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  Table of Contents

  Book Description:

  Chapter One – A New Life

  Chapter Two – A Rocky Start

  Chapter Three – Traven Island

  Chapter Four – A Bit of History

  Chapter Five – Exploration

  Chapter Six – An Unexpected Welcome

  Chapter Seven – A New Meeting

  Chapter Eight – An Invitation

  Chapter Nine – A Blue Light

  Chapter Ten – Behind the Door

  Chapter Eleven – A Watcher

  Chapter Twelve – A Long Night

  Chapter Thirteen – An Unexpected Journey

  Chapter Fourteen – A Meeting

  Chapter Fifteen – The Seekers

  Chapter Sixteen – Oblivion

  Chapter Seventeen – A Latent Ability

  Chapter Eighteen – Connections

  Chapter Nineteen – An Unexpected Visitor

  Chapter Twenty – An Uncanny Pull

  Chapter Twenty-One – A Visible Aura

  Chapter Twenty-Two – Triangulation

  Chapter Twenty-Three – Rob

  Chapter Twenty-Four – Twists in the Pattern

  Chapter Twenty-Five – A Confrontation

  Chapter Twenty-Six – Into Darkness

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – A Deadly Game

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – A Voliar

  Other Books by Sarah Swan:

  Chosen

  (Book 1 of the The Seeker Saga)

  By Sarah Swan

  Copyright © 2011 Red Eagle Press

  Amazon Kindle Edition

  This entire book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are all either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, persons are coincidental. All right reserved.

  January 2012

  About the Author:

  Brief version:

  Sarah Swan was born in the summer of 1991 on the outskirts of Seattle, Washington. She is an avid reader and has been so since her mother placed her first book in her hands. She has dreamt of being a writer ever since meeting J.K. Rowling in a local bookshop at the age of 12. She wrote Chosen while balancing a full college schedule and waitressing part-time at a college bar.

  Book Description:

  Could you live your whole life feeling empty?

  A New Life

  Seventeen-year-old Tracy Bachman feels that something is missing in life. Despite a normal upbringing, she can't help but yearn for more. That is why she decides to transfer to a new boarding school, in a move that takes her all the way across the country.

  An Unforgettable Adventure

  When Tracy arrives at her new school, she expects an ordinary enough life. But what she finds there instead changes her in ways she could never expect.

  A love interest she did not ask for.

  A power she does not know she holds.

  And a clique of mysterious, popular girls hell-bent on entangling Tracy in their affairs.

  A Hidden Purpose

  The girls Tracy meets all know she is different. Beneath their easy smiles lies a friendship laced with dark intentions. Will Tracy understand what they want in time to protect herself? Or will she find herself hopelessly ensnared in their web of secrets?

  A Forbidden Romance

  A suggestive glance. A secret rendezvous. In the midst of everything else, Tracy finds temptation in the very boy she is prohibited from speaking to. But as she pushes herself away, she falls right into the arms of another...

  A Mystical World

  Slowly, Tracy starts to understand that beneath her school's veneer of splendor lies a dangerous, secretive world brimming with supernatural powers. And before she knows it, she finds herself deep in the heart of that cryptic, mystifying world.

  All expectations are thrown to the wind as Tracy struggles to balance love, friendship, adventure - and her newfound power. But will she be perceptive enough to realize that there are those who would use her for that power, lurking closer than she can believe?

  --

  Chosen is the first book of The Seeker Saga, a new YA paranormal series. Look for the second book, Forbidden, to be available March 2012.

  Chapter One – A New Life

  September 23 is the first day of fall. I know this not because I have some bizarre fascination with the changing of the seasons, or with watching the days of the calendar slowly creep by, but rather because this year, September 23 happened to fall on a Friday. This is ironic to me, since that day of the week is typically reserved for marking the end of things, such as the working week, than signaling the start of something new. But for me, September 23 marked not only the transition into a less prosperous season, when the last rays of sunshine from a glorious summer are taken away, leaving only memories of those warm, lustful days, but also the end of my previous life.

  I guess, from an even more pessimistic perspective, one would be justified in saying that September 23 is also the end of the three most peaceful months of the year, a time when the entire western world shifts away from a recess of lounging and relaxing into a more high-octane way of thinking. New stresses and pressures begin to show themselves and become painfully rediscovered. At least, this is the way of things for adults, as I’ve come to figure out in my relatively short sixteen years on this planet.

  For a student like me, fall marks the beginning of a new school year. This is a time of great fascination and palpable excitement – about seeing old friends, and meeting new ones, and about discovering yourself for the umpteenth time in the first semester of school. But, this year, that beginning was slightly different for me.

  Thinking back, September 23 was more than just the start of a new season. For me, it signified the beginning of a new life, one which would typically be thrown off as interesting and eventful only in the shallow minds of teenagers and (to be frank) the miniscule world they inhabit. But, my story is far from typical. While it may begin in a familiar setting, I can see now, in hindsight, that where it takes me is a place far and away outside the realm of familiarity.

  But I digress. The beginning of this story takes place in the backseat of a very cramped early 1990s Oldsmobile Bravada. If the make of the car doesn’t ring a bell, I wouldn’t blame you – the entire line was phased out of production sometime in the mid-2000s. But with my dad’s constant insistence that his car was just as good today as the day he bought it, only a few weeks after I was born, it was the only vehicle available to us for the cross-country trip that my family was just completing. After spending the better part of a week squeezed between boxes of nearly all my belongings, even my patience was starting to wear thin. And that’s fairly impressive, because, as you’ll soon see, I pride myself on being a very patient and tolerant person. I’m kidding. That was just a lie I made up to make myself feel better about my impatience at the gnawing and very distracting feeling of being restricted to nothing more than a very small, very hard backseat in this rickety ride.

  “Look honey!” my mom exclaimed in her usual-but-completely-baffling cheery voice. “The sign outside says we’ve only got twenty miles to go!” She turned around from her copilot seat up front with a wide grin on her face. That quickly turned into a frown. “Tracy! How many times do I have to tell you to stop chewing your nails?”

  Abashedly, I jerked my hand away from my mouth. That was a habit I had been meaning to break for, oh, over two years now. I was actually feeling proud of myself for not succumbing to the temptation even once on this long road trip. But I guess it had become so ingrained that I sometimes did it without thinking. I resolved right there and then that this would be the absolute last time I allowed myself to do that. What better time, really, than the day before joining an entirely new
school?

  “Sorry,” I replied cheekily, “I guess my mind just wandered.”

  My mom waved me away. “It’s for your own good, you know. There aren’t many boys who will like a chomper.”

  “Mom!” I exclaimed, feeling unusually embarrassed. “Can we not talk about that? Not right now?”

  “I’m just saying…” my mom replied, turning back around. “Isn’t that right, Dave?”

  Dave, of course, was my father, who snuck a surreptitious wink at me when mom wasn’t looking. “Of course, dear,” he replied with only the barest hint of sarcasm. “Although, I have a feeling that Tracy’s going to do just fine with the boys no matter what her habits are.” I smiled to myself. Dad always had a very inflated opinion of his one and only daughter. If he knew just how much of a struggle it was for me to be able to say two coherent words to a boy that I liked, well… shell-shocked wouldn’t be too strong of a word. Still, he always had a way of making me feel better every time I came home after school with any type of problem, big or small. That would be one thing I would definitely miss at my new home.

  I shook my head. It was strange thinking of this place I was going to, this seemingly otherworldly institute located far from my Washington home as could possibly be, as, well, home. But that faraway place would be home for the next two years of my life. I was headed for a very small, very prestigious, private school, located on a small island just off the coast of Maine. I emphasize the word prestigious because, while it is not something I would ever use, it is what nearly everybody else said about the place when they found out I had been accepted.

  Truth be told, I had had my sights set on the boarding school – Oliver Academy – for a very long time. It had been my goal ever since I had finished elementary school and took my first class in the neighboring high school, actually. I wanted to get into a good college. Doing so from a no-name junior high in the back hills of Tacoma would have been a herculean task. I’m not sure exactly where the desire to go to university came from, but I had a pretty strong suspicion it was because my dad once attended Harvard as an undergrad. And I say “attended” because he was one of those students who never graduated. It is quite a romantic story, actually, and perhaps worth its own in-depth look at a later time, but I’d be remiss if I failed to give the bullet points now. Essentially, in the summer between his junior and senior year, my father decided to backpack through the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies. Somewhere along the way, he stumbled upon a girl: a girl he liked very much, actually, and one to whom he proposed after having known her for only a few weeks. She said yes, of course, and the rest, as they say, is history. Because she was studying to be a doctor at a fairly obscure Canadian school, my dad dropped everything he had to move in with her, putting his own studies on hold. A few years later, I was born, and this Oldsmobile came soon after. And now, I was staring at the back of that girl’s frizzled sun-colored hair while she looked on through the side window at the trees passing us on the side of the road.

  I sighed, and tried to wiggle into a more comfortable position on the hard seat. Both my legs were beyond asleep at this point. Try as I would I couldn’t actually feel my toes. The entire lower half of me, in fact, was absolutely numb – which was why I was so surprised at how cheerful my mother sounded earlier. She had been in this car as long as I had, and while the front seat was a little more spacious, it could hardly be called comfortable.

  I tried to drown out my thoughts in the midst of the alt-rock tunes playing softly from the radio. Over a week of travelling, a family road trip, and – as my mom just told me – it was twenty miles from finally coming to an end. Even after being cooped up with both my parents for the better part of seven days, I realized just now how much I would miss seeing them. It was a strange sensation, leaving behind a fairly full life of family and friends and moving away from the place you grew up in and called home. But it was what I wanted to do, and I knew it was exactly what I expected from the moment I filled out that first blank line in the application papers.

  To say I was excited when I found out I had gotten in would be an understatement. I was absolutely ecstatic. I felt like I was on top of the world, in a place where nothing could get in my way. But now, I was caught up in those sad emotions that always came with saying good-bye. They temporarily eclipsed my excitement over the upcoming year. At least, I hoped this melancholy feeling was temporary. I assumed my regrets would all fade soon after I said the final goodbye to my parents and watched them drive back home from the yard outside my new room.

  “I’m going to miss you, honey,” I heard my mom say softly, and realized with a start that her voice was quivering. She wasn’t crying, was she? No – I knew she was stronger than that. “The house is going to feel so empty without you.” She was crying! Although she was obviously trying her best to cover it up.

  “Don’t worry,” I said quickly, trying to get a grasp of my new role as emotional psychologist, “I’ll be back before you know it. Winter break is over a month here, and everybody goes home then. You’ll see me soon.”

  “I know,” my mom answered, “but I’m still going to miss you.” She reached back with her hand to squeeze my knee lovingly, and then took it away. I smiled sadly. We weren’t even saying goodbye yet, and already I was feeling a little rough.

  “I’ll miss you too, kiddo,” my dad said in a much less grave tone than my mom had just used, “but we’re not saying goodbye quite yet, are we?” Again, he looked back to shoot me a quick smile. “After all, we’ve got to get to the school, first. And besides, this is an exciting time for you—and for us, too, really. Our only daughter, entering an entirely new stage of her life, and we won’t even be around to see it…” he trailed off, then shook his head roughly, “…er, that’s not how it was meant to come out.”

  My mom reached over and put a hand on my dad’s shoulder. They both turned and smiled at one another. I let the familiar melody from the stereo drift soothingly into my head, replacing my jumbled thoughts.

  The rest of the drive was spent in silence. I must have drifted off, because I didn’t realize we were off the main road until the car suddenly skidded to a halt, sending me flying forward unceremoniously. Only the seatbelt wrapped around my shoulder, saved my face from being mashed right into the back of my mom’s seat.

  Before I had the time to orient myself to my surroundings, I heard my dad speak. “Something’s wrong,” he said seriously.

  “What is it?” I asked, jerking myself to full attention. I looked through the windshield to find us stopped in a vacant and somewhat creepy looking parking lot. About forty feet ahead, the asphalt abruptly gave way to a roiling body of water. A deep fog stood as solid as a wall. It was impossible to see through, and impossible to see how far the water extended.

  “This is the ferry terminal we’re supposed to be at,” he said slowly, “but I don’t see any ferry big enough to have a loading dock for cars.”

  I frowned slightly, not immediately understanding the implication of his words. Oliver Academy was on its own private island, a few miles off the coast of Maine. The only way to get there was by ferry, which is what we were supposed to do. Scanning the edge of the water, I saw a small, decrepit-looking ship – more like a tugboat, actually –bobbing roughly on the waves. I thought there was a light inside the main cabin, although it was difficult to tell since there was still enough sunlight to dim out the effect. I looked past that boat, to either side. The rest of the terminal was empty. We were the only ones there.

  My eyes returned to the single, floating boat. Right on cue, the door to the main cabin swung open. Out stepped the most peculiar man I had ever seen. He was short, likely no higher than my shoulder (and I was not ever known as particularly tall), and had a belly that seemed as wide as he was tall jutting out from the splitting seems of a dark trench coat. A thick, curly beard hid half his face. This contrasted strangely with the top of his bald head. I watched, strangely entranced, as the man scanned the area in front of him. His
eyes settling on our car, he jumped onto the plank and started walking toward us.

  “Um, dad…?” I began unsteadily. “That man is walking right to us!”

  My dad nodded in reply. “Maybe he can tell us where we need to go. The directions I have told me to come here for the ferry over. Perhaps I misread one of the road signs on the way.”

  “He doesn’t look very friendly, dad.”

  My dad barked a laugh. “What, you’re not intimidated by him now, are you? Come now! He’s half your size!” He laughed again, although I thought he sounded like he was trying to convince himself that there was nothing to fear.

  My dad started the engine, and put the car in reverse. Backing up a few dozen feet, he turned the wheel so he could angle the front of the car toward the man who was still walking right at us. My dad shifted gears, and drove up slowly toward him. A look of recognition dawned on the sailor’s face when we started moving toward him. He stopped and waved us over.

  The next thing I knew, we had driven up right beside the strange man, and my dad was rolling down the window.

  “Excuse me,” my dad began, “but we were looking for a ferry terminal that can take us to Traven Island?” Traven Island was the small island owned by my new boarding school, and was where the entire campus was stationed. “I followed the directions I was given, but it seems I must have taken a wrong turn, somewhere. Could you direct us?”

  The man looked at my father for a second, seeming to consider him. From close up, I realized he had a single toothpick stuck between his teeth. He shifted it in his mouth with his tongue. Finally, he jerked a thumb toward the back of the car – toward me.