Lost & Found (A Lost Ones Novel Book 1) Read online

  Dae scoffed. “It’s not an excuse Iya, I really am being followed. Believe it, don’t believe it, or set it on fire because it’s Saturday. It doesn’t change the fact that someone is following me all the time.”

  Dae looked completely serious, so Iya decided to entertain her entirely ridiculous mental breakdown. “Ok. I’ll bite. Where is this person that’s been following you?”

  “I can’t find him, here or anywhere else. If I saw him, I would have kicked his ass already instead of having this frustrating conversation with you. Duh.” Dae rolled her eyes.

  “Then how do you know someone is following you if you haven’t caught someone following you?”

  “I feel it.”

  “You feel someone following you?” Iya asked incredulously.

  “That’s what I said.”

  “So proof wise…”

  “I don’t need proof. I can feel it.”

  “But you haven’t seen anyone following you, or heard anyone, and you have absolutely no physical evidence whatsoever but your feelings that someone is following you?”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “You make entirely no sense.”

  Dae ran her fingers through her long dark hair. “If I saw someone trailing me, or heard them at all, wouldn’t that alert me that someone’s there?” Dae held up her hand when Iya looked like she was going to interrupt. “Wait, don’t answer that. It would be a piss poor job at following someone and this guy’s good. He knows to be out of sight and ear shot. But he doesn’t know I can feel him around me all the time. Before it was two guys, now it’s a different guy.” Again, Dae paused to halt Iya when her eyes widened. “Wait, I know what you’re about to say: how could I possibly know it’s not one of the original two guys? Right? That’s the thing, the energy feels different. The other two’s energy was more malevolent than this guys is. Like he’s not as bad. I actually feel a little hurt that I don’t warrant the original two assholes on my tail. It clearly means they think I’m an easy target.” Dae sounded like she was insulted.

  Could Dae actually be insulted from two or possibly three fictional stalkers? Iya seriously hoped not.

  A Lost Ones Novel:

  Lost & Found

  By Khristine Stain

  A Lost Ones Novel: Lost & Found

  Copyright © 2010 by Chrystal Finck

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Khristine Stain

  Published in the United States of America

  Fifth Edition

  First Published: November 15th, 2010

  ISBN-13: 978-1456365752

  ISBN-10: 1456365754

  Dear Reader,

  This is going to be my first official publicly released story. I have wanted to be an author for many years. I have been an avid reader all my life. I can only hope to create a world to disappear into for others as my favorite authors have done for me. I hope you like the beginning of my story.

  Sincerely,

  Khristine Stain

  This is for my children, Iizaiah & Kylie whom I love more than the stars in the sky. You’re my gifts and I try to prove my worthiness every day… Love you both always.

  Prologue 7

  One 10

  Two 25

  Three 40

  Four 59

  Five 75

  Six 87

  Seven 96

  Eight 107

  Nine 118

  Ten 132

  Eleven 141

  Twelve 154

  Thirteen 163

  Fourteen 172

  Fifteen 181

  Sixteen 189

  Seventeen 197

  Eighteen 205

  Nineteen 218

  Twenty 228

  Twenty-one 236

  Twenty-two 245

  Twenty-three 257

  Twenty-four 268

  Twenty-five 285

  Twenty-six 296

  Twenty-seven 302

  Twenty-eight 311

  Twenty-nine 319

  Thirty 329

  Thirty-one 340

  Epilogue 350

  Prologue

  She had the prettiest eyes he had ever seen. Her eyes weren’t hazel or green or blue. They were a rich liquid gold that screamed otherworld. He didn’t think he’d ever seen eyes like that like in a human face before. He would have remembered those eyes; so alive, so hypnotizing. Since the first day he saw her, those eyes haunted him. It didn’t help that they were set in the most beautiful face he’d ever seen. Her sun kissed freckled skin, long almost black hair, pouty mouth, almond shaped eyes framed with dark lashes and tiny button nose replayed over and over in his brain like it was stuck on repeat.

  He waited months to see her first smile; she didn’t smile enough. He wanted to make her smile all day, every day. When he saw her eyes light up with those dimples and that devilish grin it opened up something inside him. It made him want something for himself… Her. He wanted her. He shouldn’t want her, of all women –he really did know better. But she changed something in him with that impish grin and he hadn’t even met her yet.

  He’d been watching her for so long already he felt like he knew her. His own fantasy –Gods knew the months gave him many. That was the only safe place he could know her. Not in the real world, never there. He couldn’t take the chance. Besides… he had a job to do.

  This job (thank the Alpha) was one he did gladly. Investigate why the Cursed wanted the human for as long as it took. No problem. The Cursed didn’t care much for humans but to torture and kill them. He still didn’t understand why they wanted her much less why their best warriors were sent for her. He couldn’t ever recall hearing the Cursed looking for a specific human. Any old regular human would do.

  He could only conclude she was important. If she hadn’t been than the Cursed wouldn’t be whispering with the need to find her, the human female with sun light for eyes. What that meant and why it was important, he didn’t know. But he did know one thing.

  There was no way he was going to allow them to get their paws on her.

  The Cursed were warped beyond all imagining. This wasn’t the first time he had wondered about their erratic behaviors and sadly he knew it wouldn’t be the last. The evil they carried rotted their brains.

  Or at least the searchers sent after his beauty had the brain rot.

  He couldn’t believe how close they got to their target her. They were too eager, too sloppy. Going after her had been the nail in their coffins.

  Once he saw them getting too close to his beauty, he lost it. He grinned at the memories of the pleasure he felt as he gave them… incentive to cooperate. Sadly, their stupidity ended there, those Cursed were older than dirt and more evil than any devils he could imagine. He would have liked the information. He sighed. Now he had to wait. To watch. Until some more Cursed joined the party.

  He only hoped her luck endured until he figured this madness out. He’d have to make sure of it.

  What they could have wanted with her, he had no clue. And it ate him. As he watched her, he saw her living a regular human life even though her roommate was arguably anything but. She used to work for a restaurant with her roommate until recently. Now, he wasn’t sure where she worked. She hadn’t left to go to any new job in two weeks. What he found peculiar was the roommate also stopped going to work as well.

  His beauty went to Michigan State University. She spent a considerable amount of time in the
main library on campus, always with the roommate. He poked around the records department and found out they both shared most of the same classes, so being together most of the time made sense.

  His beauty rarely went out to parties or hung out with other groups of humans but when she did, it was always with the roommate. And the roommate never went anywhere without his beauty in all the time he was watching.

  He wondered if the roommate was afraid; the only time his beauty and the roommate weren’t attached at the hip was in the early morning hours. It definitely wasn’t his beauty; she was strong and confident as she walked around at all hours of the night and morning as if she owned the world. She didn’t let anyone intimidate her.

  Irritate, definitely. She had temper like books had words.

  She seemed to argue so much and intensity the humans she was familiar with tried to avoid her if they could. He wondered if when they met, would he want to avoid her too? Maybe she wasn’t a people person.

  One

  Dae’s room looked like a tornado blew through it. Shirts, pants, shoes, and weeks’ worth of unopened mail were scattered around her floor. Most of it was bills she was content with ignoring. Some of it actually had to be opened, but that wasn’t going to happen today. Or tomorrow. Or any other day in the immediate future.

  Iya, Dae’s roommate, hated how her room always seemed to be a disaster.

  The rest of the apartment they shared was always in order, sparse but clean. Sparse because they both were in college, both working for their education and clean because, for some odd reason, the only place unaffected by Dae’s OCD was her room. Clutter anywhere else gave Dae the heebie-jeebies, and usually sent her into a cleaning fit. As tight as Dae’s quarters were it seemed to be the only place with a partial immunity to Dae’s odd impulses.

  The tight little hidey-hole Dae called home was barely big enough to contain Dae’s full size bed and dresser. Like most college students, they didn’t have much money to spend on square footage. While the apartment lacked space, it made up for it with a non-functioning elevator up to their floor (the fourth of course), four windows total and a bathroom the size of a broom closet.

  If Dae’s foster families could see her now… Not that she’d cared much about any of them to keep in contact. She’d been happy these past few years to be free them and from ‘the system’.

  One doesn’t get out of foster care until they turn 18. Dae’s 18th birthday was the happiest day of her life. She was finally of age, no longer trapped with whoever the great state of Michigan saw fit to toss her with. She could finally be free. She thought about what she could do once free all her life but what she didn’t think about was that she had 5 minutes to leave the premises.

  That morning she woke up to Mrs. Morldenescz, her last foster person, throwing all her clothes in garbage bags, kicking her single bed, yelling for Dae to get her ‘leaching ass up and go’ before she kept all her things. Dae was happy to oblige, she didn’t have a lot but all that she had she worked for. Yes, while Mrs. Morldenescz collected a check for Dae each month, the crazy Slovakian woman made Dae work for her clothes, pay rent and contribute to the food.

  “You want eat, you buy. No leaches here!” Mrs. Morldenescz said as soon as the caseworker left Dae there. Everybody was a leach to Mrs. Morldenescz but not her own self though she had no job and made money off of the kids she took in.

  Truthfully, Dae didn’t mind; she was happy to be free of Mrs. Morldenescz 16 hours of the day. Between school and her job cleaning at the car plant distributing center, whenever she was at Mrs. Morldenescz’s house, she slept. When she wasn’t sleeping or going to school, she got up and left to be anywhere but there. Most of her free time then was spent with the trees, the grass and the air. And she liked it that way. Solitude was her comfort.

  Dae was in that placement for almost a year and that was a record. Once fosters realized Dae didn’t care about their stupid rules, views, lives (yada, yada, yada) they sent Dae back. Oh but they always waited for the first of the month before they booted her out. Check day, the best day of the month for a foster.

  Iya never said an ill word about any foster she had, as opposed to Dae, who would bitch about the foster care system in America for hours if she got started. Iya’s fosters’ weren’t so bad as to kick her out the very morning of her 18th birthday; no, Iya’s fosters had hearts of gold. They kindly waited until after breakfast to give her the old heave-ho. What happened to them both bothered Dae –really bothered her– but not Iya.

  Iya always said Dae sounded bitter when she talked about her past. Maybe it’s because she was still a little bitter. People can’t grow up with crap everyday of their lives and not be. Or at least that’s what Dae kept telling Iya.

  Iya had been in foster care since she was 12. That girl was the type to smile everyday and thank God for the blessings she thought He gave her. Iya’s belief in her God was foreign to Dae. Most orphans didn’t believe in anything. Dae suspected it was Iya’s real parents that must have been religious.

  The only thing Iya said about her parents was they died in an accident and she didn’t have anybody else. Dae knew Iya remembered them, thought of them often even though she spoke very little about them. Dae could always see it in her face when they were watching those TV perfect families; Iya must miss them something terrible.

  Sometimes, secretly, Dae wished she had someone to miss.

  Dae was a lifer, orphaned at birth. No real parents to give her that spiritual path Iya was sure Dae was missing. Dae didn’t think she ever even had fake parents –fosters were very different than parents. Parents were what you got when you were lucky and, according to Dae, she was the single most unluckiest person anybody, anywhere, would ever meet. She didn’t know anything about her birth mother, except that the woman was part Native American. Which part, how much, Dae had no idea. The records were sealed, her caseworker said for Dae’s protection. What a joke.

  This is never going to get picked up if you keep distracting yourself. Forget the past. It’s now, not then.

  Dae shrugged off her annoyance –and self pity because that never got anybody nowhere– as she grabbed a large paper bag and started tossing the mail into it in bunches.

  “Okay Dae, you’re actually supposed to open and sort through the mail before getting rid of it. If you don’t, it still will be a mess in the bag instead of thrown around your floor.” Iya said, her very intimidating eyebrows raised. Sometimes it was like they could talk. And they always seemed to be able to call Dae on her crap. They must be psychic eyebrows.

  “Last night when you beat me at rummy, I conceded to get everything up off the floor. I said nothing about organizing it all. If I agreed to that I’d be here all week.”

  Dae couldn’t help the smirk she wore as Iya’s eyes glittered with annoyance from her spot standing in the doorway. Iya never came in Dae’s room, partly because it was always a disaster, but mostly because Iya didn’t want to intrude on Dae’s personal space. Dae appreciated that about Iya. Iya knew Dae had some issues, but she didn’t point them out to Dae 24/7.

  Iya shut her eyes like she was in pain while shaking her head and left the doorway. Dae continued throwing random letters into the bag suppressing the urge to do her football touchdown dance in triumph screaming ‘in your face’. Dae knew it would be immature. So she just imagined doing it while Iya ground her teeth to nubs. Still very satisfying.

  “I’m going to make some coffee, you want?” Iya said from their kitchen/dining room/living room which was 5 feet away from Dae’s bedroom door.

  “Blech, I’d rather lick the toilet.”

  Iya chuckled. After some shuffling about, the microwave turned on and Iya said, “I’d like to see that. I’d charge a fee for the whole building to see you do it and we could split the profits 50/50.”

  “Hey, now, if I’m the one licking the toilet, then it’s going to be 90/10 split. I could have a hidden talent; I can’t begin to sell myself short.” The microwave timer dinged b
ut coffee wasn’t the only aroma in the air.

  “Hey, you’re done negotiating already? I could have sworn you’d try to get me down to 70/30!” Dae shouted knowing Iya had been ignoring her. As if that would work.

  “Yeah, we could negotiate all day and then you wouldn’t have to clean your room, right?”

  Shit. Live with somebody for nearly 8 months and they figure you out. Who knew?

  “Hey, stop using that word I don’t like being used in reference to my room.”

  “What word?”

  “Clean.” Dae said in mock disgust. “My room and I don’t like it. In fact, we take great offense to it. We are actually thinking about building a religion around hating it.”

  Dae heard Iya snickering and continued “And besides, shouldn’t you have specified your conditions clearly before the bet last night? Hmm, that sounds like bad business to me, Iya.”

  “You knew what I meant.” Iya snapped. Iya could never ignore Dae for long. Sometimes Dae didn’t know why Iya tried.

  “But it’s not what you said when the conditions were set. You’ll never be lawyer in a prestigious law firm if that’s how you do things.”

  “And who said I wanted to be a lawyer?” Iya was still in the kitchen. Slamming cabinets closed. Nice.

  “Nobody and thank your God for that. You suck at negotiations.”

  Dae was grinning when Iya came back to the doorway with a coffee mug in hand that had a familiar aroma that made Dae focus her attention on Iya fully.

  Iya’s eyebrows were at work as she started, “Ok, since you’re up for negotiating, I’ll trade you this steaming cup of instant hot cocoa with the tiney tiny cardboard marshmallows I know you love so much, if, and only if–” Iya paused for dramatic effect “you to clean your room before we go to the campus today.”