The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade

_{Smashwords Edition}

_{Copyright 2014 A.P. Kensey}

Covers by TJ Wright

neechmonkey.carbonmade.com

BLOOM Copyright © 2012 by
A.P. Kensey

FADE Copyright © 2013 by
A.P. Kensey

—
CONTENTS —

○

{
MAPS
}

○

BLOOM

Chapter 8

Chapter
16

Chapter
24

Chapter
32

Chapter
40

○

FADE

Chapter 8

Chapter 16

Chapter 24

Chapter 32

Chapter 40

○

{
NOTES
}

D
EDICATION

For every person who can tell the
difference

between reality and
imagination

and still prefers the
latter.

1

H
aven Kincaid won a spelling bee when she was seven, a math
tournament when she was twelve, and nothing else until the day she
turned sixteen. Her parents thought their daughter would be happy
to learn she had “won” the right to stay out until ten o’clock on a
school night. It was a sign of trust, they said, since they were
both
so
knowledgeable about what teenagers did and they were certain
their little Haven never got into anything that would make them
blush in front of a crowd.

Now, just after turning
seventeen, Haven spent most of her days wishing she had an
apartment of her own so
she
could make the rules. Ever since her dad got his
new job a year ago and moved the whole family from Flagstaff to
Scottsdale, Arizona, she felt like she didn’t belong at home, at
school, or anywhere else.

Haven left behind a
handful of friends that she had known ever since grade school—girls
she was planning on graduating with and rooming with at college.
Moving across the state was bad enough, but to do it right before
her last year in high school was the absolute
worst
.

Her family’s new home in Scottsdale
was nice enough. It had two stories, which Haven always wanted, and
was on a quiet street not too far from the downtown area. There was
a small movie theater next to a smelly bowling alley not too far
away, and she heard rumors that someone was building a miniature
golf course.

Yippee.

Haven was at least thankful that she
no longer had to share a room with her little brother, Noah, and
that the new yard was a lot bigger than the old one—but she was
still more than two hours away from her friends in Flagstaff. Those
two hours could just as easily have been two weeks since Haven
didn’t have a car and there was no way her friends were going to
drive all the way down to Scottsdale just to hang out at a smelly
bowling alley.

If she had more than one
close friend at her new school, she probably
would
have been happy. But Kayla
Robertson, her closest, could only stay out until eight-thirty.
Haven wouldn’t have her own car until her eighteenth birthday (when
she was expecting to inherit her mom’s old junker once her dad
“surprised” her mom with a new luxury model on their twentieth
wedding anniversary), so her curfew may as well have been
eight-thirty, too. Haven suspected her parents knew all of those
things already and that extending her curfew to ten o’clock had
been more of an attempt to distract her than anything
else.

Things hadn’t exactly been rosy around
the Kincaid house for the past week. Haven was disrupting her
classes at school out of boredom—nothing serious, but she had been
sent to the principal’s office several times for making rude
comments in the middle of lessons—and she was caught drawing a
lopsided heart on the gymnasium wall with a permanent marker. She
was trying to write a name inside of the heart before Coach Lawford
saw what she was doing and took away the marker, but she only
managed to spell out J-A-S.

Up until then, Principal
Rivera had only given her warnings for disrupting class, but said
Haven was on a “slippery slope” and called her parents after the
incident in the gym. They scheduled a meeting for later in the
week—a
face-to-face
meeting—that Haven would be forced to attend.

Haven’s room was small but had two
windows since it was in a corner of the house. She and Noah had the
two bedrooms on the second floor of their two-story home, and her
parents had the largest bedroom—downstairs next to the den. The
stairs were well-carpeted—enough so that when she was very careful,
Haven could sneak up and down in the middle of the night without
making a sound. She did that often to raid the fridge for ice cream
whenever she couldn’t fall asleep. Opening the silverware drawer
was another story. It squeaked loudly unless it was opened at a
snail’s pace. Haven meant to stash a spoon away in her room for
those sleepless nights, but she had forgotten yet again, and would
be forced to use stealth to obtain her late-night snack.

She walked quietly down the stairs,
her feet padding into the carpet with each step, then crept into
the kitchen, pausing briefly by her parents’ closed bedroom door to
make sure they weren’t moving around. Hearing nothing, Haven
stepped softly to the silverware drawer next to the sink, her bare
feet making slight sticking noises as they peeled off the hard
linoleum floor.

She grabbed the metal handle on the
drawer and started to pull it out as quietly as she could. When the
drawer was halfway open, a small bubble of blue light formed just
below the first knuckle of her index finger—it looked as if she was
wearing one of her mother’s gaudy costume rings. The back of her
hand glowed pale blue and small flames flickered across her
skin.

Well that’s new,
she thought.

It didn’t burn, whatever it was. There
was no heat at all.

The bubble on her index finger
expanded as the thin fire on the back of her hand fed into it.
After the growing bubble had absorbed all of the flame, it moved
slowly from her knuckle down to her fingernail. She let go of the
silverware drawer handle and the small sphere of light exploded
like a tiny firework. The drawer slammed back into place and the
metal utensils inside jumped and clattered loudly in the plastic
drawer organizer.

Haven covered her mouth with both
hands to stifle a small scream.

She held her breath and listened for
the all-too-familiar sound of her parents getting up to see what
she was doing out of bed so late at night. In the absolute silence,
she heard soft footsteps in the grass outside, moving quickly away
from the kitchen window. A quick shadow darted across the kitchen
window and Haven gasped.

Someone had been watching.

2

C
olton Ross awoke late—the glowing red numbers on the cheap
alarm clock next to his mattress read eleven o’clock. He lay there
smiling, knowing that he felt better in that moment than he would
feel for the rest of the week. He pulled aside his thin sheet and
stood on the cold wooden floor.