Overworld Chronicles Books 1-2: Sweet Blood of Mine & Dark Light of Mine by John Corwin Page A

cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, vomit, and a sickening mix of other unidentifiable odors. The house smelled more like a low-rent bar every day. The odor sickened me even worse now that my nose had gotten a zillion times better at its job. I had to snap him out of this cycle of self-destruction soon. I asked him several times about money while I cooked. He grunted once, rolled over, and went back to sleep. I had no idea if the house or utilities were even being paid for. A mountain of mail teetered on the kitchen table. I didn't even know why I should care. I was a teenager, not a responsible adult. But I kept imagining me and Dad begging for scraps on the streets after the house was repossessed.
    But I didn't know the first thing about finances or making payments. Mom's computer still sat in her office. As far as I knew, she'd always taken care of the household money, and one of the few chinks in my parent's relationship had been how awful my dad was at handling it. I turned on Mom's computer and stared at the login screen. Just great. After trying all sorts of possible passwords and failing each time, I groaned and sat back in the black office chair. The desk was immaculate with every bit of paper filed away and each item on the desk lined up perfectly with its neighbor. Mom was OCD when it came to cleanliness and pretty much everything else. Which was why a yellow post-it note stuck to the side of the pencil-sharpener caught my eye.
    I snatched it and recognized Dad's handwriting. The username and password gave a cheery wave from the scrap of paper along with some rudimentary instructions for using the computer. I logged in and found a document on the desktop which told Dad in no uncertain terms not to mess with the automatic payments Mom had set up for keeping the bills paid.
    But where is the money coming from? I found the answer after logging onto the bank's website. The checking account had a number with seven figures in it. I counted it twice to be sure and choked back a gasp. Who had my parents robbed to get that much money? I swore under my breath. I thought I'd known my parents. Now I felt like the kid of criminal masterminds. Could the money have something to do with Mom's departure? Were they part of a Mr. and Mrs. Jones type conspiracy? The amount of money in their bank account birthed a million new questions although it made me feel a lot less guilty about raiding their rainy-day stash.
    I scoured the computer for more information but came up empty. The documents folders and everything else were empty. I stared at the system files on the screen and was about to shut the computer down when I noticed a folder that seemed out of place at the root of the hard drive named Copy of hash codes . I wasn't a computer expert, but I knew enough that this wasn't a normal system folder even though the name seemed harmless enough. I opened it and found a bunch of files that I managed to open in a text viewer program. Not that it mattered. Something like a combination of gibberish and programming code was all I found inside the files. It struck me as very odd because unless Mom was a secret hacker or computer genius, she couldn't have written this stuff.
    Had she made this folder copy by accident while removing other files? I didn't know but I wanted a copy of my own just in case it might be important to figuring out where she'd gone. I grabbed a flash drive from my room and copied the folder over before shutting the computer down.
    I wanted to analyze the files some more, but I glanced at the wall clock and realized I was running late for my appointment with Victoria.
    The moment I entered the gym, I knew it had been a terrible mistake. Not because Stacey the vampire was there, but the sheer volume of sweaty sexy girls threatened to overload my senses. I had to think about baseball so hard I felt the veins in my head bulging. Everywhere I turned I was attacked by sexual desires and longings. It was insane. I knew what a victim