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Chapter One: Chiara

Chiara Jenkins stared at the map before her with a frown

She’d followed a trail of cryptic hints ever since she’d first discovered the es of an old French book that was slowly falling apart

That’s how she’d ended up in France

She didn’t actually speak any French But that hadn’t stopped her fro an extraordinary find in her hands as soon as she saw the map

There’d been so connected to the supernatural world

And ever since she’d been first attacked by a ht before her eyes, she’d dedicated her life to uncovering this mystery

It didn’t matter that both cops and doctors had called her crazy when they thought she couldn’t hear

It didn’t matter that her dad hadn’t talked to her in a year, ever since she’d left her awful, crushingwith customer complaints day in, day out

What mattered was that there was an entire world out there that most people couldn’t even see

But Chiara could She’d started researching olves as soon as she’d realized that no one would ever believe her

Turned out that there were a lot of people on the internet who’d seen sihouls, vampires, aliens

Chiara still wasn’t one hundred percent sure if she believed in aliens, but the website she norote for had run a pretty convincing theory last year, clais of olves, vampires, and other monsters were caused by the tests aliens did on humans

It was at leastthan the idea that the world was just collectively going mad

She knehat she’d seen And there were so s Not just olves—but some people had seen humans turn into lions, cats, all sorts of animals Even bats

Chiara had fortunately never met a vampire in her research, but if people could turn into bats, then why shouldn’t the rest of it also be true?

“Another drink for you, mademoiselle?”

The bartender spoke with an accent, but there were apparently enough tourists coe in France that they were used to American tourists like Chiara And the French accent was incredibly charh to be her father

Also, I have no ti the iven her a slow smile when she’d come in

She was here for work Theto lead her further into the mountains She didn’t even knohat exactly was hidden there—but it had to be soood