The Turning

JENNIFER ARMINTROUT

blood ties book one:
the TURNING

Much love and thanks to:

The FNMS. Michele, for eye rolls and encouragement. Chris, for loving my characters (and me) enough to read revised scenes for the nth time. Cheryl, for your advice on shameless self-promotion. Marti, for the [expletive deleted] advice from that [expletive deleted] book. You know which one. Derek, for keeping the adverbs and alliteration at bay. And Mary, even though you weren’t part of the crowd then, you deserve a mention for being Cyrus’s biggest fan.

Peggy, who let me pretend to be a writer on her typewriter when I was four years old.

Shannon, for still liking the book after viewing my lame attempt at dancing.

My editor, Sasha Bogin, and my agent, Kelly Harms, for being enthusiastic about this book and me.

Joe, for believing I could do this and subjecting yourself to the ups and downs of living with a writer.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Coming Next Month

One

The End

I read a poll in the newspaper once that said the number-one fear of Americans aged eighteen to sixty-five is public speaking. Spiders are second, and death a distant third. I’m afraid of all these things. But most of all, I’m afraid of failure.

I’m no coward. I want to make that perfectly clear. But my life turned from nearly perfect to a horror movie in a matter of days, so I take fear a lot more seriously now.

I’d followed my life plan almost to the letter, with very few detours. I’d gone from plain old Ms. Carrie Ames to Dr. Carrie Ames just eight months prior to the night I now refer to as “The Big Change.” I’d broken away from the sleepy, East Coast town I’d grown up in, only to find myself in a sleepy, mid-Michigan city. I had a great residency in the E.R. of the public hospital there. The city and surrounding rural communities provided endless opportunity to study and treat injuries inflicted by both urban warfare and treacherous farm equipment. Living my dream, I’d never been more certain that I’d found the success and control over my destiny that had always seemed to elude me in my tumultuous college years.

Of course, sleepy mid-Michigan towns get boring, especially on frozen winter nights when even the snow won’t venture out. And on a night exactly like this, after only having been home for four hours from a grueling twelve-hour shift, I was back at the hospital to help deal with a sudden influx of patients. The E.R. was surprisingly busy for such a forbidding evening, but the approaching holiday season seemed to affect everyone with a pulse. Thanks to my rotten luck, I was charged with attending trauma cases that night, patients with serious injuries and illnesses that put them in imminent danger of death. Or, more specifically, carloads of mall-hoppers who showed up in pieces after hitting black ice on 131 South.