Page 28

Unsurprising. The sheets were too soft, the mattress smelled too clean, and the weight of the house was pressing down on my chest.

After I’d scoped out the woods and pulled files from the library yesterday, I’d gotten a few bottles of whiskey before heading back to Chesterfield Street. I’d forgone my knock-out cocktail and went back to basics—just plain drank for a few hours until I was unconscious. But now it was three in the morning and I was staring at the ceiling.

It wasn’t a surprise that I was awake at that hour, I was used to it.

The witching hour— or the devil’s hour, depending on whom you ask. There was a lot of debate over who and what that term belonged to, but Christians and Pagans alike agreed that it was spooky. Powerful.

Not untrue. For the practical reason that a lot of supernatural entities struck their victims while they were sleeping, and therefore, most vulnerable. Adze liked to transform into small insects then drain the blood from souls.

Penanggalan routinely used this time for sucking the life force from their victims. They were the grossest, most ruthless spirits out there, heads detaching from their bodies. Their entire spines and entrails trailed behind them like a seriously macabre train. Yuck.

Witches liked to suck up the energy of the liminal time too, usually dark ones. Scientifically, if you were going to die in your sleep, it was during the witching hour. Blood pressure drops, heart rates slow, and respiratory drive becomes weakest.

So yeah, there were a lot of things to actually be afraid of at three in the morning, but I’d have taken on a penanggalan over the reasons for being awake right then. Hearing my parents’ screams, the tearing of flesh, the low growl of the werewolf as it ate their hearts. Seeing its blood-stained muzzle, flesh slopping from its teeth onto our rug.

The eyes, yellow, knowing, human, piercing right into me as I stood there screaming in my prom dress, all pink and tacky sequins, too much cleavage.

I would’ve been an easy victim. I didn’t try to run. I didn’t even try to fight. There was no point; a seventeen-year-old cheerleader wearing taffeta was not a match for a full-blood werewolf on a full moon.

But the wolf was sated by the two hearts of the only people I’d ever loved, staring at me for exactly fifteen seconds—I’d counted in my head—before it ran off.

Leaving me alone with my parents’ heartless corpses and my screams.

Happy memories.

I hadn’t dreamed of that night in over a decade. Yet there I was, having nightmares in my childhood home, no one to tell me nightmares weren’t real because they were. Worse, I was scared. Dried sweat clung to my shirt, my heart thundered, and my breathing was shallow. Me. Scared. Of a dream. A memory. It was laughable. And unnerving.

“Fuck this,” I muttered, throwing back the flowered duvet then stomping down the stairs. I would not let myself turn into a vapid prom queen, pissing through cheap lingerie bought for her quarterback boyfriend.

I just needed food. Low blood sugar—that must’ve been the reason for my physical symptoms.

The fridge light was a bright contrast against the thick darkness of three in the morning. I hadn’t bothered to turn the other lights on, knowing my way around. Muscle memory and all that.

I wasn’t afraid of the dark. The dark and the monsters who dwelled there, I could deal with. The light was much more terrifying.

I lifted the lids off various Tupperware containers—fancy glass ones, not the plastic that everyone said was going to kill you—sniffing at the various foods Sharon had obviously made from scratch. All of them a little too healthy until I settled on lasagna.

Even while chilled in the fridge, the scent of it brought me back to their table.

They sat down for dinner every night. Not because they were pretentious, because they prioritized family. We often had too, but there were nights when Dad was grading papers, eating in his office, and times when I was sulking for one reason or another. Our dinners were a lot more casual, though no less warm.

I loved and hated dinner at Colton’s. The meal was always great, they’d let me have a glass of wine—because that was what they did in Europe—and I got to make out with my boyfriend, maybe even go to second base after dinner.

But I always felt as if I had to sit with my back straight, my manners intact, be shiny and perfect to measure up to the golden boy.

Even then, being the proverbial cliché of the golden girl, the title itched, chafed. And I knew somewhere deep down that I couldn’t grow up to be Colton’s parents. Or even mine. Chained to a small town, popping out children. Pretending all there was of the world existed within the town limits. The thought had suffocated me, even as a teenager.

But I would’ve stayed because before the attack, I hadn’t been brave enough to say no, to demand what I wanted.

The gruesome death of my parents made me plenty brave, apparently.

A shadow in the woods jolted me from my introspection.

I swallowed my cold lasagna with a gulp as I set the dish and fork down with a clatter.

The oppressive darkness outside was illuminated by various porchlights, including one I hadn’t remembered turning on. Everything was still for a handful of moments, the trees’ giant shadows looming over the edge of suburbia. It was almost quiet enough to make me believe I was imagining things, if I didn’t know better. But I did. Something was out there.

I squinted as I watched the creature lurk at the edge of the woods. My eyes ran over it, but I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.