THE 24th SHADOW

The 24th Shadow In Glint Hollow, the past doesn't just haunt you. It leaves a trail. Twelve-year-old Vesper Lowen is a master of being invisible. In a town tucked away in a fog-choked valley, she is the "smudge on the glass," the girl who survives by blending into the shadows of her middle school hallways. She doesn't expect to be noticed, and she certainly doesn't expect to be a hero. Then she meets Blue. A retired racing Greyhound with a scarred flank and soulful eyes, Blue is considered a "washout"—a dog too slow to ever win a trophy. But Vesper quickly realizes that Blue isn't staring at empty corners. He is tracking the Echoes: shimmering, violet-hued silhouettes of people exactly twenty-four hours after they've passed by. When Kaelen Voss, the town's golden boy, vanishes during the annual Harvest Festival, the police are left with a cold trail and a locked-down valley. Only Vesper and Blue can see the truth. They possess a decaying map of the crime, a flickering replay of the kidnapping that only they can follow. But the Echoes are governed by a brutal law of physics: The Rule of 86,400. Every second that ticks by in the present is a second of the past that vanishes forever. As the twenty-four-hour window begins to close, the violet trail starts to fray. To save Kaelen, Vesper must step out of the shadows and trust a dog that everyone else gave up on. Together, they must outrun the fading light—because when the clock strikes the twenty-fourth hour, the boy in the past will disappear forever.