by Teresa Roman
This book is dedicated to my three Js
Who bring magic into my life every day
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Other Titles by Teresa Roman
Chapter 1
As I fastened the button on the back of my dress, I remembered Dad telling me black wasn’t my color. He preferred me in happier shades, he used to say. I never did ask which colors he considered happy, but that hardly mattered now. Black was what people wore to funerals, so there was nothing I could do about it.
Damp, chilly air surrounded me and my aunt Katy as we stepped out of the house that morning. It was as if the sun knew that today was the wrong day to come out. My aunt and I sat in silence as she drove to the cemetery where my father’s service and burial were to be held.
“Lilli, say something,” Katy urged as she parked her car in the empty cemetery parking lot.
She’d been trying to get me to talk for the past three days—ever since I came home to find my dad lifeless in his bed. But what was there to say? Nothing could give me back my father.
It had always just been the two of us—Dad and me. That’s probably why we were so close. The realization that I’d never see him again left me alternating between a hollow feeling and a searing pain that stabbed at my chest, making it hard to breathe. The only parent I’d ever known was gone now, leaving me an orphan at barely eighteen.
Orphan. The word tasted vile in my mouth. I turned to look at my aunt. Her eyes were red and puffy, like mine, but I’d been buried too deep in my own grief to pay attention.
“We’re early.” It was a stupid thing to say, but the only words that came to my mind.
Katy glanced at her watch. “Half an hour, but I expect people will start getting here pretty soon.”
“Then we should find somewhere to sit while we wait for them.”
We got out of the car and walked through the cemetery’s gates. Wooden folding chairs were lined in rows on either side of my father’s casket. A few minutes after we sat down, the funeral guests started to arrive. I recognized only a few faces—people my dad knew from town, acquaintances mostly, rather than friends of my reclusive father. Eventually, my closest friends Emma and Tim arrived, holding hands. The three of us had known each since grade school, but ever since they’d decided they were head over heels for each other, we hadn’t spent as much time together.
Emma took my hands in hers and gave them a soft squeeze. “You okay, girl?”
I nodded and bit the inside of my lip, afraid if I answered her I’d start to cry. Tim patted my back before he and Emma went to find a seat. I looked over both shoulders, craning my neck to look for Devin, the one person I wanted to see, but he hadn’t shown up yet.
Something else caught my attention—a woman standing off in the distance right by the line of trees flanking the cemetery. Long dark hair fell down over her shoulders. With her head bowed and her hands covering her face, it looked like she was crying. But if she was here for my father, why was she standing so far away?
Something about her pulled me out of my chair. I needed to see her face, to talk to her, to find out if it was my father or someone else who brought her to the cemetery on what felt like the coldest June day in memory.
I mumbled, “I’ll be right back” to Katy and left her alone to greet the guests who trickled in. She was too busy accepting someone’s condolences to ask me where I was going. Hesitant, I walked toward the woman. What would I say when I got close? For a second, I thought about turning around. What right did I have to intrude on someone’s grief? My feet refused to listen to my head, and I kept walking in her direction, hoping that when she finally noticed me, she wouldn’t be startled. I was only a few feet away from her when I heard my name being called.
“Lilli.” I recognized Devin’s voice but kept going, only sparing him a quick glance. The sound of my name being called must’ve gotten the woman’s attention because she lifted her head and gazed at me. I froze as a jolt of recognition ran through me. My mother stood, tall and straight as the trees at her back, her face exactly the same as in the picture I had stashed in my nightstand drawer.
When I felt Devin’s hand on my arm, I looked over my shoulder. Relief flooded through me at the sight of his face. I didn’t have time to greet him, though. I needed to talk to my mother, but when I turned my head back in her direction she was gone. I took a few hesitant steps forward, then a few more. I could feel Devin trailing closely behind me. When I reached the spot where she had been standing only moments before, I scanned the trees and tombstones, desperate to catch sight of her once more.
“What are you doing all the way over here?” Devin asked.
“Nothing. I . . .” Puzzled, I wasn’t sure what to say. “Did you see the woman who was just standing here? Where did she go?”
Devin shook his head. “No, I didn’t see anyone.”
“She was just here,” I insisted. “You must have seen her.” My heart pounded like a hammer. It wasn’t possible for someone to disappear as quickly as she had.
Devin wrapped his hands around my wrists. “Lilli, I didn’t see anyone but you.” He stared at me intently and I tried to stem the tears that were beginning to well in my eyes. He pulled me into his arms, perhaps sensing how badly I needed to feel them around me. “Are you okay? You’re shaking.”
I didn’t know what to say. If I asked him about the woman again, he’d think I was crazy. Maybe I was, but I didn’t want Devin to know that. So I just nodded and whispered yes.
“I wish I knew what to do.” Devin’s words came out so softly I barely heard him. I wasn’t really sure he intended me to, so I didn’t respond. Truthfully, him being here for me was enough. Eventually, Devin dropped his arms from around me and laced his fingers through mine. “C’mon. The funeral is going to start soon.” As he led me back toward the rows of chairs lined up near my father’s casket, I turned my head for one last look, but there was nothing to see.
Shaken, I made my way back to the empty seat next to my aunt.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
I nodded.
“What were you doing all the way over by the trees?”
Clearly, she hadn’t seen my mother either.
“Nothing. I thought I saw someone I knew.”
Thankfully, my aunt didn’t ask any more questions and a few minutes later the service began. Devin held my hand as the officiant spoke about the transience of life. My dad wasn’t a religious man. I couldn’t remember him once setting foot in a church, so I didn’t know the man speaking, and it was pretty clear by his words that he didn’t know my father, either. I tried to focus on his words, but eventually I gave up and let my mind wander.
Dad never spoke about my mother. It was as if he couldn’t bear to think about her. He’d answer my incessant questions with a vague
smile, then change the subject, until eventually I gave up asking just to avoid seeing the sadness that flared in his eyes. I had no idea what she looked like until I snooped through a drawer in his dresser and found a photograph.
Even then she was instantly familiar to me. I wore my thick, dark—almost black— hair long and straight; so did she. We had the same fair complexion, the same stormy gray eyes.
I stuck the picture into the back pocket of my pants and kept it in my nightstand drawer.
My father must have known I’d stolen it, but he never said a word. Sometimes I felt guilty about it, but I needed something of hers to hold on to, and that picture was all I had. Every so often, late at night, I placed her on the pillow beside me and told her my secrets, the ones I couldn’t tell anyone else in the world.
Now that I was older, the resemblance between us was even stronger. Seeing her was like looking at my own reflection. I had made no mistake. The woman I’d seen was my mother, the same woman who had died almost eighteen years ago.
The funeral passed by in a blur. A string of well-wishers came to offer their condolences afterward. I nodded politely and said thank you every time someone told me they were sorry for my loss. After the cemetery cleared out, Devin and I got up.
“Thank you for coming,” Katy said to him giving him a quick hug.
“Of course.” Devin’s eyes met hers, his full of regret. “You know Mark meant a lot to me.”
Devin was the first friend I’d had who didn’t seem nervous around my dad. My father was a quiet, brooding man, qualities that people mistook for unfriendliness. But in reality his heart was big—and broken. According to Katy, it had been that way since my mother died. People tended to shy away from his often somber moods, but when I introduced Devin to him a few months ago, the two of them somehow connected.
That wasn’t the only thing unexpected about Devin. The fact that we were friends at all still surprised to me. We met at a local coffee shop where I was scanning the bulletin board for help wanted flyers. He noticed and asked if I was looking for a job. When I told him I was, he promised he could get me one at the hotel where he worked. I was skeptical, but true to his word, a few days later I got hired.
Working together gave us lots of time to talk and get to know each other, but still, it was unlike me to get close to someone that quickly. I chalked it up to him being the first person my age I got to know outside of school, where I had the reputation of being the shy, weird girl. Devin didn’t know that about me, which made it easier to relax around him. He made me smile and laugh, something I didn’t do easily. Sometimes it felt like he could see inside of me. Whatever he found he kept to himself, sparing me only the briefest of knowing looks.
Devin reached for my hand. I didn’t realize how cold my fingers were until I felt his warmth. “How are you doing?”
“I’m all right.” It wasn’t true. I hadn’t been all right even before I saw—what?— my mother’s ghost crying her eyes out at my father’s funeral. But I couldn’t admit that I was losing my mind, not even to Devin.
“I can go back to your house with you,” he offered.
“No.” I didn’t want to do that to him. I couldn’t smile and laugh, much less talk the way we usually did. This wasn’t the version of me I wanted him to know.
“Then tell me what I can do.”
“Nothing. You being here is enough.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I have Katy. I’ll be fine.”
Devin dropped my hand. “When will I see you?”
“I don’t know.”
I shivered as the wind picked up. Katy put her arm around my shoulder.
“You’ll call me if you need anything? Even if it’s just to talk?” he asked.
I nodded and Devin planted a kiss on my forehead. He stared at me for a moment before walking away.
When he was gone, I turned to look at my father’s casket. My chest felt tight, like I had to gasp for air. I walked over and rested my hand along the smooth wooden finish. I would never, ever see my father again. Soon, he would be lowered into the ground, and covered with a mound of dirt. Feeling too weak to hold myself up any longer, I sank to my knees. The earth was cold beneath my legs and I began to shiver again, but I didn’t want to leave my dad’s side. I curled up into a ball next to the casket, shaking with sobs. Katy kneeled beside me. She draped her sweater over my shoulders, then her arm. The two of us stayed there like that for a long time. Finally, Katy got up and then lifted me to my feet.
“It’s time to go home,” she said.
Chapter 2
Night brought an escape from my aunt’s endless hovering. She meant well, trying to get me to eat and asking me for the one hundredth time if I was okay, but I didn’t feel like eating and I doubted if I’d ever be okay again. I couldn’t tell her that, though.
I lay in bed—half of me desperate for sleep so I could escape the sorrow that wrapped itself around me. The other half worried I’d have another one of my crazy dreams. I already felt like I was perched on the brink of insanity. I couldn’t handle my father’s funeral, my mother’s ghost, and another nightmare about monsters and death all in the same day.
I flashed back to the funeral and tried convincing myself that the woman I saw wasn’t my mother. How could she be? She was dead, and I didn’t believe in ghosts. Although it wouldn’t have been the first time I saw something no one else did.
Maybe it was one of her relatives, someone who’d known my dad and came to grieve. But no matter how hard I tried convincing myself, I knew that wasn’t right. If my mother had relatives, I would’ve already met them by now. My mother’s family, if she had one, was as much a mystery as she was.
Katy was all I had left, but she lived in Eureka, more than an hour away. My aunt and her boyfriend had been together for a long time, but Katy didn’t believe in marriage and they’d never had any kids. That meant a cousin wasn’t in the cards for me, no matter how badly I wanted one.
I wondered what Katy would think if I said anything about what I’d seen at the funeral earlier. There was no way I could. She worried too much about me already. Even though she didn’t have kids of her own, she had a natural sense of what I needed. Over the years, I’d overheard enough conversations between her and my dad to know that without her, my dad wouldn’t have had a clue how to raise a girl.
Between the attention I received from Dad and Katy, I never really thought about my mother until I started kindergarten. That’s when I noticed that I was the only kid who didn’t have someone to call Mommy. Since my dad never mentioned her, I assumed the worst—that she’d run away because she didn’t want a child. After thinking about it for so long that I couldn’t keep my thoughts bottled up any longer, I worked up the courage to talk to Katy. She’d come up to spend the long Thanksgiving weekend with us, and even though it was already getting cold out, I begged her to take me to get ice cream. My dad had stayed home to catch up on work, which gave me the chance to ask Katy the question that had been on my mind since school started.
“Why don’t I have a mother?” I asked. “Is it because she didn’t want me?”
Katy’s face blanched before she tried to explain. “No, Lilli! It had nothing to do with you.”
“Then what happened to her?”
My aunt looked away for a minute, like she was deciding whether or not to tell me the truth. Finally she said, quietly, “Nobody really knows for sure. When you were still a baby, she just vanished one day. She went out to run some errands and never came back. Your father looked everywhere for her, so did his friends, and the police. But no one ever found her.”
“What happened to her?” I repeated, not understanding.
“I think the angels took her,” Katy replied. “We don’t know how or why, but that’s what happened, because if she were still alive, she would be with you and your dad. She loved the two of you very much.”
“So I’ll never see her?” I asked, trying to hold back tears.
; Katy hesitated before answering. “No. I’m sorry, but you won’t.”
“Dad doesn’t think she’s dead. He thinks she’s going to come back.”
“What makes you say that?” Katy asked, frowning. “Did your dad tell you that?”
“No,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, not sure why Katy was bothered so much by what I had said. “I can just tell.”
“I know your dad wants her to come back, but sometimes we don’t get what we want.” Katy reached for my hand. “You understand that, don’t you?”
Knowing how heart-broken losing my mother had left Dad, I did my best to make him proud. He never had to get after me about doing chores or my homework. I earned good grades and never got into trouble. I didn’t experiment with alcohol or drugs, not even cigarettes. I lived for the moments I could bring a smile to his face, like when I brought a report card home, or when someone commented on what a well-behaved daughter he had.
But despite my determination, I was far from the perfect child. Without meaning to, I gave my dad plenty to worry about, and it all started right after Katy explained what happened to my mother. I woke up screaming one night after dreaming about people being burned alive. Dad didn’t seem too concerned at first, but when the nightmares continued, he took me to see a psychologist.
Talking about the dreams didn’t help. They still came, thankfully not every night, but when they did, they were horrifying. I watched helplessly as people were tortured, drowned, burned.
Then the scenarios changed. For a while, my dreams were actually kind of cool. I dreamt about people who could control fire and wind and do all sorts of magic. But despite their enormous power, they weren’t invincible. They had enemies, monsters who appeared human but then morphed into something beastly before attacking. Not all of the monsters looked the same. Some had talon-like fingers, and others had goat-like horns. Often, they had contorted facial features and fangs for teeth, but they were all similar in one way, they had eyes as black as pitch and they scared me. Once again, my screams woke Dad in the middle of the night.
I felt guilty that my father was almost as sleep deprived as I was, but things got worse when I saw one of the monsters from my dreams—in real life. Dad was used to hearing me cry out in the night, but not when the two of us were out in public. He brought me back to the psychologist, and, when I explained what happened, he told my father I needed to be medicated. Dad refused, vowing to find another way to help me, and never took me to another doctor. I became just as afraid of seeing another monster as I was of upsetting my dad, so I learned how to control my reaction to them. Instead of screaming, I turned my head and found an excuse to leave wherever I was. It became obvious after a while that I was the only one seeing them. But even though I’d managed to convince my dad that everything was fine, it wasn’t. And now, after seeing my mother today, I worried that I was getting worse, and I was doing it alone, without anyone around to help.