How to Seal Your Own Fate (Castle Knoll Files #2)

by Kristen Perrin

If I’m too excited over something simple, I’m not acting my age. If I’m too deep in my own thoughts, I’m not fun enough.

“Crystal pick ’n’ mix sounds like new slang for hard drugs, but Castle Knoll style,” I say, and feel my mood lift again from its momentary dip. “You’ve just invented a great new game,” Jenny says. “Drugs or village souvenir? I’ll go first: lemonade Punch and Judy,” she says, and grins at me.

When I’m around him, I tend to turn my personality up to eleven. Whether this is because I feel comfortable around him or because I’m lonely enough that I’m craving to be seen by someone, it’s hard to say.

But when people have been seeing right through you your entire life, you know that transparency isn’t a weakness. It means it often never occurs to people to distrust you.

I wanted to be a good investigator, but not if it meant being less of a good person.

Ford kept so much to himself, like a tree where you only see the green and healthy bits, but belowground there’s a whole root system that twists and snarls out to destinations unknown. And if I’m to love someone, I want to know all of them. The roots, the debris, the broken branches.

He never once questioned my growing fixation on my fortune, or why uncovering the secrets of those around me seemed to calm my restless mind. And I was glad of that, because I often felt bad about my burgeoning obsession. Because what kind of person feels better when they learn about the dark deeds of others?

When you’re a woman, people talk to you your whole life in terms of when you’ll have children, never if. God forbid they let you make up your own mind and keep your future out of their business.

They were his blood, but not his family.

“So you believe in luck, but not fate?” I ask. Archie grins. “ ’Course,” he says simply. “Luck is a nice explanation for how life isn’t fair but sometimes has good things in it. Fate—now, that’s just an excuse to give up control and let some invisible force drive things. And I could never do that.”