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Informationen zum Autor GRAHAM McNAMEE is the award-winning author of five novels, including Sparks , which won the first PEN/Phyllis Naylor Working Writer Fellowship; Bonechiller ; and Acceleration , winner of the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery. Klappentext Jane is not your typical teen. She and her best friend Lexi call themselves the Creep Sisters. Only Lexi knows why Jane is different from anyone else: Her own shadow seems to pull her into near-fatal accidents. Jane is determined to find out why these terrifying things happen, and to overcome her shadow enemy. Her sleuthing with Lexi connects her own horrors to the secret history of a serial killer. Leseprobe 1 I remember dying. After I got injured my heart stopped and I flatlined. I was done and gone. But I wasn’t alone. There was something waiting for me when I died. Something dark and cold tried to take my soul away. When they brought me back to life I escaped from it. Left it behind. But what if it came back with me, followed me home like a hungry stray? 2 Don’t think about it. I keep telling myself that. Today I find out what they’re going to do with me. I’m counting down the hours till my doctor’s appointment. My best friend, Lexi, is doing her best to distract me. So on this stormy afternoon she drags me out in my backyard to try a new trick shot with her camera. “We’re going to stop the rain.” That would be a real magic trick out here on the Rain Coast, in the town of Edgewood. Never heard of the place? I’m shocked. We’re famous for our wet weather. Lexi gets me to stand under the tree in back. It doesn’t give me any shelter, with all the dripping branches. “What do I do?” I ask as she sets up her tripod on the grass. “Just stay still, Jane. Facing me. I need to get the focus perfect.” Most days are gray around here, where the sky is always crowded with clouds and the rainy season never seems to end. Makes you feel color-blind sometimes, starving your eyes. Only the bloodred of Lexi’s lipstick saves the world from fading to black-and-white right now. “Ready?” she says. “Okay, the camera’s set for superquick shots. Don’t move for a minute. And close your eyes. This flash is really intense.” I shut them, and Lexi starts shooting as the wind shakes cold raindrops from the branches above. Through my lids I can make out the flashes, like rapid-fire lightning. When it feels like a minute’s gone by, I open my eyes and catch the last blinding flares. “Done,” she says. We run to the back porch and check out the results. As I blink away the afterimage fireworks, my vision clears and I see Lexi beside me. Always in black, she looks like the Grim Reaper’s hot little sister. Right now she’s wearing a hooded slicker over her miniskirt and tight sweater. Raven-dark hair frames her pale face. “Got it.” She shows me the image on her camera. “Took a hundred shots to get it, but we tricked the rain.” There I am. Brown eyes wide, frizzy blond hair blown wild by the wind so it seems like I got zapped by lightning. Makes me look witchy. But the magic is in how the raindrops are stopped in midair. They show up as streaks around me, but where the focus is tightest right in front of my face a few are frozen. Caught in the split-second flash, they seem solid, as if you could pluck one out of the air and hold it. Crystal clear pearls. “You stopped the rain,” I say. Lexi shrugs it off. “A minor miracle.” “I could use a miracle right about now.” “The rain falls too fast to really stop it. But the drips from the branches are slowed down enough to catch.” She hands me the camera. “Now you try.” We experiment some more, capturing the dribbles off the porch roof, suspended before gravity splashes them to the ground. Cool special effects. But Lexi’s best trick is to take my mind off everything. And it works wonders. Playing with the camera l...
