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The Stonekeepers

By Sally Chambers

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Two excerpts from

Chapter One

Nantucket, Massachusetts

There has to be an explanation.

Outside Lexi Christensen’s bedroom window, the world shook. The fast-moving storm hurled shards of silver lightning, and thunder bruised the heavens above rain-swept Nantucket Island. She leaned over her empty cedar chest, and again smoothed her hand across the base. Surely she’d only imagined the solid base had moved as she’d dusted the bottom.

There. A small indentation shifted beneath her fingers. She pressed the end of the wide slice of polished wood and drew in a quick breath. As if hinged, the slender board rose straight up, revealing a compartment.

Someone had carved out a section just big enough for a business-sized—
The overhead light flickered. Another explosion of thunder rocked the house as lightning illuminated an envelope tinged yellow with age. She bent closer. Emblazoned in sweeping black script, her name, Alexia E. Christensen, traced across the face of the envelope.

Why would an envelope bearing her name be in her cedar chest? How long had it been there? She’d never completely emptied the box, but with her first year of college looming, she’d decided to clean it out. Remnants of her life had been layered like tree rings in the chest. Plaster-of-Paris handprints from kindergarten, old books and diaries, rumpled report cards, loose photos, awards, and more lay around her in short, not-so-neat stacks.
Then she’d lifted the old paper liner from the bottom of the chest. And found this.

The handwriting on the envelope wasn’t familiar, and the possibilities that twisted through her mind didn’t offer a single credible explanation.
The storm quieted, moving eastward over the island. Twin fires of curiosity and anticipation burned through her fingers as she picked up the envelope. The thin wood cover fell into place with a soft swish.

A clatter of pans sounded from the kitchen. Mom, fixing lunch. Good. For a while at least, Mom wouldn’t barge in with more orders or an interrogation. Right now, Lexi wanted privacy.

She stretched to ease the tension in her neck, then sat back with her knees drawn up under her chin. Her hands trembled with excitement—or was it apprehension—and for a second, she hesitated.

Do it, for heaven’s sake. It’s just an old envelope.

The glue easily gave way as she slid her finger beneath the flap. She pulled out a fragile sheet of thin, crackly paper, and unfolded it. Several lines of text were written in the same handwriting as her name outside the envelope. Most of it was faded, barely legible, ink almost obliterated by brown stains. But the words of the first line stopped her, made her suck in a breath.

Northbrick House.

+ + +

Goose bumps rippled down her arms. She looked at the paper. If she read the remaining lines, would it make sense or get weirder?

The paper quivered in her hand, her eyes skipping down past several single, widely-spaced, hard-to-read lines, pulled to the bottom as a wave of unreality engulfed her. Two sketches of a familiar shape—a six-pointed star—like the one she’d worn beside her cross every day for as long as she could remember. She closed her eyes against the barrage of thoughts, questions, in awe at what she held.

Her hand moved to the slender gold chain against her throat. She pressed her fingers against the tiny metal replica of the Star of David, held it out and turned it over. The two entwined triangles were engraved on the bottom of the left and right angles with two letter A’s. Just like in the sketches—
And for a fleeting moment, she was a little girl again, sitting on a whitewashed bench in a garden, cradling a small box in one hand, and in her other, something golden shining in the sunlight.

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