Panic tightens in my chest as my thoughts shift to Archie. I twist, searching wildly until I see a familiar streak of brown fur poking out from under the blanket at the foot of the bed. My breath rushes out.
Still breathing. Thank God.
“It might not feel normal, but this is your reality now, Rowan,” Iris says, and I swear I hear excitement in her voice.
Meanwhile, I feel like I’ve been rebooted into a different operating system, and someone threw away the user manual. Everything is louder. I can hear Liz’s heartbeat. The softtick-tickof a clock somewhere outside the room. Hell, even the fluttering just beyond the windowpane is like tiny wings of chaos when I focus.
Awesome. Super hearing. Maybe next I’ll get X-ray vision and can finally find where Archie hid the car keys that cost me hundreds of dollars to replace last year.
“Why can I hear…everything?” I ask, not sure I actually want the answer.
She punctuates the sentence by rummaging in her robe pocket and pulling out a peppermint with lint already stuck to it. “Want a mint? Helps with the existential dread.”
I blink once, then twice. “Excuse me?”
She offers me a look of forced sympathy, the kind people give right before they say something truly unhinged. “You died, Rowan. And then you came back to life.”
I stare at her like she’s grown a second head. “That…that’s not how dying works.”
“For most people, no. But for you? Let’s just say fate has a twisted sense of humor.”
I turn to Liz, silently pleading for a lifeline. For someone—anyone—to say, “Ha, just kidding!” But she only offers me an apologetic shrug.
Archie stirs and crawls toward me, slower than usual. I lift him gently, cradling his warm body against my chest. The soft press of his fur grounds me more than anything else in this room ever could. My eyes drift closed, blocking out this conversation and the strangers leading it.
We’re okay. We just got knocked around a bit, and my brain is misfiring. As soon as my head stops pounding, we’ll leave. Pretend this never happened.
I didn’t die. I didn’t come back to life. Iris is just a crazy old woman who has spent too much time in this gothic mansion.
“How about I go make us some drinks?” Liz offers, but I don’t answer her.
“You might want to bring a few bottles back instead,” Iris titters. “I think I’ve got some emergency brandy hidden behind one of the dead animals on the first floor. This feels like a taxidermy-drink kind of day.”
My gaze snaps toward Iris, but I stop short. There’s awry grin on her face, laced with amusement and—unexpectedly—a flicker of warmth. It brings a youthfulness to her features that, for a heartbeat, mirrors my mother so precisely I can’t breathe.
My throat closes. I look away fast, swallowing the grief like a pill too large to go down. Archie stirs against my chest, his tiny heartbeat thrumming like a drum against mine. Just me and him. That’s all I need now.
Mom was right. I never should’ve come here.
“Jocelyn really never told you about NightShade, did she?” Iris says, her voice filled with more compassion than I’ve yet to see from her.
“Mom didn’t like talking about her past.”
Iris lowers herself into the chair beside my bed, letting out a long breath as she leans back like the weight of memory is too much to carry standing up. “I guess I can’t be too surprised. This was never the life she wanted. But I tried like hell to show her the importance of it. Maybe I pushed too hard, and I lost her because of it.” She blinks rapidly, lashes fluttering. “She was stubborn as hell. Just like you seem to be.”
A lump forms in my throat, but I ignore it. “You don’t know me.”
“Maybe not,” she admits, “but I know your blood. And blood never lies unless you’re a vampire. Then all bets are off.”
This woman really has lost her mind.
She leans forward, eyes sharp now, like crystal blue daggers locked onto mine. “You come from a long line of Hollowborn, Rowan. Women who have safeguarded the supernatural world for generations. We don’t take sides.We don’t wage wars. We help keep the balance. We are the line between what the world believes and what it should never know.”
The words hang in the air between us. I wonder if Hollowborn means secretive and clearly terrible at communication, because nothing she’s just said makes any sense.
Yet, her eyes peer into mine with such intensity that I start to wonder if I’ve accidentally joined a cult or some sort of cryptic book club. Still, something tells me she won’t let me leave until she thinks I understand. So, I play along.
“Hollowborn? Hollow how?” I laugh to myself because clearly, they’re all missing their sanity. That, at least, I can see for myself.
