Heart of Shadows

Chapter 1

January 20, 2021

As Evie walks the streets of Atlanta, she contemplates if she should go to the bookstore or straight to the coffee shop. She looks up into the sky to notice the first few snowflakes of this year. It's been a few years since it has snowed in the city. She couldn't remember the last time it happened.
    Without even realizing it, Evie's own feet had made the decision for her and she walked into the warm coffee shop. It was a place that often brought her comfort. It was as if it had the ability to make her feel safe. As she considers what to order, a voice asks:
"You want the usual?" The barista, Matthew questions even if it's not a question since it's what she gets every time. Evie glares in return. "I'll take that as a yes."
As she pays for her drink, she thinks she should probably order a new drink every once in a while, but Evie has always loved hot chocolate. As was tradition in her family, or at least, that's what her father had told her. "Are you alright?" Matthew questions, as he gives Evie her order. She nods and mentions that she has to get going.
"Well don't stay out in the streets for too long. I don't want you to freeze to death." Evie smiles and assures him that she will not freeze to death.
~                    
Once Evie arrives at the bookshop, she talks a bit with the owner, as he's a family friend. Then, she goes to look around to see if any book piqued her interest. Recently, she has been more in the mood to read murder mysteries than anything else. There was something interesting about reading murders taking place in a city and the killer causing chaos. It kept her mind constantly thinking about who the murderer was and why they were committing such violent acts. Evie knew that not everyone who read murder mysteries wanted to find out who it was before it was actually revealed, but she always tried to figure out who the murderer was.
She looked into the mystery genre section of the store and found a few titles similar to her tastes. Evie wasn't familiar with many mystery novels since it wasn't something that she found she really loved until last year. Since graduating high school, she has discovered more about herself in the past few months. In the beginning, Evie had wanted to go to college, to experience what it would be like to go out in the world and to find what secrets it held for her to uncover. But a part of her wasn't sure if that was the right path. So Evie told her father and he had only replied by saying: "It's alright if you're not sure. It seems you must've gotten your indecisiveness from me. I didn't figure out who I wanted to be right away. It came in time."
It was one of those memories that Evie knew would stay with her forever. She ends up choosing a few books by Agatha Christie. A few days before, Evie had researched what the best mystery novels were and one of her novels had come up. The next day, she came in to buy Murder on The Orient Express and instantly was entranced by the story. It had been a while since a book could make everything else in her life blur away and there was only Evie and the pages of the story. She decides to try out more books from the same author, as well. She always likes reading novels from the same author, especially if she had loved one of the author's previous works.    
Once Evie pays for them and leaves the bookstore, she contemplates if she should go home right away or if she should go to the library and read for a bit. She already feels the cold in her bones and tries to walk faster as she goes through the streets. Too focused on her own thoughts, Evie doesn't hear the shouts until it is too late. She pauses to make sure she heard correctly and hears another scream. Evie runs as fast as she can toward the direction of the scream and pauses once she finds the person who had been yelling. Except the person wasn't yelling anymore. The person who had been alive just a few seconds before was dead.