The Sleuth Squad (eBook)

The Mystery of the Silver Compass

LaTonya T. Dudley (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
306 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
979-8-9938512-2-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Zoe Harper and her friends follow a mysterious silver compass whose glow connects the tides and the stars. Their search uncovers an ancient observatory, a celestial map, and a secret that could change Harbor Glen forever.

Textauszug

Chapter 1 – The Compass That Points Nowhere

The storm that had rattled Harbor Glen for two long nights finally blew itself out. Morning sunlight poured through Zoe Harper’s window and turned the puddles in the street into tiny mirrors. The world smelled new—salt and pine and something like electricity left over from the rain. Zoe sat cross-legged on her bedroom floor with Milo snoring beside her, the silver compass balanced in her hands. She had been staring at it for half an hour, waiting for the needle to behave. It never did. It spun, hesitated, and then stopped—not at north, but at the cliffs beyond the harbor.

She compared it with her hiking compass. That one pointed neatly north. The silver one pulsed with a faint light that ran along the wave pattern etched around its edge.

“Milo,” she whispered, “either this thing’s broken, or it’s trying to tell us something.”

The dog’s ear twitched, unimpressed.

When a beam of sunlight slid across her desk, it caught the compass glass and threw a spray of reflections onto the wall. The spots weren’t random; they formed a cluster of dots—small constellations Zoe didn’t recognize. She grabbed her notebook and sketched them quickly before they faded.

Her phone buzzed. Two messages popped up back-to-back:

Amira: “Bring the compass. You need to see this.”

Leo: “Adventure 2.0 — I’m packing snacks + rope. Meet at the park.”

Zoe grinned. “Here we go again.”

She slung her tote over one shoulder, tucked the compass safely inside, and called for Milo. Outside, the air still shimmered with mist. The lighthouse beam, repaired since the storm, made one last sweep across the harbor before fading in the daylight. Its reflection flashed off the compass through the fabric of her bag.

At the Park

Leo was waiting on the picnic table, one foot on the bench, a donut in hand. Amira sat beside him with her laptop open, cables snaking to a small solar charger.

“You’re late,” Leo said through a mouthful of sugar.

“I was decoding starlight,” Zoe said. She set the compass on the table. “Watch.”

Sunlight hit the glass and projected the same dotted pattern onto the tabletop. Amira leaned closer, eyes wide.

“I ran a scan last night,” she said. “Those grooves in the metal act like prisms. It’s basically a mini planetarium.”

“So… we’re saying this isn’t a compass,” Leo said, squinting, “it’s a projector?”

“Or both,” Zoe said. “A projector that points somewhere.”

Amira pulled up a map on her screen. “Those dots match part of an old star chart—one that would’ve been visible fifty years ago.”

“Same time the observatory collapsed,” Leo said. “And when Henry Glass disappeared.”

The word observatory hung between them like a challenge.

Zoe traced the engraved wave on the compass rim. “Then that’s where it wants us to go.”

Toward the Cliffs

By noon they were hiking the narrow trail that wound above the sea. Milo trotted ahead, tail wagging, nose full of new smells. The compass needle quivered but stayed aimed at the horizon where the broken dome of the old Harbor Glen Observatory rose out of the mist.

“Last one there has to clean Leo’s drone filters,” Amira called.

Leo groaned. “That’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

Wind pressed against them as they climbed. Salt spray stung their faces, and gulls wheeled above. The observatory looked larger with each step—a half-crumbled shell of stone and rusted metal, its telescope pointing uselessly at the clouds.

Zoe stopped at the crest of the hill and held up the compass. The needle pulsed faster now, almost like a heartbeat.

“This is it,” she said quietly.

The others joined her, staring at the ruin. Somewhere inside, a sheet of metal banged softly in the wind, like a door calling to be opened.

Leo adjusted his backpack straps. “All right, captain. What’s the plan?”

Zoe smiled, eyes bright with that spark she always felt at the start of something unknown. “We start with the stars—and see where they lead.”

Milo barked once, the sound carried away by the sea breeze.

The Sleuth Squad stepped toward the broken doorway, sunlight glinting off the silver compass in Zoe’s hand as the tide rolled below like a promise.

The first sound of morning, before the gulls and the harbormaster’s diesel yawn, is the hush and lick of the tide slapping the pier supports. Zoe Harper hears it through her boots, vibrating up the planks, thumping at the arches of her feet like a signal she can’t yet translate. Harbor Glen is, as always, late to wake, the shop lights off and the only glow the bruised orange of the lighthouse cutting across fog, its beam blinking—twice, pause, once, twice—a staccato heartbeat against the blue-black.

Zoe’s hands ache from holding the compass, silver chilled to near-biting by the dawn. She works the filigreed lid open and closed by nervous habit, thumb running circles over the star-inlay button. The compass’s needle vibrates, humming a note she feels more in the bones of her wrist than in her ears. She braces the compass in both hands and angles her face into the salt spray, blinking as droplets suture her lashes. The wind brings the ripe tang of seaweed, the ghost of gasoline, the faintly metallic scent of lightning not-yet-come.

In the brief hush between wind gusts, Zoe dares a whisper. “You awake yet?” She keeps her voice low, for the compass or for the memory of her grandmother—impossible to say. Her words drop into the surf and vanish.

The gulls stir at once, raucous and furious, knotting the air overhead in loops and lazy dives. She wishes, for the hundredth time, that she could fly like that. Not the actual flying—she’s read enough about hollow bones and flight feathers to know she’d rather keep her mammalian density—but the absolute freedom of direction. The way the birds seem always to know, in the instant, which way to move.

The compass needle twitches, stutters, finds north again. Zoe feels the thrum of it in her thumbs.

She waits.

Five minutes past, the harbor growing brighter, the lighthouse beam thinning out to a pale blade as sun pushes over the horizon. The buildings on the hilltop yawn into view: the museum, the bakery, and the peculiar glass dome of the Global Listening Institute, its panels winking dew. Zoe rocks back on her heels and stretches, feeling the pop of her vertebrae, the cold-shiver of sweat along her collarbone. She half-considers tucking the compass away, admits privately that today’s experiment is, so far, a flop. But she holds her post, as if the pier expects her to.

It happens at 6:14 exactly, a minute earlier than the logbook predicted.

The hum in the compass surges, a mosquito whine right under Zoe’s fingernail. The needle snaps from its slow north-waver to true, and then flings itself due east, toward the lighthouse. The whole casing rattles, then buzzes a sharp, metallic note. Zoe’s breath stutters—she knows, instantly, this is a first.

The lid is half-closed, and through the magnifying crystal, the compass face ignites—no, not the face, but the space above it, as if someone projected an image onto her palm. A shape in gold: a ring of interlocked stars, bright as fire, dancing and spinning. The points burn, then converge, forming a perfect circle. She tries to move her hand, but the skin tingles, as if caught in an electric net.

“Okay,” she says, and her voice isn’t steady. “That’s—new.”

The circle pulses, flashes once, twice, echoing the old lighthouse code. Then the gold collapses, the starlight drawing inward in a line so fine Zoe almost misses it—until it spikes, shooting a pinpoint of brilliance straight toward her heart.

She flinches. The light carves a starburst onto the compass glass, the edges frosted with shimmering points. For half a breath, it holds. Then it vanishes. The humming drops out. Silence, except for the gulls.

Zoe waits, expecting another surge, some aftershock. But the compass is inert, the needle gone slack, spinning lazy circles as if it’s dizzy from the effort.

She glances around. The pier is empty; no one to ask if they just saw what she did. She runs her fingers over the compass. The glass is warm to the touch, the pattern gone. If not for the red mark imprinted on her palm, she could almost believe it hadn’t happened.

Her thoughts run ahead—Mr. Finch at the museum, who said he’d never seen the compass do more than shiver, not in fifty years; Amira Nassar, at the Listening Institute, who’s sworn it’s just an artifact, “electromagnetic, nothing magical.” Even Leo, who gave her the “Captain Compass” nickname, wouldn’t believe this. No one would.

Zoe closes the compass with a snap. Tucks it into her coat, hand pressing flat over the place above her heart where the pinpoint landed. She shivers, but not from cold.

One more breath, and she pivots on her heel, gaze drawn not to the town behind her but to the cliffs that rim the harbor, slick black stone banded with streaks of white guano and lichen. Beyond them, the morning sun catches the sky’s edge, illuminating the old radio tower’s silhouette—a needle against the blue.

“Set the right course,” she mutters. “Whatever you are.” It’s not clear if she’s speaking to the compass or herself.

Her silhouette on the pier is sharp now, black cutout against the quickening gold. For a moment, she stands still, shoulders squared, brow creased, the sea wind plastering her hair to her forehead. Then she sets off, boots hammering the old...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 9.11.2025
• Reihe/Serie: Harbor Glen Mystery Adventures
• Illustrationen: Ai generated
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kinder- / Jugendbuch ► Bilderbücher ► Religiöse Bilderbücher
• Schlagworte: Celestial Map • friendship teamwork • observatory adventure • silver compass • starlight mystery
• ISBN-13: 979-8-9938512-2-8 / 9798993851228