Product Description
The Thirteenth HourSome clocks count down to midnight. This one counts past it.When the grandfather clock in Oakbridge Library strikes thirteen, Clara Whitmore feels the darkness calling her name. It's been calling for twenty-seven yearsâ ever since the night her father faked her death to save her from the same fate as the other children.Every thirteen years, a child vanishes from Oakbridge. No trace. No explanation. Just shadows that move wrong and a silver-eyed man named Marcus Thorne who's been young for over a century.Clara Whitmore is not who she thinks she is.Her real name is Clara Vale. Her bloodline has been feeding children to an ancient entity for generations. And the quiet life she's built as a librarian? A carefully constructed lie to keep her hidden from the machine beneath the clock tower.The machine that holds six children in eternal sleep.Margaret Thorne (disappeared 1891)â the first dreamer, trapped by her own father's desperate bargain.David Caldwell (disappeared 1995)â the most recent, brother to Ethan Caldwell, the man who refuses to let Clara face the darkness alone.They're suspended between life and death, their dreams turned into barriers holding back something that's been imprisoned since before humans built cities. Every thirteen years, the machine needs a new dreamer. Every thirteen years, the clock strikes an hour that shouldn't exist.This year, it's calling for Clara.But Clara isn't just another victim. The power in her Vale blood can break the machine. The combat skills her father buried in her subconscious can fight Thorne's silver-eyed servants. And her dreamsâ the ones that have haunted her since childhoodâ aren't nightmares. They're weapons.On Halloween night, when the barriers between worlds grow thin, Clara must choose: walk into the darkness alone, or watch everyone she loves disappear into the thirteenth hour.A gothic mystery perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic, The Silent Companions, and stories where small towns hide ancient evils.
