In the Bones (North Country #1)

Prologue

Molly

Nine months ago

Nothing good happens after midnight. Isn’t that what they say?

Midnight had come and gone, but we were still there.

A haze of smoke and liquored breath hung over the room like a veil, suspended above the heads of strangers.

There were too many people, lips and hands fluttering fast, and the effect was dizzying, like a strobe light pulsing close to my eyes.

A ribbon of cool air slithered across my feet, turning the skin to gooseflesh.

Someone, somewhere, had propped open a door, and my body responded as though I’d been touched by icy fingers in the dark.

When was the last time I saw her? An hour ago? More? She’d been talking to a man I didn’t know, one of many. Where were they now? The muttering in my brain told me this was bad. Enough. Get out. My skeleton hummed, keen to move. But still, I couldn’t see her.

Why didn’t I shout her name? Make a scene? Shake the truth out of everyone in that house? I should have tried so much harder to reach her, wherever she was, because that expression isn’t right. It doesn’t tell the whole story.

Nothing good happens after midnight when you find yourself alone.