in cobwebs. Huge cobwebs. I don’t want to think about how big the spiders were that made them. And