River of Shadows (Underworld Gods 1)

I run my hands over the casket, wishing I could feel his energy come from inside. But dead people don’t give off energy. I’ll never feel that again from him.

Open it, a voice in my head says. You’ll regret it if you don’t.

I swallow hard. I’ve been debating this last week whether to look at my father’s body. On one hand, I don’t want the memories of him tarnished. I want to remember him alive and full of life. On the other hand, I need closure, badly. And if he was found frozen, well, how bad can he really look?

So I place my fingers along the bottom of the lid.

Lift it up.

And stare directly into an empty casket.

Chapter 2

The Funeral

What the fuck?

I stare at the empty coffin, bewildered, then push the lid up further, quickly glancing down the end, then putting my arm inside, frantically feeling around.

There’s nothing.

It’s fucking empty.

What the hell is going on?!

A flush of hope warms my chest, the idea that perhaps my father isn’t dead after all. But then none of this makes any sense. They would have had a body at some point—where did that body go?

“You need to leave.”

I gasp loudly and whirl around, but the room is empty. Where the hell did that voice just come from?

I turn back in time to see the casket lid slowly lowering and, standing behind it, the tall slim shadow of a man.

I gasp again, taking a step backward, just as the shadow comes forward into the candlelight. The light of the flames flickers against his face, revealing a young man with floppy red hair and sky-blue eyes, his cheekbones high with alabaster skin and ruddy cheeks, making him look eternally youthful, his age hard to pin down. He’s dressed in all black, except for a string of spotted feathers tied around his wrist.

“Who are you?” I ask, pressing my fingers harder into my chest as if to keep my heart from jumping out.

“You need to leave,” he says again, his eyes briefly going over my shoulder to the doorway and back to me, shimmering in intensity. “Now.”

I shake my head, having no idea what this crazy stranger is saying. “What? No. I’m staying here at the hotel. My dad is supposed to be in this casket. It’s his funeral tomorrow. I’m Hanna—”

“Heikkinen,” he interjects with my last name. “I know who you are. But please, listen to me, you have to leave this place right now, before it’s too late.”

I hate how slow my brain is, that nothing is making sense, let alone this stranger who literally just appeared before me out of the shadows and is telling me what to do. “I’m not going anywhere. You know what happened to my father? To Torben Heikkinen? Is he really dead? Please tell me he isn’t dead.”

The man is breathing hard now, his eyes keep flitting to the door. I look over my shoulder quickly but it’s still just the two of us in the room. Two of us and an empty casket. “I know the truth about your father,” the man says, his eyes taking on a feverish gleam. “And I can take you to him, if you come with me right now.”

He reaches for my arm and I rip it away from him.

“I’m not going anywhere with you!” I cry out, stumbling back a few feet. “I just want to know where my father’s body is! Tell me where it is!”

The man shakes his head, putting his finger to his lips. “Please, don’t wake them.”

“Don’t wake who? I want to wake up everyone!” I roar, throwing my arms out. “I don’t know who you are! For all I know, you’ve broken in here and stolen his body!”

“Please, Hanna,” he says.

“Don’t call me that! You don’t know me.”

“I know of you. Very well.” He licks his lips quickly, pupils growing as small as pin pricks. “Your father spoke of you all the time. Every day we’d work together, he would tell me everything about you. I know that you were a dancer, that now you do martial arts, and it suits you even better. That you work in fashion. That you live in a house in North Hollywood, but that’s nothing like the actual Hollywood, and you have a housemate who has a hair salon in the garage. That you used to write your father letters and draw little nature scenes with each one, a magic forest.”

“Stop,” I whisper. Everything inside me is shaking. How does he know all this? “You can’t…how do you know all this?”

“Because I was close to your father,” he says, his voice rising with a hint of bitterness. “Maybe as close as you were to him. And when I tell you I know where he is, you have to believe me, and you have to leave this place while you can.”