PROLOGUE
Obsession.
The domination of one’s thoughts or ideas or feelings with a persistent image, idea, or desire.
I stood in front of the chair, throwing the old record of violin concertos across the room. It crashed into a table and toppled our wedding photo. I huffed when it fell face down on the floor.
“I know you’re here.Watching.”
I narrowed my eyes on the doorway that usually remained locked. It creaked softly in the wind now, the loose jamb clicking in the breeze before a crack of moonlight shone through. Winchester barked once, eyes on the door along with me.
“A lot of people talk aboutmyobsession, but what about yours?” I glanced down at Winchester. His eyes flicked to me and he wagged his tail once. “I should throw out these old recordings, they only dredge up old ghosts that are better off buried.”
The wind slammed the door to the music room closed, almost in answer to my statement.
I climbed the stairs, annoyance heavying my bootsteps before I reached the door to the music room and yanked the key out of my pocket. I locked it once, checked it twice and then turned to find Winchester pointing at the small violin mounted on the wall.
Herviolin.
“Winchester, leave it.” I patted his head but he remained still, eyes intent on the instrument. “Not tonight, please.”
Winchester barked once, then lay down, nose still pointed in the same direction. He did this most nights, especially in the fall and spring when the lightning storms kicked up outside. I thought he was crazy at first, but then I began to feel it too. Some kind of kinetic energy in the air that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
“Stay then, I’ll be downstairs with dinner.”
I climbed back down the steps. Before I reached the bottom, the slow strains of violin music started again. The note stirred in my ears most nights, but the nights it stormed made the tone exponentially loud. Like a low grade hum turned to a sharpened pitch, I began to wonder if it was more than just the isolation that drove a person mad up in these mountains.
Winchester hummed once, then began to bark softly as the violin notes reached deafening tones. I turned, stomped up the stairs the way I’d come. The violin sat on the floor, upended from the wall and at Winchester’s feet.
He looked concerned, his big worried eyes holding mine.
“I can feel you,” I grit into the air. “I can feel you everywhere! Why can’t I touch you? Why won’t you let me?” I picked up the violin, smashing it against the wall in a fit of anger.
It splintered against the wall and I regretted it instantly.
Herprized possession, the very thing that’d come to possessme.
Emotion boiled to a fever pitch inside of me before I scooped the wooden pieces and strings into my hands and stomped down the stairs. Winchester followed hot on my heels.
Into the cloudy mist we charged out, around the feathery evergreen boughs that hung over the driveway, down the corner and to the overlook. From this vantage point I could see all of the bay, the marina of Cherry Falls lit with bustling life even in the middle of the night.
I groaned, wondering if my obsession had ruined me. Wetness slid down my cheeks before I launched the broken pieces over the cliff.
But the shattered fragments of my haunted memories remained.
I turned to head back to the house, Winchester trotting ahead of me, before we both stopped dead in our tracks.
Clinging at the edges of the evergreens, almost floating out of the mist, a figure appeared.
“Mav.”
I shook my head, shoved a hand over my face and tried to rub away the vision ofherin my mind. Words pounded through my skull, desperate words like duty and loyalty and honor and legacy and death. There’d been so much death.
You can’t ignore this forever. You can’t ignore this forever. You can’t ignore this foreverchanted on repeat in my mind, like the chorus to a bad pop song.
“It’s my fault you're dead!” I called into the wilderness. “It’s my fault you're dead...” I repeated as I dropped to my knees, rocks biting at my skin through the worn denim. “I’ll always be your murderer.”
CHAPTER ONE
