Rivulet

Jamie Magee

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to any real people or event is purely coincidental.

Kindle Edition

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the express consent of the publisher and author, except where permitted by law.

For the dear friend that showed me how passionate fire signs could be, Chancey Shae Pickard.

And to my baby brother, Joseph Brady, for teaching me to respect fire, for showing me how courageous fireman have to be. Your bravery is unprecedented.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.

Bruce Lee

Other Books by Jamie Magee

All series mingle at some point creating a “web of hearts and souls”

Insight (Book 1)

Embody (Book 2)

Image (Book 3)

Vital (Book 4)

Vindicate (Book 5)

Enflame (Book 6)

See (Book 1)

Witness (Book 2)

Synergy (Book 3)

Redefined (Book 4)

Where To Find Jamie Online:

http://authorjamiemagee.blogspot.com

Table of Contents

Excerpt “Switch” by Janelle Stalder

Chapter One

When death shadows your path, you only have one viable defense—adrenaline. All the rage, panic, and jealousy coursing through my veins vanished instantly. There was no room for such emotions. There was no choice between fight and flight—I’ve always been a fighter.

The light was blinding, but that was nothing compared to the piercing sound of the train’s whistle that was bellowing through my body. I braced my arms on the dash, knowing there was nowhere to turn, no way to stop.

Out of sheer instinct, Wilder turned the wheel sharply, which rapidly plowed us through the brush that surrounded the frozen lake. The ice carried the wheels of the car so far out onto the lake that turning back was not an option.

Gavin’s truck, which was just behind us, had followed our path onto the ice. The only way to go was straight ahead toward the manor, but that was a foolish mistake.

Seconds later, just before the hood of the car, I saw the darkness spider web across the pristine blue of the ice, and the frozen lake opened wide, swallowing us whole.

The shock of the cold water never registered to me as I struggled to undo my seatbelt.

Once I was free, I reached for Wilder, who was already loose. He leaned back in his seat and lunged his long legs at the windshield, trying to give us both a way out, but before he could break the glass Gavin’s truck landed on us with a sickening thud.

The added weight caused us to sink faster than before, and now the icy water was seeping over our necks. Wilder was so cold that he couldn’t think—he couldn’t move. I swam over the seat and angled myself so I could kick out the back window. It took me three tries, but finally I forced it open.

Wilder was gone, completely unconscious. I positioned my arm under his shoulders and pulled him with every ounce of my strength. He was almost too broad to fit through the window. The jagged glass scraped his arm—the pain from the gash shocked him awake. I heard him scream under the water as I thrust him forward then followed, finding air with the next beat of my heart.

After a second of thought, I realized that when I swam by Gavin’s truck it was upside down; I knew they were either hurt or trapped because no one had broken through the surface of the frozen lake. I had to go back. I had to save them.

“Indie, no!” Wilder screamed at me, but I didn’t bother to argue or even hesitate.

I dove into the water, pushing through the blocks of ice. Wilder was behind me, swimming faster than I could.

The dark color of crimson was escaping out through the windows of the overturned truck.

Wilder started to kick out the passenger side window as I swam down to the crevasse where our car met theirs. The back window was buckled. It only took one kick to break my way through.

Wilder had broken through and was pulling Cadence out; she was the one that was bleeding. Gavin was awake and struggling with Wilder to rescue her.

I wrestled with Sophia’s seatbelt; just when I got it loose, the truck began to fall to the side, losing its balance on our car. I pushed Sophie out just before the car tumbled in the water, trapping Mason and me.

The tumble knocked him out cold, but it also crumbled the windshield, giving us a faster escape than I could have hoped for. I took my scarf off and looped it under his arms, then I pulled, kicked and fought my way past the massive blocks of ice, wanting air – wanting survival, wanting death to leave me be tonight.

It was as if the lake were demanding a sacrifice, payment for breaking the peace it had before we lost control and broke through her barriers.

I climbed and climbed, pulling the weight of Mason with me, careful not to let the ice hurt him anymore. It felt like a century later, but I broke the surface and sucked in the freezing night air.

My heart was pounding so hard that it was making me shake. I knew. I just knew I was too late, that somewhere in this battle with this lake I’d lost one, if not all, of my closest friends.

Each time I pushed the weight of Mason onto the ice, more broke away. He wasn’t going to be able to handle this water much longer—there was no way. I pushed forward, knowing the bank wasn’t far, which meant the ice would be thicker, stronger.

Behind me I could hear the thrashing of the water against the ice, the sound of death itself chasing me from this lake. Adrenaline was coursing through every inch of my body. It was my weapon at the moment, and my intent was to use it fiercely.

After the seventh attempt, I found ice that was strong enough to hold Mason. He groaned as I pushed him up, coughing out water.

I was exhausted, but I had to go back. I had to get my camera. It was my proof, my only proof, and I wasn’t going to give it up without a fight.

Just as I went to dive into the freezing lake once more, a blinding light stopped me and my hell vanished instantly.

“Indie, what the hell? Get down!” Cadence said in a harsh whisper.

My eyes were wide with shock. I couldn’t understand where I was or what had just happened. I gripped the side of the wide beams above my bedroom. I’d climbed almost twenty feet in the air, and I had no idea how I had managed to do that. My room was a disaster; bookshelves were turned over and lamps were shattered on the floor.

My heart was beating so fast that I couldn’t breathe. I could not understand how I was at death’s door one instant and perched up here the next. I tried to breathe, but no air would come. I kept seeing the ice, the water, the blood…that couldn’t have been a dream—could it? The last thing I needed was for my night terrors to return.

I glanced at the beam just beneath my hand to see ice growing. I clenched my teeth and thought of every word or image that resembled fire wanting to hide this dangerous curse.

My wrist began to burn, then warmth eased through my hand, my arm, and my body. In my mind, I heard a familiar, deep whisper echo, ‘I’ve got you, Love. I’m never going to let you go.’ I clenched my wrist; the black scarf that was wrapped there, it was my magic, my defense, and most importantly at that moment it was my sanity. Tiny rivulets of water appeared where the ice once was, evaporating just as they emerged. I let out a sigh, knowing I’d talked myself down once again, which was a miracle in and of itself considering how insanely my heart was beating—how out of control my emotions were.

Echoing footsteps made their way down the hall, and that did nothing but make my alarm grow. I could see my breath and feel the ice coming back. Focusing on the fire burning within the scarf, the warm sensation, was my only hope. One beat later, the fog of my breath vanished, along with ice on the beam holding me in the air.

“Freaking A,” Cadence said under her breath as she rushed around picking up lamps and scattered books, trying to make the room look less violent.

Mrs. Rasure opened our bedroom door one beat later. She pulled her black robe tightly closed; her blazing red hair marked by lines of silver reflected the anger in her cold, dark stare that found me peering down at her.

“Genevieve Indiana Falcon, what on Earth are you doing up there?” she scolded.

“I—um—I was. Cold,” I stammered, still not completely awake.

Mrs. Rasure took in the room, along with Cadence’s obvious shock and fear. “So you chose to climb the walls?” Her tone was icy and quick, just like always.

“Hot air rises,” I mumbled, letting my legs relax along the beam I was perched on.

“I see,” she said distantly. “If you choose to carry on with your wild ways, do so in another wing; your grandmother needs her rest.”

A glare was my instant response. Now I was wide-awake. This woman was evil. I was sure of it. I turned my body so my arms were holding the beam, then swung my legs to the edge of the bookcase and climbed down.

My emotions of rage and declared vengeance caused ice to form on the wood as I climbed down. I focused on the scarf and felt the fire there once more. I let out a small breath to ensure that there was no fog there; finding nothing odd, I placed one hand over my wrist and turned sharply to face my one and only mortal enemy.

“Mrs. Rasure, I have no wild ways, and I would appreciate it if you would leave my wing, my house, my life.” My tone was beyond polite, yet dripping sarcasm.

She grinned indifferently as Cadence came to my side. “Tell me why after seven years you still choose to use my proper name. I’m your aunt, your family. Your well-being is my first priority.”

Every curse word I knew was racing through my mind as I smiled graciously at the woman who had invaded my family so long ago.

“That is how my mother introduced you to me. She never advised me to call you differently.”

Mrs. Rasure tilted her head and let her eyes smile innocently. “Considering that she was not your real mother and that she has long since passed away, I will ask you once more to call me Aunt Celia.” She let her words settle, then crossed her arms. “I received a call from the attorney. He was somewhat surprised that you listed seventy-seven siblings and that each of them had written a letter on your behalf. He asked if there was any family that was not listed that he should expect correspondence from. Of course, I told him that he was lacking seven, but considering they had passed away, I advised him not to list them…that it might damage your delicate state of mind.”

Cadence gripped my arm, trying to tell me to calm down, but I didn’t care to hear her warning.

“Listen to me,” I said flatly. “You can throw every lawsuit you want at me, you can dig up any past you want—but let me be clear: this is my house, and you are not welcome. And if you intend to dig up my past I will gladly dig up yours.”

She smirked as her dark eyes inched over me to the tattoo on my shoulder that had seven unique flowers across a vine, one to represent each of those that I’d lost, my parents and five of my sisters. Her gaze moved to my wrists, one layered with watches and handmade bracelets and the other where my scarf was. She could not stand my appearance and often let her disapproving gaze state as much. “Why on Earth would you think that I would have a past that would need to be researched?”

“You’re a gold-digger. We both know that,” I seethed.

“It breaks your uncle’s heart when you say such things…” She stepped forward and slowly circled Cadence and me. As she passed by my ear, she whispered, “A gold-digger is the least of my crimes.”

My emotions went wild, and my breath became a fog once more. I gripped my wrist, feeling the burn come back to me, feeling the courage to push my justifiable emotions deep down inside of my soul.

After she circled Cadence, she stopped in front of us and glanced at my wrist. “If you want to be an heiress, act like one. Lose your rags, your wild friends, that little coffee bar you love so much, and go to school for a real degree. Otherwise, leave my house and return when you understand what ‘class’ means. When you become the daughter your mother thought you could be.”

She turned to walk toward the doorway. At the threshold, she stopped and looked back. “Stop acting like the trash she found in her garden.” And with that, she smirked and left the room.

I stood frozen with rage. Cadence rushed to the thick oak door that led to our room and shut it. She grazed her hands through her long strawberry blonde hair, then let her head fall. “The night terrors are back,” she said in a hushed whisper.

I had more than a few odd flaws, and not being able to lie clearly was one of them. My silence has always been my lie. If I didn’t answer a direct question that meant that the truth was more than I could say or admit.

I didn’t want to admit that on the inside I was damaged, that I could never dream when I was asleep, that the only real dreams I have ever had were the terror I just had…and the one I had just before I lost my family.

When I didn’t respond, she turned and wrapped her arms around her petite body. Her faint freckles along her high cheekbones were made apparent by the blush that surfaces when she’s angry. “What else is back? Are the illusions back?”

“She’s not an illusion,” I said under my breath, knowing she was talking about my friend Skylynn, the one who’d given me this scarf, the one that had brought me back from the brink of insanity so long ago. “And she never left. I just stopped talking about her.”

I turned to walk to the edge of my bed that was centered before a massive window. I collapsed on the edge and held my head in my hands. A beat later I reached for the small pillow on the bed, the one embroidered with a flaming ‘F’; when I touched it, if I let my mind carry me away, my mother would appear. I would see her holding this pillow as she sat at the end of my bed and listen to me tell her about my day. She would smile warmly, eagerly, as I told her every secret I knew. This was a memory. A memory locked within that pillow, one that I could call forth at any time.

That was one of my other odd flaws. I never dreamed when I was asleep, but when I was awake, if I touched something that belonged to me, belonged to someone I loved, these vivid images would appear around me; ghostly images carrying an echo of a lost past. A past that was rich within the manor I was raised in, a past that I dare say I was madly in love with.

I have been told by more specialists than I could remember that I never really reached or stayed in a dreaming state at night, so my mind produced these memories, these images, as a way of locking my memories in place.

I would have believed them if it weren’t for the fact that when I touched really old items, items that this manor was filled with, I saw images from a past that I could not have possibly been old enough to witness. I have personally watched the most epic love affair of all time within these walls. A love affair that I could feel in nearly every room. The images of the past were so vivid that at times I spent more time staring into the past, to a love that could never happen again, rather than living my own life. I was obsessed with this manor. Obsessed with each memory locked away within it.

A few beats later, I felt Cadence sit down next to me. “Freaking fantastic,” she uttered under her breath.

Cadence was the last foster child my parents had the privilege of taking in and later adopting. My parents, by all means, were philanthropists. They both came from old money, money that would take centuries to spend. A year after they were married, they opened their home and became foster parents. At all times, there were no fewer than seven children in their massive home. I guess you would call them children; most them were fourteen or older, kids that just needed one break, one chance at a real life. Each of them left my parent’s nest with infinite love in their hearts, a solid education, and the means to change the world—or even create one of their own. Before my parents died, they had changed eighty-four lives…they had changed the world and had planned to save so many more.

I was the only one they adopted at birth, and that was by fate itself. On a cold winter night almost twenty-one years ago, my mother woke from a dead sleep. She thought she heard screaming. She rushed outside in the snow thinking that one of her children was hurt somewhere on the grounds.

In the snow, she found my birth mother, she found me, minutes old...the second my mother cradled me in her arms, tucking me in her coat, my birth mother breathed her last breath. She died without ID, without any evidence of who she was or even how she had made it on the grounds of this manor. It was as if she appeared only to give me life.

When I was fourteen, they adopted Cadence. She never had a chance to get to know them the way I did; they died three months later. Cadence was safe with us, though; my parents had the foresight to assign my grandmother as the primary guardian over the two of us. My uncle Jamison was the secondary, with which I had no issue. My only issue was that he married a gold-digger, and right after he did I lost my family. I’ll never forget the look on Mrs. Rasure’s face when the police escorted me in the manor, telling her that I’d survived, that I wasn’t on that boat. I saw right through her fake grief. That day, our war officially began. That was the last day I had a night terror.

Chapter Two

Flashes of the worst day of my life rushed through my thoughts. Without fail, when I wanted to feel my mother’s embrace or my father’s words of wisdom, my mind would take me back to the last time I saw them.

My parents fostered a strong belief that you must face the demons of your past in order to move on. Often, once they took in a child, broke them from their shell, and helped them find what made them special, they would set up a meeting with their birth parents, allow them to talk through the shattered memories and mend their broken hearts.

These meetings were always a surprise, and that surprise had a dual purpose for each of the Falcon children. One was to teach us that our past could surface at any given moment, and when it did we had to face it with open arms. The second was to teach us that literally anything could happen at any moment and that learning to react calmly to those unexpected moments would teach us never to fumble through life.

I’d seen the act enough times to know that when they planned a day at sea on one of my father’s boats, more than likely one of my sisters would meet someone from their past. I just didn’t think it was me.

No evidence of either my birth mother or father was ever discovered, but my mother was relentless and wanted to give me some kind of closure, some kind of peace. The morning we were to set sail, we were all at breakfast at a little restaurant near the docks. Cadence was terrified of going out on the boat and was begging not to go aboard. I was teasing her, telling her that we were all born to die, not to fear it…then I heard someone behind me say, “I’ve heard that line before.” I turned to see a young woman with long blonde hair and an innocent smile.

Turned out that a private investigator my parents had hired found her. Years before, she had filed a missing persons report on a friend of hers; she only knew her first name and offered a brief description that matched my mother.

All of my foster siblings were given the chance to see their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, but no such people could be found for me. This woman, who knew my mother for all of nine months, was the only connection I had to a sealed, and presumably lost, past.

I stared at that woman, completely speechless. I can still feel my mother’s arm go around me. “This is your day, baby,” she whispered to me.

My grandmother stayed on shore to watch over this meeting. Nerves had gotten the best of Cadence; after she got sick, Mom and Dad decided to let her stay on shore with us, too.

Side by side with my grandmother standing behind us, we waved as our perfectly flawed family boarded the boat.

I remembered thinking that I should stop them, that I should go with them, ask this lady who had come to see me to go along, too. I told myself this was the beginning of my night terrors; I was happy and safe one minute, and the next I was all alone, running from an evil that promised to destroy me.

My mother thought the night terrors meant that I was afraid a dark past would come for me one day; that was why she was so urgently insistent on finding anyone from my past, anyone who could help ease my fears and allow me to feel at home, truly at home. My father had tried to help me overcome them by telling me to stop, turn, and face my demons. He told me they may not even be as terrifying as I thought, that in my dream I could simply be running from my own fear.

I knew if I chased after them, they would both tell me to stay with that lady, that this was my only cure for the terrors that had tormented me for months before that moment.

We never saw them again. Hours later, the Coast Guard was called out to a craft in distress alarm. They found a burning boat that was halfway under water…and no survivors. I lost five sisters and two angels that I called Mom and Dad that day.

My parents were right about one thing: the terrors did stop that day—they stopped because they became my life. I was alone and running from the evil that Rasure was.

I didn’t learn much from that lady they arranged for me to meet. Her name was Megan—I think. My birth mother had leased out a studio apartment attached to her home. She’d paid in cash, leaving no paper trail. Megan said my mother never had any guests or talked about anyone. That she was quiet, beautiful, loved to read, loved music, and more than anything photography. Megan only filed the report out of curiosity. My birth mother vanished, leaving the next three months worth of rent on the nightstand next to her camera. Megan just wanted to make sure she was okay, but she never found her answer.

To this day, I will swear that Mrs. Rasure had something to do with that boating accident. She was too shocked at how Cadence and I had survived. She demanded that we have immediate counseling and fought my grandmother at every turn on how to raise us. The paperwork to add Cadence to my parent’s will was never complete, so I was the sole heir to the majority of their assets.

My inheritance was supposed to be given to me at eighteen, but my grandmother had a stroke three months before my birthday. Mrs. Rasure convinced a judge that my grandmother was not of sound mind and had him grant power of attorney over me to my Uncle Jamison. One day before my eighteenth birthday, she filed against me, stating I was too young and unbalanced to be given my inheritance. The judge enforced a clause in the will that pushed the time back until I reached the age of twenty-one, which was now weeks away.

For the past year, Mrs. Rasure had pulled every stunt in the book. She even hired a private investigator to follow me; her argument was that I was still mentally unbalanced, captivated by my grief, and that it was affecting my sleep, my judgment. She claimed I was rebellious and would not only lose my inheritance but also destroy my family name. Her goal was to freeze my trust until I was thirty or married. I was sure that the age of thirty was another clause in the will, but the marriage was all her idea. She knew that I was the last person on Earth that would be able to stomach the confinement of committing to anyone, but by proposing that compromise she managed to paint herself in the light of a concerned relative.

Cadence let out a deep breath. “Okay…I’m not going to argue that Skylynn is or is not real; just tell me about the night terror.”

I had told her more than once how my last one came true in its own way. I didn’t want to tell her that I would lose them all this time. I had to make sure this dream didn’t come true.

Maybe I could ask Skylynn to watch out for all of them, not just me. Skylynn—my phantom friend. I pulled back the scarf that was folded into a wide bracelet on my arm to see the scar that was no more than a centimeter long.

Grief was my demon when I met Skylynn. I was a lost kid who didn’t think she had the right to live, that she could possibly be the last child of the Falcons.

One dark night, I walked out in the snow, tired of fighting with my thoughts, with my odd curse…the one that caused my breath to turn to fog, that would freeze anything or anyone if I let it. I thought I was a mutant that should have died at birth, that if I did, my family would still be alive.

Just as I took the knife to my wrist, Skylynn appeared. Literally, out of thin air. I can still remember how beautiful the snow looked as it fell on her long, lavender hair, how pure her blue eyes were, her innocent, pale skin. With a glance from her, the knife in my hand flew across the woods, stabbing a distant tree. I thought I’d officially had the psychotic break that Mrs. Rasure had predicted I would have at any moment. Either that or I had touched something, unlocked some vivid memory, a ghost from the past.

Skylynn dropped to her knees in front of me, staring eye-to-eye with a wide gaze. “I know you were not about to take your life—right?” she said coolly.

“I was born here. In the snow. In death. I just want to go home,” I said with a quiver.

“Tell me why,” she said with a sternness that demanded my fourteen-year-old mind’s attention.

It took me a moment to formulate the words that I’d never spoken aloud, words that only my parents and grandmother knew to be true; they never asked me to keep it a secret, but they never forced me to face this particular demon. “I’m a freak. When I let my emotions surface, I freeze everything. Literally. I can’t hide this anymore; they think I’m insane. They want my home, and they can have it because it’s too empty for me.”

Skylynn glanced back at the manor, then to me again. “This is your home?”

I nodded once.

“Tell me when you were born—what day?” she demanded.

“Today.”

“On the winter solstice?” she questioned.

I looked at her like she was insane. “On the twenty-first of December.”

What was odd was that my birthday, where I lived, seemed to be more of a shock to her than what I just confessed.

She took my hands and stared into my eyes. “Feel.”

I shook my head no with a panic. “I’ll hurt you.”

“No, you won’t. Feel.”

I had no choice. It was as if my soul had been waiting on that command. I let it all out. All the grief I’d held in, all the emotions that I knew would give away my freakishness. I let the breathless tears flow, and it did nothing to her—no ice, and no evidence whatsoever of my curse.

That went on for hours. It was as if the weight of the world were lifted from me.

“What is your name?” she finally asked me.

“They call me Indie.”

That made her smile for some odd reason.

“What else can you do, Indie?” she whispered.

I almost told her, but I held back.

“Tell me,” she urged.

“I…sometimes if I touch something old, sometimes I see things…like memories…they look like ghosts.”

“Some might be,” she said so softly that I wasn’t sure I heard her right. “Do you want to know why?” she asked gently.

My pleading gaze begged for an answer.

“You see your memories, you see your past. That is a gift, Indie, nothing to be ashamed of. If you can see that lingering energy, those memories, then you very well may be able to see some ghosts—but do not fear it. Anyone in the glow of what you see is at peace. They are only reaching for one last goodbye.”

“You sound like my mother,” I mumbled, thinking maybe this girl was an angel sent by her. My mother used to hand me random things and ask me to tell her a story; it was her way of telling me that I should enjoy my odd trait of dreaming while awake, of seeing memories that could not all have been mine so vividly that I could never forget them.

I didn’t agree with my mother, though. Because of the way I was, I had a phobia about losing anything that belonged to me, anything that belonged in this house. I thought if I lost those items that I would forevermore lose the memories.

“If you are who I think you are, you never knew you mother. You were born in the veil. You are very special.”

“What do you know about my mother?” I said through gritted teeth, feeling the abandonment that had haunted me for as long as I could remember.

“Nothing…but I’ve heard of you.”

“You’ve heard of a freak that can freeze people?” I said with a sneer.

“That’s a side effect.”

“Of what?” I asked, brushing away the tears that were freezing to my skin.

Skylynn gazed into the distance, then slowly let her eyes meet mine. “Evil is cold, and those that stand in its presence tremble; they cannot think to fight, they cannot see their victory. You can withstand the cold, you can stand in the presence of evil and fight with a clear mind; your soul is forevermore protected by the death you were born in. You are connected to your past, and your visions will unlock a life plan for you. One way or another, your mind will unlock those memories for you…for now, it’s with a touch.”

I swallowed nervously. “Listen, you are the result of a psychotic break. You’re not real. I’m a freak. I can’t do this anymore.”

“I’m just as real as you are,” she assured me, sounding somewhat offended.

“And you just appeared here for no reason. Flung my knife with a thought. Can withstand my touch without trembling. I may be insane, but at least I’m very aware of that fact.”

She smirked. “Sane people are rather boring, if you ask me.” She hesitated then let out a sigh. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a small black scarf and placed it in my hand.

The moment it touched my skin, I felt warmth for the first time; I felt my heart pound in my chest. Two fast beats. Two beats that caused me to feel alive for the first time ever. That thrill ignited the most rapid heartbeat I’ve ever felt in my life. To this day, it is unmatched. I felt the sensation of a first kiss and thousands of other emotions that my youth could not or should not have been able to comprehend. It was a breathless surge of energy. A deep whisper echoed in my mind, ‘I’ve got you, Love. I’m never going to let you go.’

I saw flashes of my home, but the land around it was different. I heard my laugh; I felt strong arms around me as I fell in the snow. I felt bliss, I felt claimed. It was the strongest vision I’d ever seen, one I wanted to hold forever deep inside of me, never let go.

“What do you see?” she asked with a tremble. It was clear to me that she was hoping she was wrong about me, but my instant reaction had proved her theories to be on point.

“This is my home,” I whispered, unable to explain that what I felt was so much more powerful.

She nodded once. “What do you feel?”

A blushing smile came to the corners of my lips. “Warmth.”

Skylynn took in a sharp breath. “Okay,” she said as she carefully tied the scarf around my wrist. She whispered words, and a gleaming blue light surrounded it, then vanished. “This is not mine, and I will need it back one day, but for now it will keep you safe. It will keep the cold at bay, allow you to hide that side effect.”

“Who does it belong to?” I asked with a quake in my voice. I doubted I could stand in their presence. The energy was so powerful that it elevated me to a level that was out of my control. It was breaking me free from the cage I’d put my soul in, and I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to step out of that cage at the ripe old age of fourteen.

“That doesn’t matter right now…never take this off…water will bead off it. No flame will burn it. I trust this with you. I do not trust many.”

“It will hide the ice?” I asked, not caring that I was feeding into the illusion of the moment.

Her blue eyes sparkled. “Nothing is strong enough to suppress any soul’s emotions, but it will help you control them. I’ll help you with the rest. No one will ever hurt you. This is your home. You belong here.”

Over the years, Skylynn never aged a day, but I grew into the young woman I am now. She was always there, popping in and out right when I needed her.

When I was forced to face a psychologist or judge, she was at my side, feeding words into me. Thanks to her, Mrs. Rasure was never able to lock me away, take me from my home.

My only problem was that my best friend, who happened to be my foster sister Cadence, could not see her; no one could. I stopped trying to prove she was real when I was sixteen.

That was when I met Mason, my brown-eyed daredevil of a friend. The thought of him in that dream made me shiver. I could not lose him, any of them.

Cadence was waiting patiently for me to answer her question. When I didn’t, she repeated it. “What else is back besides the night terrors, besides Skylynn?”

I stood up quickly and began to pace. “I told you, she’s not back; she has always been here.”

“Is she here now?” Cadence gasped. That was her way of saying she was going to let me have my little imaginary friend for now.

“No,” I said under my breath, wishing she were.

“Night terrors are brought on by stress and anxiety. We both know Rasure has caused both. Tell me about the dream. I already know the ice is back.”

I felt my skin blush with fevered embarrassment. Cadence was one of four people beyond Skylynn that knew about that curse—that had seen it in action.

“It just showed itself because I was freaked out. I couldn’t have suppressed those emotions if I had all the will in the world.”

“No joke. One second you say, ‘Let’s go to bed early tonight and catch up on sleep,’ and an hour later you’re climbing the walls, gasping for air. Dreams are symbolic. Talk to me about it.”

Cadence was three years deep into a psychology degree and took every chance she got to exercise her relatively recently acquired wealth of knowledge. She had no dreams of unraveling troubled minds. Her minor was in theater; she wanted to be an actress, Broadway, and she was good enough to reach that dream. I envied that. I loved the theater, but I was gracefully clumsy, meaning I may stumble, but I keep walking. Instead of finding my way on stage, I would find a way to direct, and when I couldn’t do that I would capture the moment in still shots, on film.

“I don’t know. I was mad, jealous or something. Wilder was driving; you, Mason, Gavin and Sophia were behind us. A train came—we had to dodge out of the way. The next thing I knew, we were in the lake, I was pulling all of you out…”

As I spoke the dream to life, I realized how it didn’t make any sense, how unlikely it was for the lake behind our home to be frozen over in the first place.

“All right,” Cadence said to herself. “So you had a dream that you and all of your almost’s drowned.”

“Almost lovers? Seriously? You and Sophia were there.”

“Right. And Gavin and me are on the outs. I don’t ever think we were on the ins. Sophia told you she had a thing for Mason, and Wilder is back in town. The dream makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I muttered. I hated how she never let me forget that at one time I tried to be more than friends with two of my best friends. It never took us long to figure out that I could only be friends with them, that I could not or would not commit, and we went back to being best friends. At times, I thought that infuriated Cadence. She thought I should send them away, clean break. That having them around was fueling Rasure’s accusations that I was wild. She didn’t get it, though. I loved those boys. In my mind, they were a handpicked family that I didn’t think I could live without.

“You’re stressed out about how sick our grandmother is, that Rasure is up to something. You just need more rest, less caffeine. Some time alone.”

“Thanks, Mom,” I said through gritted teeth, knowing there was more to that dream. There was a game-changing danger ahead, and I knew it.

I could read that stare she was giving me without even meeting her eyes. If she was on the outs with Gavin, that meant she wanted me to keep my distance, obey some kind of girl code and take her side in a fight that I didn’t care to know about. I didn’t care because it wasn’t any of my business, and no matter what, I would still love them both.

I’d known Gavin since I was fifteen. We tried to be a couple more than a few times, mainly because we were always together, so it seemed to be the next logical step. I loved his mind, his imagination. He was a gifted writer, researcher. I would gaze into his steel blue eyes that were enhanced by his whitewashed hair and try and force myself to show him who I was deep down, but I never found the courage. Something always told me he knew the real me, though, that he knew that I was dealing with who I was the best I could and that forcing me out of my shell would be far too dramatic. Calm. Patience. That was Gavin.

Mason is my wild boy. His wavy brown hair matches his chocolate brown eyes. He has a grin that would make any girl melt.

I met him when I was sixteen. He was wild, free, had no boundaries. He was a daredevil, adrenaline junky, and talented musician. We spent our summers hiking, fishing, canoeing; anything that involved the wild outdoors, where walls didn’t exist. Mason had a way of bringing life to anything or anyone he was around. A breath of fresh air. A hint of freedom where it might not otherwise exist.

At some point, he and Gavin became best friends. I thought it was to torture me at first, but they balance each other. Mason inspires Gavin, and Gavin grounds Mason.

Wilder, he’s an entirely different story. A year and a half ago he surfaced in town. He was only passing through; he claimed he was visiting family, though I never met that family. I don’t know why, but a natural mental shield always seemed to surface when he was around. I was intrigued by him, enticed by him, but I was never real around him. Though he tried, to this day I doubt he has any clue what the real me is all about. Wilder made me forget the grief I was drowning in. The emotion would vanish when he was around. He was nothing more than a good friend and a vice for me. I hated to think that, and I doubt I would ever speak it, at least not to his face. His presence was powerful, seductive, downright alluring. I wanted to swim in those sensations, but…I didn’t want them to come from him. That doesn’t make sense; I realize that. I guess I just knew he wasn’t mine. Simple as that.

Wilder’s an artist. He can see anything once and paint it from memory. The entire left wall of my room is a mural he made for me, a scene that was the backdrop of our first kiss. The thought of that day still makes my stomach flip, and not in a good way. I’d dodged his advances for weeks and just happened to look up right when his lips were inches away. It felt wrong. So wrong. I gently pushed him away and tried to end us then, but he had a way of talking to me, a way to make me face my darkest emotion: grief. He had me convinced I felt guilty about being happy because I knew my family would never feel that way again. Slowly, he pushed us forward. Fearing that he was right about me, I let him draw me in. I’m sure he thought more than once that he was breaking through to me, but the truth was that I imagined someone else’s lips on mine. Someone that brought fire to my soul.

One time he even pulled away from me, pulling his fingers to his lips, as if he felt the burn there. The look he gave me was near anger. “You’re not here right now, are you?” he’d said.

We had the biggest fight ever on that day. He wanted me to tell him who I was seeing behind his back, wanted me to tell him why I was holding back, why I would not let him in. By the time it was over, I told him we were friends and nothing else. I stopped our relationship cold after only three kisses. They were not ordinary embraces. It was abundantly clear that Wilder had far more experience than me. Every movement of his lips was pure seduction—but once again, I wanted to feel that, just not from him.

He left town the next day. A week went by, and he texted me out of nowhere. We talked like nothing had ever happened between us and began the friendship we have now, one that is at a safe distance, so safe that I hadn’t even heard his voice in six months, only texts.

I was a coward. I knew that. But I wasn’t ready to deal with him, or anyone else in that capacity right now. I had far too much family drama to deal with.

Which meant I needed to find someone to distract Wilder for me.

“I think Sophia and Mason would make a good couple. I think he and Jewls are having issues again. Do you know anybody at school that would make sense with Wilder?” I said, sitting down next to Cadence.

“Seriously?” she said, cocking her eyebrow comically.

“What’s with that look?” I asked absentmindedly.

“You just baffle me sometimes. Wilder is not pushing himself on you. He sent one text telling you he was in town. What if he’s got a girl already?”

“Right. I bet he does,” I breathed, remembering his essence. I moved my head from side to side as my stomach flipped in the bad way again. I decided long ago that I was in love with the idea of Wilder, not Wilder himself, and that flippity-floppity feeling always proved my point.

“Why do you feel the need to match up your exes?” Cadence asked as her pale green eyes cascaded over me. She was playing the part of the psychologist again.

“I want them to be happy,” I said with a faint smile.

“To use your own words, you don’t have to be with someone to be happy. Those boys will go off and marry some girl, have a lot of kids—but Indie, they won’t forget you. You let them be themselves, helped them figure out who they are. They know you are special. They also know you are untamable.” She rolled her eyes. “No doubt, you are all going to be best friends for life.”

There was that hint again. If she and Gavin did actually split, I knew she would start dropping hints left and right that it was too hard on her to have him around. I needed to shut that idea down right now.

“I agree. I could never send Gavin out of my life, or Mason for that matter.”

“You had no issues sending Wilder away,” she rebutted.

“Nope.”

She playfully glared at me. She wanted all the juicy details about what went down between me and Wilder, but I never told her anything. And I wasn’t about to start now.

Cadence pointed to my wrist, to the scarf. “That scarf got in your way again, didn’t it? Or was it the North Wing?”

That right there was exactly why I would never tell her anything about me and any guy.

I confided in her years ago about images that I could see and whispers I could hear in my mind. Even though I was blushing with a warm excitement at the time, she managed to jerk me down into the cold reality by saying I had a crush on a ghost, someone that had been long gone and was clearly in love with another girl. She didn’t get it. And later when the images I would see in the North Wing became clearer, I kept that to myself.

I stood up. “Nope. There is no sense in making love work. It either does or it doesn’t. Two beats, or not two beats. It’s one of the few things in life that are black and white.”

“Two beats. That is your thing, not theirs,” she said so quietly that I could swear her tone was laced with jealousy. “You dodged the one guy that could have pulled you out of this grief you are fighting, for fear of what? You can’t possibly enjoy living life looking back. Like I said, you might need time alone. You dreamed of the death of everyone you hold close; that is the end of something, which means the birth of something better is coming.”

Coded conversation. She was pushing me to put distance between myself and Gavin, and I didn’t even care to know why; I was ending this banter.

Truth be told, she had commitment issues, too, but her exes didn’t set up camp in her life. Most of the time, they never spoke to her again. Not sure whose fault that was—I never pried into her life, and for the most part she did the same for me.

I briskly walked past her.

“Where are you going?”

“Darkroom.”

“It’s late.”

“I’m wide awake.”

Our room might as well have been an apartment. It was almost two thousand square feet, and it was supposed to be a study or some such thing, but we transformed it into something of our own. After we lost our family, neither of us could find the courage to sleep in separate rooms in this massive manor that was well over forty thousand square feet. Parts of the manor were over two hundred years old; others were newer. One wing was basically brand new, built ten years back by Mrs. Rasure—on my dime, I’m sure.

My darkroom was behind a bookcase in our room, down a winding stone stairway.

Photography has always held my interest, at least since that lady Megan gave me my birth mom’s camera. My only problem was that photography, if done correctly, captures emotions, and I can’t feel emotions because if I do—I freeze everything. I ruin the images.

Though I’d found several cameras that could withstand my touch, I hated the barrier I had, I hated that I needed help to bring the images to life the old fashioned way. I just wanted to feel something, someone, and not fear destroying it. I think that’s why theater was my second strongest interest. On the stage, you could be anyone for a moment, completely check out and become someone else. And when you became that person, you understood them and inevitably saw life differently from that point on. According to the guys, I was always on stage. The consummate actress.

They’d quickly figured out that the real Indie was deep inside, that when I was around them I became the girl they dreamed about—and when they acted on that, I couldn’t bear the lie anymore; I walked away in silence. They always followed, vowing to be my friend instead. At one time, I feared they were just waiting on the second act, waiting to see if the heroine would finally tell the hero who she was.

I had a few tables in here that held everything I needed to develop film, the old-fashioned way. Strings were crisscrossed throughout the room, holding the images I was working on.

On my desk was the camera that lady Megan had given me on that fateful day. I had never tried developing the film that was in it; I couldn’t bring myself to. I was sure it held images of my birth mother, but I didn’t want her image to cloud the memories of the woman who saved my life, who gave me a home.

What was even more terrifying was that I saw nothing when I touched that camera. That didn’t make sense to me because that was truly the only possession I had that connected me to my bloodline. So, it should be the only item in my life that birthed vivid images.

I knew in my dream that it was the camera I was going back for, that I was willing to die for.

I clenched my back teeth as I thought of the ice I had to swim past in that dream, how I couldn’t get Mason to the surface. I wondered why the one time I would need to create ice, I couldn’t. Why I couldn’t just dream like a normal person.

I reached for the camera, and with my touch it froze over; the entire table did. One lonely, angry tear came to the edge of my eye. I was losing control, right when I needed it.

I heard a familiar whisk of wind and turned to see Skylynn. She looked just as frazzled and confused as I did. I was starting to think she really was a figment of my imagination, a front I hid behind, and that front was crumbling like I was.

“Why are you here?” she asked in a tone that was full of bewilderment.

“This is my darkroom.”

“That is not what I mean. Why are you here? What happened?” she asked breathlessly.

I glanced back at the table. The ice was gone now, but that wasn’t odd. Usually, as soon as my touch left, the ice did, too. My gaze found hers. “I had a night terror—words with Rasure—a lot on my mind.”

“Night terror,” she said, angling her head down but letting her eyes hold my gaze. “Explain,” Skylynn said shortly, which was odd. She was usually so calm with me. I knew she had a fierce, protective temper laced with impatience, but it had never been directed at me.

“There is nothing to explain. I was in a car, a train came, and we dodged out of the way into the icy lake. I had to save my friends. I woke up in the rafters of my room after Cadence turned on a light.”

If Skylynn could have turned paler, she just did. “Listen,” she said, stepping closer. “I’m going to help you deal with this. I promise. But right now I have something else that I have to do.”

“Then why are you here?” I said as I turned away from her. She was in front of me before one beat had passed.

“I need that scarf.”

“Now? You need it now? Are you crazy? I almost froze the entire room in front of Rasure. I basically breathed out fog. She is looking for one thing to hold against me. I can’t give it to you.”

In that beat, the scarf was in her hands. I didn’t even feel her touch my skin or see her move. I did feel something, though: emptiness. I felt hollow, lost.

“I told you I needed that!” I bellowed.

“And I told you that I did, that it was not mine to give. Listen to me. I will be back. I will protect you.”

“Knock knock,” I heard Mason say from the stairwell, beats before he appeared.

When he landed on the bottom step, I was astonished to see his chocolate eyes meet Skylynn’s, then move to me. “Am…I interrupting something?” he asked with a boyish smirk as he looked over Skylynn once more.

Skylynn sighed. “Some dream you had there, Indie,” she breathed. She glanced back at me. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And with that, she vanished.

“Skylynn!” I yelled after her, still feeling the emptiness that surfaced when she took that scarf away. I circled in place, calling her name, demanding that she appear again.

Mason was at my side instantly, pulling me to his chest.

“So that was the elusive Skylynn,” he said as he caressed my short blonde hair.

“You really did see her,” I whispered tearfully, pulling his lean body closer to me, gripping him for dear life.

Chapter Three

Mason didn’t shiver as my touch all but froze him. Instead, he pulled me closer, finally urging me to the oversized floral couch that was along the side wall, the place where I would lie and think for hours.

Besides Cadence, he was the only one I’d let down here, the only one who understood how private this room was to me.

“I don’t understand why you saw her now and never before,” I said to him, catching his gaze as his hand moved across my back.

“Maybe she didn’t want me to see her before. I caught her off guard,” he said, smoothly leaning back and inviting me into his embrace. “I never doubted she was real…” he promised with a murmur.

I reached for the blanket on the arm of the couch and pushed it between us in a vain attempt to shield him from my freezing touch.

His eyes smiled painfully at me. “I like the cold…always have.”

I let my exhausted stare fall to the floor as I leaned away from him. “I thought you and Jewls were on again?” He wasn’t coming on to me. He hadn’t dared to do that since we were sixteen. Nevertheless, I wanted to move the conversation on to him and his life instead of mine. I didn’t want to think about the reasons he never minded the cold.

He pulled me back against him. “On, off…I can’t tell the difference. I wasn’t hitting on you, Indie. I really do like the cold. It reminds me of…well, you know what it reminds me of.”

I felt a blush spread across my pale skin.

“On again, off again Jewls knows you’re here?” I asked, trying to change the subject once again.

“Maybe. She knows Gavin and I were out tonight. Your house is usually what ‘out’ means for Gavin.”

“Apparently, not lately. And don’t play coy with me. Cadence called the two of you and told you about the night terror. You’re supposed to come down here and act like you are giving them room to talk and in the meantime dig inside my head and make sure I’m okay—and if Jewls isn’t working out, Sophia told me she had a thing for you today.”

I heard him breathe a grin, and felt his arm tighten around my waist. I wanted to tell him to hold me tighter, to do something, anything, to fill the void I was feeling now that Skylynn had stripped me of the one thing that had kept me sane all these years.

“Okay, so maybe he called her, and maybe she told him you had a run-in with the queen of evil right after climbing the ceiling like a mad woman. And maybe we were only a mile away and decided to swing by for a nightcap. They still need to talk, and I still like hiding in this darkroom.”

When I didn’t respond, he leaned me back so he could look into my eyes. “Is it Wilder? Is he pushing you?”

“No, he learned the hard way about that last fall.”

“Which led to him vacating town,” he said, raising his brow to emphasize his point. “I was really rooting for the guy.” His grin spread across his deceivingly innocent face, meaning he wasn’t at all rooting for him. He always said Wilder didn’t sit well with him, but he could never tell me why. Mason kept Wilder close anyway, surely trying to figure out what it was about him that he didn’t trust.

“Yeah. He told me you gave him tips—starting with the Halloween mask,” I muttered as I thought of the day that happened.

When I’d broken it off with both Mason and Gavin, stopped it before it became too serious, they both asked me why, and I told them it was because I couldn’t feel the beats, that I wanted to feel two rapid beats in one. I wanted to feel that burn of life on the inside of me, the one I felt when Skylynn gave me my scarf, the one I felt in the North Wing. I told them that I wanted them to feel that for someone.

To be funny, when Wilder started to ask about me, when he was trying to find a way to introduce himself to me for the first time, Gavin and Mason told him to wear a mask, catch me off guard.

Of course, they were hiding outside my window, the one Wilder was perched on outside my bedroom. When the laughter stopped and I found my breath again, they asked me how many beats right as Wilder pulled his mask off. When my gaze met his, I wanted nothing more than to feel those beats. I didn’t, but like a fool I did try.

I was afraid Wilder was back in town to force me to try again. I didn’t want it to get ugly between us. I’d had enough permanent goodbyes in my life, and I had vowed not to add to that list if I could help it. I knew it would only take one word from me to cause Mason and Gavin to ask him to leave again. No doubt, Gavin shared Mason’s lack of trust when it came to Wilder. That hurt me, too. Wilder didn’t deserve to be an outsider, and that is exactly what I made him out to be.

“I heard he met someone. Not sure how solid that is,” Mason said under his breath as his hands danced across my back, reminding me of how awesome his touch had always felt. It was never forceful, and it seemed to hum to the music that was in him, the music he loved to play.

Without warning, my breath turned to fog. He leaned me back once more, pulling my chin up so my eyes were inches from his, which made my heart race.

“What?” I said in a foggy gasp.

“I just wanted to watch them change,” he whispered as his fingertips delicately traced my jawline.

My eyes were like Cadence’s, a pale green, but when my curse surfaced they turned deep blue, the color of ice.

“One day, someone is going to push past this cold, and when they do you will see that it was nothing more than a wall keeping you from being happy.”

“I am happy. I have the pleasure of calling the four most amazing people I have ever met my best friends.”

“And three of them are your exes,” he said with a smirk.

“That makes me a bad person, doesn’t it? Keeping all of you in my life?”

“‘Keeping? Good luck kicking us out.”

He held out my arm so it would catch the dim light of the room. Along my shoulder and a few spots down my arm were bruises.

“What did you do?” he said with a gasp, sitting me up so he could see my other arm.

“I don’t know. Maybe climbing the bookcase,” I muttered.

“You may walk into things or stumble now and again, but you never bruise. Not like this.”

That was an inside joke. Every dare he gave me in the great outdoors, I matched and usually not gracefully. But I would never show a mark on my body. He would joke that that was a good thing, that someone might take him as a violent boyfriend if we came out of the woods with all the bruises I should have had.

“It was a wicked dream. I’ve never fought that hard for anything,” I said under my breath. “God, I’m so selfish. I couldn’t lose you and stay sane.”

“No one is going anywhere,” he promised.

“That is what my mom said the last time I had a night terror. She was wrong. I wish she was right, but she was wrong. I’m terrified. Rasure is going to do something to me—she is going to make sure I’m utterly alone.”

“I’m not scared of her. Neither is Gavin. You’re fine. We’re not going anywhere.”

“How fair is that to you? The both of you? You have your own lives to live. I shouldn’t be so dependent on you.”

He reached for my head and moved it from side to side.

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to see if you bumped your head during that climb.”

I elbowed him. Even though he was teasing me, there was truth behind his words. I’d always told them I was independent, that I didn’t need anyone, and now I was saying the opposite. I was facing one of my many demons and being honest with myself.

He laid me down along the couch and tucked himself against me. His eyes tenderly smiled at me. “We were each other’s first,” he whispered as his hand clenched my side. “I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that in distant, random daydreams, the thought of us being each other’s last has not crossed my mind, but I’m not a fool either. I know what we had was fleeting, and in its wake I found one of the best friends I could ask for. I don’t mind the cold, Indie, and if you ever just need to be held, you call me. You’re not going to lose me. Tell your nightmare to go to hell.”

I held my breath, then said, “I’m the reason you and Jewls are having so many problems.”

He adjusted the blanket, pushing it between us and around me at the same time. “I want a girl who is sure of herself, who knows no boundaries. If Jewls is too insecure to accept our friendship, then it’s just not meant to be.”

“Like you would be okay with her cuddling on a couch with some guy.”

“Some guy, no. A best friend that only sees her that way, yes. It was just a fling, one that I don’t have the energy to keep up with.”

“Then there was Sophia,” I said with a sleepy smile.

“We’ll see. She may be too innocent for my taste.”

“That makes me feel awesome, thanks,” I said as I playfully slapped his shoulder.

He laughed under his breath. “You were always my favorite sinner.”

“I have to be a saint until my birthday,” I murmured as I reached for the guitar pick that was on his necklace and flashes of our first summer came to me. Images of us in our youthful past began to haunt the room.

Mason had a way of daring me to step outside of my boundaries. When we met, even though it had been almost two years since I lost my family, it still felt like yesterday. He was in pain, too. He’d lost half of himself, his twin, and we both blamed ourselves for the losses we experienced. We thought the pain of grief was a justifiable punishment, but we also had no sense of self-preservation. If there was a rule that said we shouldn’t do something or were too young to do something—we broke it. On that list of broken rules was drinking. I think Mason drank to dull the pain, but that wasn’t my reason. I drank for the warmth. Not mine, but his. I wanted to be able to feel his skin against mine, his hands, lips…everything. But without the alcohol, my raging hormones would cause everything I touched, everything around me, to freeze. No scarf could shield the emotions of a young teenage heart.

That wild spree didn’t last long, Gran, my grandmother, was waiting up on me one night. I remember her sitting next to me for hours that night, waiting for me to sober up. She knew the exact second I did; it was when the room froze over and I began to cry with shame.

I could never lie to anyone. It’s an odd flaw I have. I either tell the truth or say nothing at all. So when she asked me why I was choosing that dangerous path, I told her.

As she embraced me, let me cry, very tenderly, with a gentle whisper, she told me that if I could not be myself with someone, then I wasn’t meant to be with them. She said that masking who I was would do nothing but bring me an early grave and more sorrow than I was already fighting to bury.

The very next day, she took me to the North Wing, and my life was never the same again. Usually I have to touch things in order to unlock the memories, but that wing was different. I was able to stand in any room and watch, from a safe distance, the life I was yearning for.

“And on that day, we will have the wildest party that ever existed,” Mason whispered as his hand cupped mine over his necklace. For a second, I would have believed that he could see the images all around us now, my memories that were inside out.

Back then, when he asked me why all of a sudden I was following all the rules, I told him. I told him about the cold. Even showed him. He didn’t care, didn’t judge me or call me a freak. He just said, “I like the cold.” I told him the next time I wanted to drink and let loose would be when I was my own person, sure of myself. We both agreed that would be the day Rasure left my life. We’ve been planning this party for a while. Too long.

“I saw your brother, Ben. He had me worried,” Mason said as he tensed, then squeezed his hand against my back, as if he wanted to assure himself I was real, safe and sound in his arms.

“Why is that?”

Ben was one of the first children the Falcons took in. He was almost twenty years older than me and one of the best lawyers in practice. He was helping me weave through all the roadblocks Rasure was throwing at me. It was his brilliant idea to have everyone in our rather large family write letters on my behalf. Considering that each of them were well known in their fields, leaders of the communities they lived in, it was a good play. The judge would be a fool to block me this time. I’m sure that judge was not only weighing my future, but also his. The Falcon children are peaceful—that is, until you cross one of our own. Then we only know one word. Vengeance.

“He doesn’t trust Rasure any more than you do. He found an amendment that states that if you perish, she will gain all of your inheritance. He said he was hiring security for you.”

“Yeah, he told me the same thing,” I said faintly as I thought of earlier today, when Ben told me if I died Rasure got everything. The sad part is, I wouldn’t put it past her to try something like that. “I told him I just wanted the house and my things, for him to get her out of here, even if he had to pay her.”

“And she said the same, according to him.”

“Why does she want my house?” I said, almost to myself.

Rasure had been trying to destroy it from the inside out for years. Not only did she add that addition on, but she kept adding other things, small and large. I hated that because it placed voids in the rooms. Instead of everything opening up a dream for me, there was nothing. I almost thought she was trying to make me insane, that she knew I depended on the memories I unlocked and witnessed over and over, each time finding something that I’d never seen before.

“I don’t know…was your uncle Jamison always a space cadet?” Mason said with a hint of disdain.

I had to think about that for a second. When I was a kid, he traveled a lot. Even though he had homes of his own, this was the one place he always came to for month-long stays. He used to be the fun uncle, the one that would catch us sneaking ice cream, and instead of telling on us he’d make himself a bowl and tell us stories about all his travels, with added details to keep our suspense. He had a medical degree and used it in third world countries. When he wasn’t off doing that, he was building schools or raising awareness and funds for the less fortunate. Typical Falcon.

That all changed when he came home with Mrs. Rasure. Apparently, they had eloped abroad, and at that point he no longer wanted to help save the world or travel. I knew my mother and grandmother were more than furious with him, but he was family, so they accepted Rasure. He was never the same after marrying her. Cadence and I called him a puppet behind his back. Since my grandmother’s stroke, I hadn’t really seen him. He stays in his wing and only comes out when social occasions demand that he does, when Mrs. Rasure does.

“No, he’s under her spell.”

“Interesting.”

I looked up at him. “What does that mean?”

“Just odd that there is no record of her before she married him, yet she has all of this stuff in the manor that came from her imaginary family.”

“Did you guys take that stuff to the charity auction today?” I asked him.

His grin told me he did, and that he enjoyed every second of it.

I was counteracting Rasure in our silent war. I’d decided to take all of the things out of this house that were not attached to me or my family and donate them to charity. At least, I’d started to do that. Mason and Gavin took the first load of things I’d found. Rasure was going to be furious, and I could not wait to see that in her eyes.

I did have the foresight to check with my brother Ben first; the items were not on her wing, but in the area that was designated to be mine after our last war when I was eighteen. I was in the clear to give them away. I had Mason and Gavin do it so it would come as a bigger surprise. In the past, moving trucks were too easy for her to see coming. I was going to do this nice and slow. What can I say? I learned torture from the best. Rasure herself.

“Pretty old stuff, too,” I muttered, glancing to the stone wall behind us. I’d found a lot of books that made no sense, journals in another language. I decided to hide them, maybe find someone to decode them for me. Until I figured out who, or if I even wanted to, I hid them in the wall in my sacred room.

Mason yawned, then hooked his leg around me. “You’re pinned down, sleep without fear.”

“You’re just looking for an excuse for Jewls to break it off with you,” I said under my breath in a weak protest. “You should go.”

“Too tired to go,” he said as he closed his eyes and gripped me tighter.

I adjusted the blanket to ensure that it was keeping him warm and took in the sensation of the vision that I saw when I embraced this cloth. It was the blanket that rested on the couch in our playroom when we were kids. Each time I touched it, I could see my sisters, my parents, hear the laughter, the absolute bliss of our family.

I dreamed for the first time ever, but I wish I hadn’t. I must have fought that ice, that lake, a million times over. Each time, I never made it back for my camera. I never saw any of us get out of the ice water. It was so real to me. I could smell the freezing water, feel the emotions that no soul should have to.

Then all at once, the dream vibrated, my body vibrated. I woke with a gasp to find Mason’s phone that was clipped to his waist going off.

He stretched and pulled it off its clip so he could see it. “Damn, it’s like, two.”

“In the morning,” I said as I sat up and tried to wake up, to push my dreams away.

“In the afternoon.”

“What? Crap! I have a paper due in, like, now,” I said as I bolted up from the couch, then took the stone steps two at a time, stumbling more than once.

Gavin was sitting on the edge of Cadence’s bed. He had his phone in one hand and held out my laptop with the other. He must have been the one who sent the wake up call.

“Thanks,” I muttered as I took it from him and sat on the floor next to him.

At the speed of light, I opened the files I needed and then attached them to an email to my professor. While it tried to send that file, I fumbled through the calendar, making sure I was not late on anything else. Winter Break was a few weeks away. I’d managed to comp out of most of my midterms. All I really had left to do was take a few pictures for my portfolio, and that was more so for the finals.

This past summer, I’d finished my Bachelor’s in business, a basic degree I chose to appease Rasure. I was more interested in the arts and photography, a skill that Rasure thought was belittling. Nevertheless, I found classes to take and escape from her for a few hours every day. That and the coffee bar were the only time I wasn’t forced to share space with her.

“Email’s jacked up,” I muttered, seeing that my file was still sending. The laptop fell off my knee. I picked it up, only for it to drop again. That is when my dream instantly came to life around me. When everything turned to ice without warning and I felt death clawing its way to me—I lost it.

I shoved the laptop across the floor, balled my fists, squeezed my eyes closed, and thought of a raging fire, warmth. In that beat, Gavin’s strong arms were around me, holding me through the breakdown. I doubted he’d ever seen me create this much ice. I’d always had that scarf to deflect this damnable curse.

When I felt my breath and heart rate slowing down once more, I cautiously opened my eyes. The room was normal again, but I was falling apart.

Gavin whispered, “I won’t let anything hurt you. No fear.”

He pushed a small pillow into my arms, the one with the ‘F’ on it, my quick and easy vice. The visions were immediate. I saw my mom, her smile, and I felt warmth. I hugged the pillow with one arm as I leaned into Gavin and let the tension float away. With utmost care, he traced my brow with his fingertips. I glanced up to see his pensive stare. He managed to smile slightly when our eyes met. “Better?” he asked.

“I’m losing it,” I said, shifting my eyes away.

“Maybe you’re finally gripping it,” he said so quietly that I doubted I heard him right. I glanced up, but he didn’t bother to elaborate his near silent statement.

“Why can’t I dream right?” I asked, knowing I had not been right since I woke from that night terror.

“Who says you do it wrong? Maybe you are the only one who does it right,” Gavin said as his hand slowly moved up and down my arm. He’d always admired the visions I saw because of his vivid imagination, the one that allowed him to slip into untold stories. We both seemed to stare into a seemingly empty room for hours at a time.

“If you have plans to write a horror story, I may have an idea for you,” I teased. Dry humor was one of the many walls I hid behind when I tried to understand who or what I was.

“Leaning more toward the paranormal side of things,” he said, squeezing my arm. “You want to talk about it?”

“No, I want to forget it.” I moved my laptop farther away. “I want to be able to send a freaking email without going spastic.”

“It’s the storm,” Gavin said as he nodded to the window. Even though it was the afternoon, the snow was pelting down and it looked more like dusk.

“Cadence at class?” I asked, wondering where she was. If they were really on the outs, the last thing she needed to see was him consoling me.

“She tried to go. She said no one was there. I guess they cancelled. She’s taking a shower.”

I leaned away from him, knowing that if she saw me near him I would have to live through countless coded conversations that would end up making her mad in the end.

“What are you up to today?” I asked, daring to look into his eyes. There, I found the same concerned, penetrating stare that I always did in his gaze.

“You tell me.”

“Why does Cadence think you guys are on the outs?” I asked as Mason came out from behind the bookcase, looking less than awake.

“She wants to get inside my head, and I don’t want her in there.”

“She analyzes me, too. Don’t take it personally.”

“Not,” he said, squeezing my shoulder. “Just not ready to open all the doors, you know.”

“Right,” I said under my breath, thinking of his sister, the one he lost, the point in his life that he could not get past. Even after I showed her to him, after I told him that the only way I could see her, show her to him would be if she were at peace and looking for one last goodbye, he couldn’t get past it.

I understood why he felt that way. So did Mason, which is why we were allowed in and no one else.

“I need a shower. You guys want to meet at the coffee bar later?”

“If it even opens. If not, we’ll hang out here, if you’re cool with that,” Gavin said, catching Mason’s agreeing nod as he stood.

“Works for me.” Storm or no storm, I was not staying in this house all day, and they knew that.

I knew once I moved through my morning routine, I would be able to shake this night terror. I blushed as I thought of going to the North Wing. When I thought of that voice, those eyes that I knew would be there.

Chapter Four

After a long, steaming shower, I covered the bruises on my body with a bronzing lotion. I inhaled the sweet cocoa scent, craving a beach, warmth at that moment. I layered on my clothes, ripped skintight jeans that had flower patterns patched here and there, a tight tank top, then a larger one that had a sizeable skull centering it. Short combat boots, laces untied, were the perfect complement to my attire. I smirked when I looked in the mirror. I loved how my style did not match my home, or my life. I loved how independent it made me feel. And how bad it ticked off Rasure. Nearly made her apoplectic, in fact.

Still feeling empty without my scarf bracelet, I scurried around, looking for gloves, hoping that would serve as a barrier if I lost control today. I found black ones that had the fingers cut out; they were almost too small, barely reaching my wrist.

I began to pin a few layers of my short blonde hair back here and there, trying to create an on purpose, messy look. I reached for the brush and straightened, then angled my long bangs to the side. With each stroke, I brought memories to life. I’d shared this brush with my sisters when they were alive, and each time I used it visions of them would come to life around me. I would see them getting ready for school, talking about trivial stuff, nothing that really mattered. It always made me happy, gave me peace.

I had a daily routine that I’d been trying to break myself from for months. Each day I found an excuse to go, and today the absence of the scarf was the perfect justification to seek the warmth I knew I’d find.

I looked over myself once more. Smirking, you’d have thought that I wanted to make sure I looked right in case the image I was about to see would acknowledge me. A warm hum centered above my heart and started to spread through my chest as I began to walk toward the North Wing.

The first time my grandmother walked me down here, I felt the same way. You would think by now that it would just be a routine or like watching the same movie a hundred times over, but I knew that each time I came here I would see something different. Those emotions I wanted to feel in real life were going to flood me.

Gran told me that this wing was mine, that it would help me understand who I was, am, and would be. I didn’t understand why she thought that. I assumed she was just trying to get me to grasp the Falcon legacy. The North Wing is the original wing of the manor. It connects to all my favorite rooms as well, the massive three-story library along with the dome room. It was nothing less than regal. Every piece of furniture in that wing was hand-selected and handcrafted by Falcons. It was so priceless that it had been sealed for years before my grandmother gave it to me. Not surprisingly, when Rasure drew up plans to add on to the manor, she planned to tear this wing down and build it again; she claimed it needed to be restored. We went to court. I won. The wing remained untouched—well, except for my slow walks through it each morning.

Sometimes late at night, when I was all alone, I would let my imagination run wild. I would tell myself that the life behind these doors was mine, that the one I was living that was rich with dark grief was just a nightmare that I would wake from one day.

I knew those thoughts were destructive, that because I let myself become addicted to this image in the North Wing that I had shut myself off from feeling anything like it in my present life. I knew that if I never felt the way I did when I was here that I would have forced myself to try harder in the relationships I’d let fall apart. The thing is, though, you have to willingly choose to get over an addiction. It will not go away on its own, and I chose to embrace this one. I chose to watch this life instead of live mine.

My hands trembled slightly as I reached to open the door that led to the wing. My heartbeat picked up as the air carrying the aroma of warm spices washed over my face.

Soft piano music was heard instantly. Low laughter reached my ears and warmed my soul.

At sixteen, when I first came here I only heard memories in this wing; small, sweet, innocent words. As the years moved forward, as I became a young woman, I began to see the image behind that voice I always heard when I was afraid and needed something to hide behind.

His low laugh stopped me in my tracks. I felt a burning sensation spread through my body. I glanced to the open doorway to my left. He was there. All six-four of him. He was breathtaking. Broad shoulders and the lean body of a warrior. His eyes were a deep gray, and his dark auburn hair was brushed off of his face, yet a few strands reached to his high cheekbones. He was smiling, a warm, alluring smile that he only gave to…her.

For the longest time, I hated ‘her.’ I was jealous that one of my ancestors had something that I could never have: warmth. But then one day, I saw her face. I saw my face. I saw an image of me in the arms of a boy that I had fallen in love with at a distance.

As you can imagine, this entire scenario baffled me. My image was right in front of me. Standing within a memory that reflected the original Falcons, yet I was adopted. I stopped trying to analyze how impossible it was that the girl in his arms was indeed me, that my soul was in that vessel, that my soul had loved him once before. I stopped because it didn’t matter—I was in love with him now. And maybe, just maybe, I was meant to be born here. Maybe I had finally found my way home.

I never dared tell a soul about what I saw in this wing, not even Skylynn. I didn’t want anyone to rationalize it, to tell me I was creating this, that I was only seeing what I wanted to see. I needed this to be real. Even if it was two hundred years ago, I needed to know that at one time I was happy.

The image of me reached to pull him closer. “Sebastian,” she breathed as his lips met her neck. He kissed her skin slowly as they moved against each other to the sound of music playing in the distance. “They are waiting on you,” she said as she closed her eyes.

“You’re only sending me away so you have an excuse to play in the snow,” he said as he pulled away from her and traced his fingers across her jawline.

“It’s a beautiful night,” she said, looking innocently up at him. He burst into laughter, telling her he surely wasn’t buying that look. He picked her up and whirled her in the air before lifting her to his lips. Slowly, he let her down as their gazes locked. “Sometimes I think I built this manor for kicks and giggles, for the girl I love would rather spend her time out in the cold.”

She smiled. “It’s peaceful.”

“It’s peaceful because you are so cold that you cannot feel anything else,” he said, raising his brow and tilting his head slightly.

“When you are that cold, your mind drifts, like a waking dream, and in those dreams I see you, and you are warmer than any manor you could have built me.”

He grinned as if he had never heard such a declaration of devotion before. “Let me finish this meeting, and we’ll go together.” She stood on her tiptoes and let her lips meet his neck as he let out a moan and pulled her closer. “How about you just promise to keep me warm once the night has met its end?”

“Always your fire,” he said as his eyes lowered to meet hers and he kissed her lips tenderly.

Other images ran into the room, all young children circling them and calling out, “Genevieve!”

Yep, you heard right; apparently, in this past life I had the same name. That fact alone dared me to ask my grandmother about the ancestors in the line of Falcons. I never found a way to come out and ask her if she had heard of a Sebastian, if I was named after the originals. Every time I thought it was the right moment to bring it up, the conversation would change course so drastically that bringing up ancestors or if I were named after someone would have been ridiculous.

I decided that I didn’t need my grandmother to tell me this couple did exist. I knew they did. The certainty saturated my bones, which allowed me to grasp the belief that in a past life I was this girl, that boy was mine.

It took days of watching these images to discover those were not their children. Some of them didn’t even live here; they just adored who I was, who Sebastian was. They pulled my image from the room, laughing.

Sebastian only held his smile until the image of me was out of sight, then his expression turned grim. Worry consumed his eyes. I stood at attention. I never saw the same scene in this wing, so that wasn’t surprising; his mood was.

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small box, then opened it and placed it on her pillow. It was a pearl bracelet. I found myself smiling with him as he glanced at it. He had given the same bracelet to me at least three times. Apparently, I kept managing to lose it in the manor or on the grounds.

He turned with a sigh and left their room. I followed him down the wide hallway, watching as empty vases began to mock the images of flowers that must have been in place when this happened the first time.

He walked to his study in this wing; it was just outside the library I adored.

The fire burning in the stone fireplace was bright enough to reach the vaulted ceiling, but small lamps remained on anyway.

There was an image leaning over the table, one that I almost thought of as a friend. He was Sebastian’s brother, Guardian. In my walks in this wing, I had seen more laughter than stifle between those two, but lately I could tell their relationship was strained, that Sebastian was worried about him.

See, to me this was like stepping into a movie. The memories I unlocked here always move forward, sometimes more rapidly than I would want them to. I had been feeling a climax or worse, an ending, coming to these memories for a while now which is why I had been trying to break my habit of lurking here every morning. I thought it would be easier if I ended it. That way, I could only be mad at myself, not at the fact that the life I’d been witnessing for years was officially lost in the past.

My heart started to hammer as this scene unfolded. I felt the dread creep over my skin. I was dreading what would be decided at this meeting, and I had no idea why.

Three other men were in here as well. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I could tell by their voices that at least two of them were young like Sebastian and Guardian; one of them sounded older. If I wanted to see them, I just needed to focus on them, but I didn’t want to stop gazing at Sebastian; he was worrying me.

“It’s been declared,” one of the voices said. “They are closing The Fall.”

I’ve yet to figure out what The Fall was. I heard both my image and Sebastian speak of it often. I knew for sure it was a passageway, that Guardian had vanished within it and then returned. Everything else they said about it was way over my head. I couldn’t figure out what they meant when they said ‘dark reality,’ ‘our world,’ ‘The Selected,’ or any of the other otherworldly references made. I suppose I didn’t want to figure it out because I didn’t want to accidentally discover that these images I lived for were fiction.

“That’s ludicrous,” Sebastian bit out. His warm, gray eyes filled with anger.

“Of course it is, but we very well cannot tell them why,” the older voice said.

Sebastian’s eyes met Guardian’s. “Have you even suggested to Aliyanna that speaking to the council may stop this?”

I had never focused on that girl’s image they were speaking of either. She had only surfaced recently. I knew Guardian was madly in love with her, that whenever he returned from The Fall she wasn’t with him, and it was clear he never intended for that to happen. He’d screamed at Sebastian, saying things like, “I wasn’t supposed to die. I have to go back. I can’t breathe without her.” Those words confused me. You would have thought the passage led to some other virtual reality, a game of sorts where he lost his turn and wanted to hit the reset button, get a do-over. Apparently, Aliyanna had appeared here, and the fight over whether or not Guardian should return to look for her took a back seat until this moment, it seems.

“She is not speaking to anyone,” Guardian stated evenly as his blue eyes averted from Sebastian’s stare.

“She can bear witness that the closing of The Fall is dangerous, that we need to send help and not turn our backs,” Sebastian argued.

“Bear witness?” Guardian mocked. “They will tuck her away, hide what she is from this world. They want nothing to do with darkness. They do not want to hear what we witnessed on that side. Life there is barbaric, cruel.”

“And what are you doing, brother? Are you not tucking her away?” Sebastian pushed.

“I’m protecting her!” Guardian yelled as an image moved between the brothers, urging them apart.

I was completely captivated. Though I’d walked this wing more times than I could count, seen more visions than I could explain, I had never witnessed this strife. I came here today to escape the stress of my life, and I’d somehow managed to put myself on edge.

This entire conversation was causing my insides to tighten up, making me feel nauseous. I kept glancing over my shoulder, hoping my image would walk in and calm this room down, bring the bliss back to Sebastian, but that didn’t happen.

“We have to come up with a plan. It cannot all be dark. We have to show the council light is still present there. Can you show me light?” the older voice said.

Guardian stood up, glanced at the other images that I could not make out, and nodded his head. All at once, a necklace that was lying on the table began to vibrate. It wasn’t apparent to me whose it was, but I was almost sure it didn’t belong to the image of Genevieve.

I gasped as a ball of fire emerged from the fireplace and met the necklace as some unseen force pulled it up.

This was too unreal.

The fire and necklace vanished, and a sphere of light formed. What looked like a waterfall divided the circle. One side was bright, the other dim, and sphere were present on each side. It almost looked like a comparison of two worlds side by side.

Guardian pointed to the darkest point on the dim side. “We were here at first, we moved away from there,” he said as his fingers traced white lines that led to less dark areas. “It’s not all dark, but it will be if I do not return. Evil is breeding there. People are losing hope. If we turn our backs on them, it will only be a matter of time before that evil finds the power to breach The Fall and our way of life will forevermore be changed.”

“Which is why they are insistent that they want to close The Fall,” the older man countered.

“If they close The Fall, they are going to close me in as well,” Guardian said in a matter-of-fact tone.

“You’re not returning. I already spoke to The Selected. They are aware of the damage you have seen,” Sebastian said as he stared at the sphere before him and his eyes filled with sadness.

“And what did they say about it?” the older voice asked.

“It’s been taken under consideration.”

“Meaning nothing,” Guardian said, as if he knew that it was pointless to try and reason with anyone.

“It means that they agree that engaging with darkness is not the right thing to do,” Sebastian countered.

“But ignoring it is?” Guardian shook his head, trying to calm himself down. “Look, I get it. I understand that you think that taking in the damaged souls and building them up before sending them back is going to heal that reality. It makes sense. But that is what you feel called to do, not me. I feel called to the front lines. I know the best way to end this is for me to walk right up to the bastard that is causing all this trouble and quickly ensure that he is returned to his Creator.”

“I cannot imagine what you endured there, the sacrifices you must have made. I respect that, brother. I do. And you know I will not think twice before standing at your side if you were truly threatened. But you’re not. You were born here. You’re an original. For some reason, you have developed a craving for senseless trouble.”

“It’s not senseless. I’m the way I am for a reason. I’m meant to stop this at its core, before it can spread and threaten everything.”

“At what cost? Your life?” Sebastian asked Guardian.

“I’ve died too many times to be afraid of death.”

“In that reality, not ours. Why don’t you try reaching at least one eternity of life on this side before you decide to throw your existence away?”

“I’m a Falcon. My blood demands that I bring change, balance,” Guardian spat back.

“Compromise,” a younger voice said.

“Indeed,” the older voice said. “You two have never disagreed on anything beyond this. We cannot move forward until the two of you are in agreement. Sebastian, you do not want Guardian or Aliyanna to return to the dark reality, and Guardian, you do not want to take Aliyanna to the council to bear witness. We all know that allowing Guardian to pass through The Fall with the threat of it being closed is not something we can easily accept.”

They both nodded.

“I propose that the two of you go to the council. State your case. If that fails, then we will partner with The Selected to find the safest course for Guardian to do as he feels pulled to do.”

“Father,” Sebastian stated.

“It’s the only course of reason now,” the older voice said, pointing at Guardian. “He respects you enough to let you exhaust every option, for you to do whatever you feel is necessary to keep him safe, but if it truly is his fate to be there, circumstance will demand that he return no matter what we may or may not do.” The older man paused. “The council is stating that the oracles have relayed that The Fall must close, that only the chosen can pass through. You have to convince them that you are the chosen, that your soul has stated as much. Then we will have no fear for Guardian and Aliyanna—for if they fail, they will send an army to carry them home.”

“You expect me to leave Genevieve here alone, to care for this home and all those who have sought refuge here? Without protection?”

I was so sick that I leaned forward on my knees. I kept shaking my head from side to side, knowing I did not want this to happen, that I feared this decision for reasons I could not understand.

“We’ll protect her. We’ll never leave her side,” the younger voice said.

Sebastian stared forward at the floating sphere before him. “And what are we to do if they do not listen?”

“The two of you are gifted speakers. Our name has long been respected. I have no doubt that you will prevail. If you do not, then we drop our alliances and aid The Selected. Work with them to find peace. I would believe their seers far easier than the council’s.”

“Why must we do this now?” Sebastian said with a clenched jaw.

Guardian looked away. “It feels wrong to stand here, brother. Aliyanna and I both feel that way. We started something over there, and I need to get back to it. Every minute I stand here equates to years over there. If we wait any longer, everything I began to repair will be in ruins. You don’t have to speak to anyone. I’m prepared to tell you goodbye. That alone should tell you how serious I am when I state I have to go back, with or without permission from this family, that council, The Selected, or God Himself.”

Sebastian stared in the direction of the images I could not see. “You don’t leave her side. Ever.”

Silence engulfed the room.

Sebastian said, “Dawn,” then turned to leave.

This is the end I had been dreading. I knew. I just knew. They would never return.

This must be what my night terror was forecasting: not the death of the life I did have, but the death of the life I wanted to live again.

The images vanished around me, and I stood there in cold silence, trying to understand even the smallest part of what I’d overheard. Even though it was the first time I’d overheard something like that here, it all sounded so familiar somehow.

I turned to leave the study, and at a slow stroll I made my way down the hall to the bedroom.

I heard Sebastian and Genevieve’s voices on the other side of the door, her comforting him, telling him that she would be fine. He must have heard the doubt in her voice because right then I heard him say, “Apart or together, I am always going to be right here, Love.”

As I listened to those words through the closed door, I felt a burning flame in my chest.

I opened the door, fearing I would never see his image again. I saw him with his hand on my image’s chest. “I’ve got you, Love. I’m never going to let you go,” he whispered as he pulled her lips to his.

I held my breath and closed my eyes, grieving for this moment. When I opened them again, I saw him holding my image in a passionate embrace, the pearl bracelet on her wrist as she wove her fingers through his dark auburn hair.

The grief was too much. I knew—I just knew I could not stay here and watch the next scene, the one where he would walk away from me.

All at once, the memory before me vanished and I heard a deep howl of wind coming from the direction of the dome room. Everything started to vibrate, then purple flames encased the walls.

This was too real.

I ran from that wing. I ran as fast as I could, wanting to forget everything I had heard and seen that day. The second I was off that wing, silence reigned. With my chest heaving, I turned to look over my shoulder, not seeing anything beyond a wing that no longer had life within it, past or future.

A heavy weight consumed me. I felt dreadfully alone for no reason at all. It was worse than the way I felt when I lost my family, and that says a lot. It also says that I only felt this bad because I was holding on to the past instead of living the life I was in. I needed to change that. I really did. I had to learn to dare to feel the way those memories told me I was capable of feeling. I had to figure out how to help others get past my icy shield.

I found myself racing toward Gran’s room. That was the name I’d always called my grandmother, simply because when I was little the formal word was too hard. It stuck, and now all seventy-seven of us call her that.

Since her stroke, she had been bedridden. Speech and feeding herself were acts she could no longer accomplish on her own. Of course, no expense was spared when it came to healthcare and doctors. I knew she was miserable—locked in a prison that she desperately wanted to escape. Lately, she had been slipping away, sleeping longer than usual, not eating nearly enough. Rasure had me blocked from the room for the last three days. My brother Ben came over yesterday and forced her legally to let me see Gran. By the time he told me the good news, it was late at night and I knew she was asleep.

I knew just seeing her would calm me down. A little voice in my mind told me to tell her what I’d always seen in the North Wing, how I was sure it was over. I knew she would not be able to respond, but I just needed someone to listen to me right now.

I thought it was odd that the medical desk full of all her needs was missing from outside her room. Even odder that the around-the-clock nurses were nowhere to be seen.

I knocked gently on the door before opening it. I gasped. Her bed was made, and she wasn’t in it.

Rage coursed through me. My hand that was on the door instantly froze it, then the ice spread across the walls. What the hell had she done with her? Just as I was about to storm out of the room, I heard, “Genevieve, sweetheart, come in.”

I pushed the door open wider and reached for the light to turn it on. Gran was in the center of her massive room, dressed, standing, looking years, if not decades younger.

“What—wh—you’re better,” I said with a broken gasp as the room froze even more. I was terrified she would slip on the ice and hurt herself.

I wasn’t used to being this out of control, having my curse this visible. What was even more terrifying was that Gran didn’t seem the least bit surprised by how out of control I’d become.

She smiled tenderly and nodded once as a gasp and a tear escaped me.

I walked slowly to her side, trying to push my emotions down so I could touch her. “How?”

Her wise eyes held my gaze as she reached for my arm. I flinched, still terrified for her, but either she didn’t notice or she didn’t care how cold I was. Her hand squeezed my shoulder with more strength than I’d ever known her to have. “I woke up, Genevieve.”

“Just like that? After almost four years?”

“Just like that,” she repeated in the sweetest voice I’d ever heard.

“I need to get your doctor, call everyone. They are going to be so excited. You have no idea how afraid I was that I…that I would have to say goodbye.”

“Sit, I don’t need a doctor,” she said, edging me to the bench at the end of her bed.

“I need to call everyone,” I protested, refusing to sit down like this was just another ordinary day, like this was not the most insane turn of events that I’d ever witnessed.

“They know.”

“And no one bothered to tell me?” I said as my instant anger seemed to intensify the ice that was forming. With a deep breath, I managed to make it go away.

“You need your rest, though. I understand you’ve had a troubled night.”

“She really is spying on me, isn’t she?” I muttered, knowing that Cadence or the guys hadn’t told Gran about my night terror. I would have been the first person they would have told that Gran was awake if they’d seen her.

“What is that look in your eyes, Genevieve? Why are you so distressed?”

I tried to swallow the emotions. I really did. But tears spilled down my face as I looked away. “I can’t let you wake up, only to figure out that I long ago lost my mind.”

“Why on Earth would you think such things?”

I shook my head as I harshly wiped away the tears on my cheek. “I’m in love with a past that I can’t understand how I’m linked to, and that love affair has caused me to keep everyone at arm’s length. I’m stressed, to the point that the night terrors are back, to the point where my own mind is shutting down the images I’ve come to rely on.”

“The North Wing,” she said tenderly.

I looked up at her waiting eyes to see her smiling slightly.

“Why did you tell me that wing was mine?”

“Was I wrong?” she asked, raising her brow as a half-smile emerged on her aged lips.

“It’s not of this world. I mean, most of it is, but sometimes I hear things there that make no sense, that turn reality into fantasy.”

“Nothing in that wing is fantasy. That is the beginning, Genevieve. Your beginning.”

I knew she meant that I had been adopted by the Falcons, that I was now and forevermore a Falcon, but she just didn’t understand what I was talking about.

“I’ve seen myself. I’ve…I’ve watched a life there for years now.”

“And why are you troubled by that?”

I shook my head. “Because I think it’s over now.”

She reached her arm around me. “Child, it’s not over, for your soul still thrives. It’s time to move forward now. Make a new beginning.”

“I wish I could,” I said under my breath as Wilder’s image slid through my mind. I still couldn’t do it. I still couldn’t imagine giving us another chance. “I’ve tried letting people in, but I freeze. Literally.”

“Then you have not found your fire. It will come.”

I blushed as Sebastian saturated my thoughts, as he often did each day after I left that wing.

“I wish I had your faith.” I glanced over at her. “Your will to fight.”

She laughed as if I had said something ironic. “You are fighting right now. And you need to keep fighting. Never doubt your emotions, your gut instinct. Follow your soul, and you will never go wrong.”

I nodded as I looked away. “I’ve been trying to see you for days. Rasure wouldn’t let me. Ben had to take legal action. Can you believe that?”

“You need to get that woman out of our home,” Gran said boldly to me, which was shocking; she had always had her opinions but thought it rude to display them openly.

“Working on it,” I said so quietly that I barely heard myself. I just couldn’t believe this, that she was okay, that she looked so good, the way I always remembered her to be.

“Your uncle is trapped by her, and if you are not careful you will be, too.”

“What do you mean ‘trapped’? He’s sick with grief, not trapped but that will be over now that he knows you’re okay.”

Gran moved her head from side to side slowly. “He was trapped long ago. Genevieve, I need you to fight her, get her out of our home, set my son free so I can have peace, set them all free.”

‘All?’ What did she mean by that? “Let me go get him. I’ll call Ben, too, see what we can do to speed things up.”

“I believe you have won your battle with the law, but she is not going to leave so easily,” Gran said, gripping my arm, telling me to listen to her.

“Ben told you I won? Why didn’t he tell me?”

“He didn’t have the chance.”

“OK, well, then I’ll order her out, get a court order or something.”

Gran smiled, but it was a painful smile. “Genevieve, dear, what lesson did your parents strive to teach all of you?”

The agony in my heart caused my eyes to glass over and the ice around us to thicken. “To face our demons.”

“Why have you not done that?”

I looked away, not wanting to answer the real question she was asking me. “I’ve been trying to face her. Ben has been handling the case because he knows what he’s doing.”

“Rasure is not your demon; she is the one you see, the one you focus all your energy on, and you do that so you will not have to discover who you are.”

She wanted to talk about the ice, why I was the way I was, but I wasn’t ready to go down that road just yet. I fought to forget or overcome this curse every minute of every day, the last thing I wanted to do was understand what I did to deserve this.

“Which demon shall I face first, then? The ice, the lack of normal dreams, the visions, my addiction to the memories in the North Wing—which one? What order?” I asked desperately. I wasn’t asking her to tell me what to do, I was trying to tell her that by facing Rasure I was facing the one thing I could change, the one thing I had the power to make go away.

“Your past does not emphatically state who you are, but it is a part of you, it is something you can choose to embrace or break away from. This old lady has a feeling that you will not want to so easily discard the past that is woven into your soul.”

“If the past I saw in the North Wing is truly mine, then I know life cannot get better. That is a fantasy, and in real life I’m battling Rasure, this odd curse, and my fear of commitment.”

She laughed. “You fear no such thing.”

God, you’d have thought this conversation was happening ten years ago, when she was vibrant, full of life—not today, not right after she left death’s door.

My night terror raced through my mind as I stared into her eyes. “The camera,” I said, taking in a deep breath. “In my dream, I went back for that camera. I nearly died trying to reach it. Are you telling me to develop that film, understand that past?”

She didn’t bother to tell me yes or no. She had figured me out years ago. If you wanted me to do something, really wanted me to, then you had to make it seem like it was my idea.

“I think I could have ruined that film years ago. The first time I touched it, I froze it. Over the years, I’ve bound to have washed it out. I would rather think there are images there than know that there aren’t.” That wasn’t completely a lie.

“I see,” was all she said.

“Why do I feel like you know something that you are not saying? Why does this feel like a dream or something? I was watching you die days ago.”

Gran gave me one more painful smile. “I took you to that North Wing long ago so you would understand your foundation, so it would give you the courage to face what this life would put before you. You are a Falcon, Genevieve. You always have been, and you always will be.”

She was confusing me. Everyone was made to feel like they were of lineage, but she was stating it as if it were fact. She was answering the questions I never dared to ask her: who I was named after, if I looked like the original Genevieve, if she thought it were possible that I was her, then and now. And she answered yes to each of them.

“I have no doubt I was born on these grounds or that I have seen my image in the memories this manor has, but I have never understood where I came from. How I got here. What fate is leading me to.”

“Fate brought you home,” she said as her eyes raced across mine. “You couldn’t know this, and I hated that I could not tell you for so many years, but your birth mother did say something before she died, just before your adopted mother brought you back to life.”

“Back to life? I know I would have died if Mom didn’t show up when she did, that I may have even been meant to die. What do you mean ‘back to life’?”

“You weren’t breathing,” Gran said as her eyes glistened with tears. “Your mother had to cut the cord, clear your passageway and rub warmth into you. Precious seconds, maybe even minutes passed, but you finally cried.”

“What did my birth mom say?” I asked, trying not to cry, knowing it would cause her tears to flow. She never really got over losing my parents in that boating accident. I think a part of her died that day, too.

“She said that you were one of seven, that you’re hidden by a veil.” She smiled widely. “I knew then that you were home. You had found your way home.”

I furrowed my brow at her, wondering how healed she actually was. She wasn’t making sense and I had to wonder if maybe the stroke had damaged her beyond the grasp of any overnight miracle.

“I have real, live brothers or sisters? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” Gran said as she caught a tear that was trying to escape her eyes.

“Then what am I one of seven of?”

Her wise eyes rapidly moved across my fearful expression. “When your birth mother said that, she was gazing at the constellation of Taurus, to the Pleiades.”

“Stars. I’m…I’m lost here, Gran.”

“I know you are, but you will find your way. I believe you are one of seven very special people that will move this universe, that will bring more change than your parents could have by adopting lost souls.”

“Gran, maybe you need to lay down. Maybe you shouldn’t be moving around this much, this soon.”

She looked down and smiled tenderly. “I’m well. I’m at peace. I finally told you what that stroke would not allow me to. Genevieve, this is your home. Defend it, hold on to the fire in your chest, and trust that it will save you from this grief, trust that you are a part of an army that will rise to bring balance in this dark world.”

My eyes grew wide as she said ‘dark world.’ It was a casual statement, but it reminded me of the conversation I’d so recently heard in the North Wing.

My head started to spin. I really did feel like I was in a dream.

A knock at the door halted me from telling her that I was in love with the boy lost in my past, of asking her how she knew that before she ever led me there so long ago.

Chapter Five

Standing on the threshold was a man I’d never seen before. He was younger and looked a lot like the images I’d seen of my grandfather, the one and only love Gran ever had.

“I have to go now,” Gran said as she squeezed my arm once more.

“Where are you going? The weather is horrible, you need your rest.”

“There are a lot of things I want to see once again, a fresh snow is one of them.”

“Who is that?” I whispered, nodding to the door.

“A welcome sight.” She cupped her hand on my cheek. “I’ll see you soon, dear, but make sure it’s not too soon. Stay safe.” She kissed my cheek, then walked past me at a speed that I’d never seen her use.

I told myself to turn around, to follow her, at least to go along with her, but I couldn’t move. Her touch had ignited visions all around me, visions of my mother telling Gran about how she found me in the snow, visions of her and my mother mulling over endless legends that surrounded those stars my birth mother pointed out. They even had mythologists from all over the world flown here to teach them about the beliefs and lore, always finding conflicting information. One man told my parents very bluntly that I was the only one that would ever know what my birth mother meant, that I would feel it in my soul.

All I felt in my soul was coldness, the cold that I was born into, the cold that was my curse. With that thought, the room I was standing in felt empty, vacant, lifeless.

Finally, I snapped out of the spell I was under and turned, but Gran was long gone. I rushed to the hallway, looking in both directions, not seeing her or her companion anywhere in sight.

I went back to my room to find my phone so I could call Ben. I was mad that he didn’t tell me Gran was better, that supposedly I’d won the case against Mrs. Rasure, that my inheritance was free and clear mine—that I could kick Rasure out.

It took me three tries to get the call out because the phone kept freezing in my hand. Skylynn better pop in soon. I couldn’t control this much longer. All I got was Ben’s voicemail, and it said for personal reasons he was taking time off and directed his calls to his partner. My message was short and sweet. “Um, personal? What’s more personal than family? I’m a bit ticked at you. Why didn’t you tell me Gran was okay? Where are we with the case?” The call ended then because the phone had turned into a block of ice. I grunted in frustration. I never realized how dependent I was on that scarf, how much it shielded this curse.

Cadence walked in our room at that moment, holding a steaming cup of coffee. “Looks like you need this more than I do.”

“Thanks for noticing,” I muttered, balling my fist. “Did you know Gran was all better?” I asked, looking up at her.

She looked at me like I was insane. “Did you hit your head when you climbed the walls last night?”

“Looks like you did. What did you do to your head?” I asked, noticing the gash on the side of her forehead. It caused a panic to rush through me, and the room turned to ice for an instant; that was the same place I saw her bleeding from in my dream.

“I slid on the ice, hit it on the side of the car door when I was getting out.”

“Looks like you need stitches,” I said with wide eyes as I moved closer to her.

“No, it’s not deep. I have that invisible Band-Aid stuff on it, but you’re starting to make me self-conscious,” she said, taking down her ponytail.

I frowned as I noticed how easily the wound was covered when she did that.

“What about Gran? Are you serious?”

“Serious. I just saw her. She’s never looked better. The nurses are even gone.”

“You’re joking,” she said as she turned to go and see for herself.

“She left, went out with an old friend,” I said to stop her.

“Indie,” she said before she turned to look at me. “You’re seriously freaking me out.”

“Fine, go look for yourself,” I said as I sucked in a deep breath and stood to go to my darkroom.

“Hiding in the dungeon again? Maybe you should head to the North Wing. You’re always in a better mood when you leave there.”

I was so not going there with her.

“Gran told me to develop the film.”

“The film.”

“Yup.”

“Are you going to?”

I smirked. “It felt so good to hear her voice again. This was basically her only wish. Who am I to deny it?”

“Do you want me to call the bar and tell them we can’t come in, that is, if they opened today? This storm is wicked.”

“No, I want to get out. This won’t take long.”

“Give me a second to check on Gran. I’ll be your hands.”

I was close to telling her no, that I’d call Mason over to help, but I didn’t feel like fighting with her about it.

I’d been staring at this camera for almost fifteen minutes before Cadence showed up. I’d already had everything else ready to go. I just needed her hands.

“Told you so,” I said absentmindedly as she came to my side.

“You don’t think this is weird?” she asked with eyes wide.

“Developing my dead mother’s film? Yes, that is weird.”

“Not that. Ben told me yesterday that he was going to start to make the calls, tell everyone to say their goodbyes, and today she is out of her bed, out on a date or something?”

“What is it with Ben lately? He didn’t tell me that either,” I seethed.

“Either? What else did he not tell you?”

“That I’d won against Rasure.”

“You won?” Cadence said with absolute disbelief.

“I’ll believe it when I hear it myself. That is what Gran said.” I peered to the side at her. “She also told me to get that woman out of our house.”

“I bet she did. Gavin told me last night that the doctor that oversaw Gran after her stroke was put in jail last week, for malpractice.”

“How did he know that?”

“Read it online. I guess you were right to have Ben fire him. Gavin thought you’d seen it online or something and that was why you were all frazzled. Apparently, that doctor was paid more than a few times to end a life and make it look natural.”

“The doctor Rasure insisted should look over Gran? Are you telling me she paid someone to kill Gran?” I fumed as the room around us turned to ice.

“I’d tell you to chill out, but that statement is apparently overrated. It doesn’t matter anyway. Gran survived her, and we will, too.”

With a soothing sigh, I managed to make the ice vanish once again.

“There are more facets to that woman than just a gold-digger. I can feel it.”

“She’ll get hers. One way or another.”

I nodded for her to go to the camera. Slowly, step-by-step I told her what to do, what chemicals to pour, and what temperature the water needed to be, and she carefully listened to every direction I gave. Before long, we were watching images come to life before us.

“Nothing…” Cadence said with a sigh as we stared at the dripping film.

“Just wait,” I said as the first one began to come to life. At first I thought it was me, but that was impossible. The figure looked like I did today, a young blonde with a scarf tied around her head. I assumed it was her, my birth mother.

“Whoa,” Cadence whispered. “You could be twins.”

I understood her awe. She had no idea what her birth mom looked like. She was raised by a reckless aunt that authorities had to rescue her from at age seven, then she bounced around in the system until she was thirteen, when our parents found her. Cadence never got her closure. I don’t really think she wanted it in the first place. She had a lot of buried hate for her birth family that no one would blame her for not facing.

The next three images were whitewashed, only shadows across them.

The fourth image made my skin boil and the room freeze again. Cadence gripped my arm, telling me to get a grip. She didn’t want me to damage the last stages of development.

The image showed Rasure, standing with all of her dominance. It was an image of an image, meaning someone took a picture of an old newspaper, a newspaper that was dated May 12, 1901. She was standing with a man that had obvious wealth, about to board a ship.

“That has to be an ancestor or something, right?” Cadence said with a gasp.

“Then they must all look alike,” I teemed as the next image came to life. It was of a painting dated with the year 1810. Rasure was there again, with another man, shrouded with wealth.

“I don’t know what I’m more freaked out about, the fact that Rasure looks just like her ancestors or the fact that your birth mom knew that.”

A beat later, I came to my senses, went to my desk, and wrote down everything I could about those images, those articles that were photographed. I knew Gavin could uncover what they meant, the story behind them. Research was his passion. I didn’t want to wait for the film to finish developing before he started.

At a second glance, I noticed the shadows on the three blank images, when pinned across the strings side by side, looked like a key; a really old key.

I turned back for the camera and started to feel around in the place behind where the film had rested for countless years. I did feel something, but my insane emotions were causing the camera to freeze. In frustration, I grunted and handed it to Cadence.

“There’s a key in there. It’s taped down or something.”

Questioning my sanity, and still unraveled by what we’d seen, she took the camera and gently dug around. She pulled a piece of tape out, then a skeleton key.

“The mystery deepens,” she mumbled, looking closely at it. “It says ‘Falcon M’ on it.”

“‘Falcon M?’” I repeated as I took it from her. How or why would my birth mother have this?

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I think your mom had every intention of having the Falcons raise you. The question is, was she for or against Rasure, and how did she know Rasure would surface years later?”

I let out a sigh, almost wishing I hadn’t listened to Gran and opened this Pandora’s Box. “It doesn’t matter either way. I’m a Falcon. And I’m against Rasure. When Gran gets back, I’ll ask her if she knows what this key might unlock.”

I stuffed the paper with the info on it along with the key in my back pocket, glanced at my image that was hanging before me, then walked up the stairs with Cadence trailing behind.

My favorite eternity scarf was on the edge of my bed. I almost didn’t put it on. I kept seeing that dream, me wrapping it around Mason so I could pull him out of the water. I put it on anyway so I would at least look like I was acknowledging the frigid weather.

Cadence had to layer on the jackets, though. She was perpetually cold, even in a room that was set at eighty degrees.

On habit and on purpose, we locked our room, eight bolts in all. We only locked three, hoping it would drive anyone who tried to break in mad, simply because they would always be locking five as they worked their way through picking the locks. We even had a pattern, a different one for each day. That alone was a testament to just how little we trusted anyone in the employment of Rasure.

Just before we reached the stairs, we both heard music coming from a room that should be vacant. We also heard girls singing, Bye bye, Miss American pie, I drove my Chevy to the levy...

We froze in place. That was our sisters’ favorite song; a song they sang on purpose each time Dad took us out on one of his boats. The song they sang all night long the day before they died.

I gripped Cadence’s arm and stormed forward. I wasn’t an idiot. Mrs. Rasure was trying to prove I was still ‘paralyzed by grief,’ as she put it. This was the lowest thing she ever could have done. These rooms were sealed, left exactly how our sisters had left them seven years ago. I had no idea where she could have found a recording of their voices, though I doubted it was hard to do; Mom filmed almost every moment of us growing up. She called them her caterpillar films because she wanted us to remember our transformation into butterflies under the Falcon name.

“Indie, NO,” Cadence said with a gasp. “I don’t want to see what sick game she is playing with us.”

“I just want to turn the music off, whatever tape recorder she has on,” I argued as she forced me to stop in the hallway.

“For all you know, she has a camera in those rooms filming your reaction. Let’s just walk away. Don’t let her do this to you—us,” Cadence pleaded.

I stared down the long hall, the one I had not walked down in years. “All right,” I said, nudging her to go down the stairs. As I went to follow her, I thought I saw someone cross the hall, then two others run out another door. I heard, “Abby, you stole my brush, give it back,” followed by, “Then give me my shirt back—fair is fair.”

I swallowed nervously, remembering that argument. Seven girls under one roof, we were always borrowing, stealing each other’s things…I missed them so much.

The banister I was holding turned to ice.

“Indie,” Cadence said, reaching back for me to come.

I followed her and said the word ‘fire’ over and over in my mind. I was going to kill Skylynn for taking my crutch. If she wanted it back, she should have found a way to wean me off it. I was mad at her for the first time ever.

“Looks like we have guests,” Cadence said with disdain as we passed the great room on the first floor. It was full of people, all dressed to the nines. I thought I recognized a few people that worked with Ben and one of my sister’s husbands, but on second glance the resemblances weren’t there. None of them even bothered to look at us, which wasn’t odd. Rasure had managed to create a disdain for us among her friends. She told them she was trying to teach us to be proper ladies and that if we were not dressed that way not to address us.

This must have been one of her fake charity luncheons. I say fake because last summer Mason and I figured out that the charity she was claiming to help didn’t exist. I was sure she was living off the donations. At that point, my brother Ben had frozen all of my assets, meaning that even though my uncle had power of attorney, he could not spend my money. That wasn’t hard to do when Ben told the judge I was twenty million dollars poorer. I still have no idea what she spent that ungodly amount of money on. I found a real charity that served the cause she was mocking and donated ten paintings that were valued at well over what money she’d claimed to have raised for the fake one. Of course, all the paintings came from her wing, which caused the next lawsuit, the one that says she stays on her side and I stay on mine, only sharing common rooms.

When we entered the kitchen, we had to dodge around the frantic wait staff that feared Rasure far more than they should have.

We’d almost made a clean escape, but low and behold there she was, lingering near the back door with Mrs. Cambridge.

“Ladies,” Mrs. Cambridge said to us with a slight bow.

“Why must you dress that way, Genevieve? At least pick one decade—either a pattern or a solid,” Rasure said to me.

Which made me smirk. “Did you not say the exact same thing to me yesterday?” I responded coolly.

“Obviously not clearly enough,” she seethed.

That made me smile.

“Oh, Celia, let the girl be. She looks absolutely exhausted,” Mrs. Cambridge said in her own condescending way.

“Yes, that is the side effect of having young men come in and out of your room all night,” Rasure replied, as if I weren’t standing in front of her.

“In and out…all night.” I glanced at Cadence. “It was just two, right? And if I recall, they left only a few hours ago.”

It took everything Cadence had not to laugh at the tone of my voice, which was mocking the ‘I’m too stuck up to be bothered with’ tone Rasure and her friends always used. I was on stage at that moment and if I do say so myself, I was playing my part beautifully.

“Mrs. Cambridge,” I continued with the same tone. “I assume you received the donations from Falcon Manor for your auction.”

“You are correct,” she replied with an all-too-polite smile. “I must say, Celia, I was surprised that you would part with such precious heirlooms. You, too, Genevieve,” she said, glancing to the three watches on my wrist. “Seems keeping time is a passion of yours.”

Watching Rasure’s complexion turn as red as her hair was pure bliss for me. I had Mason and Gavin take three grandfather clocks to the auction, along with a few smaller versions. None of them worked. Hadn’t since they’d been here, but they belonged to Rasure and I was all too eager to get those eerie pieces of time out of my house.

“Clocks never work for me. Even watches, see,” I said, raising my wrist to show her that each watch on my wrist had stopped. Gavin, Mason, and Wilder had all given me one. They joked that it was their glass slipper, that if their watches worked it would outweigh my two-heartbeat rule; they weren’t serious when they said that. It just blew their mind that the watches would work when anyone else wore them.

“Very intriguing. Then why three?” Mrs. Cambridge asked.

“They were gifts. I do hope the clocks raise the money you need. If not, I will send over something else, a painting or two perhaps.”

“I’m sure they’ll raise more than enough. The generosity of the Falcon family never ceases to amaze me.”

“Have a great luncheon, ladies,” I said with a bow.

“Don’t forget your guards,” Rasure said with disdain, nodding to two men in black suits that had come to attention the second we walked in the kitchen.

“Shame I need such things. Have you spoken with Ben?” I asked her.

“What would I have to say to Benjamin?” she responded with a fake smile.

I knew then that Gran was right: this had been resolved. My nightmare was over. First chance I had, she was going to be out in the cold. Literally.

I nodded for the men to come along, then followed Cadence outside.

“Why do you have Gavin’s truck?” I asked her.

“He thinks it’s safer. Wilder came and picked them up.”

“Really,” I said under my breath, not sure how I felt about the fact that Wilder was in my driveway and didn’t bother to come in and say hi. Then again, I was sure Gavin and Mason had no issues blocking him from doing just that.

“You guys just want to follow?” I said to the large men that Ben had obviously hired to protect me.

“As you wish, Miss Falcon,” one of them said as he opened the passenger door for me to get in Gavin’s truck.

Cadence struggled to adjust the seat and turned the heat all the way up. “You do know Mrs. Cambridge is, like, her best friend, right?”

“Yup. But the thing about women like that is that they keep just as many secrets from each other as they do from their enemies. I wanted Rasure to know where her clocks were. I gave them to Cambridge on purpose. Maybe if she is fighting with her, she’ll back off me for a beat or two.”

“Remind me never to cross you,” she said under her breath as she tried to weave through the insane amount of cars in our driveway. “You would think these people had nothing better to do on a snowy Wednesday afternoon.”

“They don’t,” I said with a sigh. “You and Gavin work things out last night?”

“There you go again, Indie.”

“What? You’re my friends. I’m curious.”

“Well, your friend Gavin is not over his sister’s death. He is deep in research, trying to find her killer. I think he wants you to do that thing again. I wanted him to talk it out like normal people do. We agreed to let it be, let him figure it out. He knows I’m here if he needs someone to talk to, but his heart is frozen. I think he’s afraid that if he lets anyone in, he’ll have to face losing them one day.”

“My advice: stop being a psychologist around him. Gavin will talk when he wants to, and what I did was not done to find her killer, it was done to show him she’s at peace.”

I don’t see many ghosts. I’m not that big of a mutant. But I’ve seen a few. Years back, Mason pushed me too far, made me feel my emotions while he held me and when that happened, he literally turned blue. I’d frozen him to the point of death. In that state, his twin, the one that had died a year before in a canoeing accident, appeared. Mason’s brush with death vanished instantly, but he could still see his brother, say his peace.

I don’t even want to know how the conversation came up, but he told Gavin about it and Gavin begged me to take him to that point, and I did. All I had to do was touch his hand and allow the emotions I wanted to feel for him to surface, and when I did he froze to the point of death and he saw his sister at peace.

Those acts were sustaining on both sides. They allowed me to push past that first wall of emotions, to discover that I was right, we were just friends, but it also gave them peace with their troubled past.

I have no doubt Gavin is still researching not only his sister’s death, but also the lore on what I can do. He thinks because I was born near death that I can see into the veil of death, that I can serve as a passageway to those who were lost to the living. I didn’t see it that way. I saw it as me almost killing them both and their family saving them.

Cadence never bothered to argue the point. She knew I was right, that grief takes time to overcome, that if she was going to force Gavin to face his past, then she would have to face hers, both the family we shared and the one that abandoned her.

“Where is everybody today?” I asked, just wanting to hear her voice.

The town looked so sad, and it wasn’t just because of the snow or the deep gray background; it literally felt sad. The people who were out and about looked like they’d just lost their best friend or something.

“Maybe they’re falling into the winter blues a little early this year,” Cadence offered, not really knowing. I was sure she was deep in her thoughts, trying to unravel Gavin.

When we reached the coffee shop, which was a bar by night, the lights were on. The only car out front was Wilder’s.

“Slow afternoon. Wonder where the poets are,” I mumbled, acting like I didn’t know that I would be face-to-face with Wilder for the first time in almost a year in a matter of minutes.

The shop was a magnet for the arts. Writers lined the tables during the day and bands played every night, but some days were reserved for poetry readings and such. Basically, any given day you could find an unbelievable talent inside the shop. Thousands of people had found their beginnings within these four walls. I started picking up shifts here just so I could be around the creativity. I’d taken thousands of images of the artists as they either created their work or shared it. My photos dominated the decor in this place.

“Huddled by a fire,” Cadence said as she parked behind Wilder’s car.

Right when I got out, I saw Abby and Lisa, two of my sisters…two of my dead sisters.