PROLOGUE
grace note
(gras ?not)
noun
An extra note added as an embellishment or decorative flourish; not essential to the main melody
I was sixteen years old the day I discovered nightmares were just memories in disguise. The truth had always been there, lying dormant, waiting for the right trigger. It came in the form of a boy daring me to dive deeper, to find the place inside me where the darkness cowered. I found it, all right—poked it with a stick and made it sing. My songs would never be the same after that, carrying me to new and unimaginable heights.
But at what cost? I could never go back to the naive girl I once was. Every effort had been taken to shield me from the horrors of my brother Jake’s kidnapping, as well as the “nightly news” madness that followed. It took a village, literally. Community leaders along with good-hearted citizens banded together to create an alternate universe for me—and to a lesser extent, my slightly older brother Quinn—to live in. Gifted with scholarships to an ultra-private K-8 boutique school where the other kids were as clueless as we were, Quinn and I were allowed to grow up without the pollutants our older siblings breathed in.
Yet it would be wrong to assume I had been untouched by the tragedy that befell my family. I still grew up with the nightly screaming, with the stress, with the conversations that hushed when I walked into a room. I developed an aversion to all things kidnapping-related. If a news article or social media post popped up about Jake’s abduction, I kept on scrolling. If kids at school tried to engage me in conversation about the crime, I walked away. The gory details of my family’s past were not my own. I’d chosen to live in the light.
You know what they say: what you don’t know won’t hurt you. My god, why had I tested the theory? It took me all of two minutes to discover the explosive truth and then another five to throw it up in the toilet. Of course, I knew there were things my family hadn’t told me, but I never could have imagined that the biggest secret of all—the smiling face, the sinister whisper—lived inside my head.
PARTI
THE BOND
GRACE: NOT MY HERO
PRESENT DAY
Ahand jostled my shoulder, startling me out of a restless slumber. I gasped, jolting upright as confusion took hold.
“Shhh. It’s all right, Grace,” Elliott soothed. “You were whimpering in your sleep. You’re safe. It was just a dream.”
“It… it was?” I asked, my voice almost childlike in its optimism. If Elliott was to be believed, then the horror in my head had never happened, and Quinn was not currently lying on an operating table with doctors diligently working to save his life. “It was all a dream?”
Elliott’s eyes widened, and he stuttered, “No, I mean… it’s not, um… no… it did happen, but… uh…”
I snapped back into my hard plastic chair, the events of the evening flooding back with a vengeance. What was I thinking? Of course it was real. I’d watched it happen with my own two eyes. The first pops had gone largely unnoticed. Concerts were deafening beasts to begin with—the music, the high decibels, the screams—some so piercing they rang in the ears for days. From where I’d been seated, alongside the stage in an area reserved for family, it made sense that I was unaware of the horror unfolding behind me… until it arrived at center stage. That was when the crowd surged forward, when the music abruptly cut out, and when my absolute favorite brother in the entire world went down in a hail of gunfire.
“…but Quinn’s a fighter,” Elliott said. “He’ll pull through this. You know he will.”
No, I didn’t. This wasn’t a sprained ankle. The blood I’d been covered in earlier was Quinn’s, and while I’d gratefully accepted the change of clothes from my sister, Emma, Quinn’s girl Jess had respectfully declined. Like Jackie Kennedy before her, she had chosen to remain in her blood-soaked clothing to show the world what they had done. Not that anyone would blame her for her defiance given that Jess had just gotten engaged to my brother as he lay dying in her arms.
Elliott continued to try and comfort me by massaging my neck and speaking soothing words of reassurance in my ear. Normally, I appreciated his calm, cool head but not today. Even his touch made me squirm.
I held up a hand. “No offense, but please stop talking.”
Elliott stiffened as he took immediate offense. “I’m just trying to be supportive.”
“Well, you’re not,” I clipped, scowling as my lower lip began to shudder. This wasn’t like me. I was known for being easygoing and weep-resistant. I had never found tears personally beneficial. It came down to the whole quantum theory—if a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody around to hear, does it make a sound?
Well, the same could be applied to lastborn children. While firstborns were falling off the jungle gym into the arms of their protective parents, I just fell. By the time I was born, the last of seven children, there just wasn’t a lot of sympathy left for my scrapes, bruises, and tears. As a result, if little-girl me face-planted or scuffed my knee, there would be no fussing over the wound. No Hello Kitty Band-Aids. No kissing and making it better. Instead of first aid, I got… well, a standing ovation.
Oh, the attention I would receive for a sniffle-free ounce of blood! My father would beam. My brothers would line up to slap me some high fives. No wonder I began to equate pain with a jolly good time. Sometimes I even purposely wiped out just to feel the love.
No doubt that early indoctrination inspired the daredevil in me. I was the tiny girl with loose strawberry-blonde curls spilling out from under her helmet dropping into a half-pipe at the skate park while dressed in a pink tutu and camouflage kneepads. The wide-eyed kindergartener who stayed up way past her bedtime to watch scary movies with her older siblings. The determined kid sister who stood on her tippy-toes at the amusement park in hopes of clearing the height restrictions to ride the roller coaster with the rest of her long-legged family.
But right now, I was none of the above. I’d been backed into a corner, and if anyone dared cross me in this state of mind, they could expect me to come up slashing. And that included my boyfriend of six months. He was one bad decision away from living a lonely, sterile life.
The wounded expression on Elliott’s face forced me to clamp down on my lower lip which, quite honestly, was the only thing keeping me from biting his head off. I knew I was being unreasonable—mean, even—but I just couldn’t with him. Not right now. Not after his tone-deaf comedy act earlier in the day—throwing shade on Quinn right before the start of the concert.
“Watch him choke,”he’d said.“Get up there, open his mouth, and be like uh… uh… uh.”
