The Healing Power of Sugar: The Ghost Bird Series: #9 (The Academy Ghost Bird Series) by C. L. Stone Page A

behind the trailer. We were facing trees, hidden from the main house.
    “This is stupid,” Silas said. “I feel like an idiot. We should just go up to the house and look for him.”
    “We need to leave him alone,” Nathan said. “We just need to see him and make sure he’s okay.”
    “I don’t know,” Silas said, looking steadily at a tree, thinking. “I mean he knows us, he’ll know where to hide so we can’t find him.”
    “We don’t want to bug him,” Nathan said. He wiped his fingers across his brow and then across the front of his Bob’s Diner shirt. “Look, let’s just find him, and when we do, we’ll just keep an eye on him. That’s what we’re here to do.”
    Silas looked back at him, frowning slightly before he looked at me. “You’re okay with this?”
    “We don’t need to snoop,” I said. “I just want to make sure he’s safe. That’s all.”
    He inclined his head slowly forward, almost a nod. “Let’s just get this over with.”
    I fell behind them as they peeked in North’s trailer windows. I wondered if he was watching us from the diner, or if he’d gone back to the house with Kota and Gabriel.
    Silas and Nathan wanted to start at the trailer, circle the woods to the garage, and then travel around to the back of the main house.
    The trailer was dark, empty. We only had to glance through one of the garage windows to see Luke wasn’t in there, unless he was sitting in the dark behind one of the vehicles inside.
    The main house was an old Victorian, with a turret and huge porches. A lot of the windows had been replaced with new ones, but the outside looked shabby and was in bad need of some paint.
    Silas asked Nathan and I to stay in the woods while he peeked into the lower windows of the house. The windows were high, and even he needed to stand on his toes to look in.
    “I don’t think he’s here,” Nathan said as he put an arm around my shoulders.
    I leaned into him, feeling odd to be standing in the dark woods, sneaking around. Since Silas had said he was uncomfortable spying on Luke, I was starting to feel the same way. I wished there was an easier way to check on him. Even spotting him on the cameras would at least confirm he was okay. “When I called him, he said he was on his way to town. When we checked where his phone was, it said he was here. How could he answer his phone if he wasn’t here?”
    “He could have left before we made it here,” Nathan said.
    “I don’t know…” I said, getting worried. “Something just doesn’t feel right.”
    “Spying on someone never feels right,” Nathan said.
    Silas waved at us, signaling for us to come along. He walked onto the back porch.
    Nathan and I joined him. We each peeked into windows, seeing rooms filled with ladders and wood and paint buckets and wallpaper. It wasn’t a wonder that North was still living in the trailer; the house didn’t really seem livable.
    “Let’s just go in for now,” Silas said. “Let’s just tell him McCoy was spotted nearby and we were checking to make sure he’s not inside the house.”
    “Okay, but say it was someone else,” Nathan said. “We wouldn’t have Sang here if it was McCoy.”
    Silas shrugged, thinking. “Rocky? Maybe looking for North?”
    Nathan nodded and then pointed to the door. “That’d be strange enough.”
    Silas tested the back door, finding it locked. He pulled out his keys, unlocked it and let us in.
    The back hallway led to a kitchen to the right. Further on, there was a front parlor and to the left there was a set of stairs, and beyond that, more rooms. The smell was a mixture of paint, wood, and must. My nose tingled and I kept my elbow near my face, waiting for a sneeze that never came.
    Silas lifted a roll of wallpaper that was on a side table. “I wish North had told me he was still sanding the walls down. I could have helped.”
    “He likes to wait until you have a free couple of days,” Nathan said. He bent down and scooped up a stack of