Hereafter (Shadowlands 2)

Darcy groaned, and I stifled a laugh. Dad could have whatever he wanted as far as I was concerned. I hadn’t been forced to fake illness to make him leave the party. The mayor had mysteriously disappeared on him, and he said he was more than ready to “blow this Popsicle stand,” as he put it. Darcy had been the harder sell, but my dad put his foot down. Joaquin was right. He didn’t want her walking home alone in the fog.

So now here we were, ensconced in our little house, the fog still clouding the windows as we indulged in a family movie marathon. As Superman struggled with his kryptonite necklace on the screen, I rested my head against my father’s chest and listened to his improbable heartbeat. I hadn’t done this in so long—cuddled with my dad on the couch—not since I was a little girl. Now it was the only place I wanted to be. He was still warm, still breathing, still here. And that was all that mattered.

I gazed through the living room window at the grayness outside, and a pair of sinister, glittering eyes stared back at me.

“Dad!” I shouted, jumping up.

“What?” he asked, startled to his feet. “What is it?”

“Outside! I saw—”

But when I looked at the window again, the eyes had vanished. I walked to the front door, shaking, and yanked it open, met with a swirling wall of wet gray air. In the distance a crow cawed.

“Who’s out there?” I demanded, as my father and Darcy walked up behind me. “Who’s there?”

Silence. Nothing but the hissing of the fog.

“It was probably just a bird or something,” Darcy said, trudging back to her seat.

“This fog can really mess with your imagination,” my dad added, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Come on. Let’s get back to the movie.”

He waited for me to close the door, then walked me back to the couch. We settled back in together, but this time I found I couldn’t relax. While my dad and Darcy watched Superman save the planet, I kept my eyes trained on the window and the swirling fog outside.

Someone had been out there, watching us. I was sure of it. And whoever it was was out for blood.

A merry morning birdsong tugged me from my sleepy state on Saturday. The first thing I noticed was that my face was not on my pillow, but stuck to something grooved—soft but grooved. I blinked open my eyes and looked around, disoriented. The living room. Right. I’d passed out somewhere between Ren getting his butt kicked and…whatever happens after Ren gets his butt kicked. I glanced at the end of the couch. No Darcy. I pulled the corduroy pillow I’d been sleeping on into my lap, then stretched my arms over my head, yawning as I gazed out the window.

It was another beautiful morning in Juniper Landing. Light breeze, sun shining, waves crashing in the distance…

Suddenly, I was sucked backward through the couch and thrown against the wall, all the air knocked out of my lungs.

Sun shining. The sun was shining.

I threw myself off the couch cushions, screaming, “Dad!”

I tripped over an ottoman as I raced for the stairs, and my big toe exploded in pain. Tears burned my eyes as I stumbled forward, shaking, trembling, gasping for air. He wasn’t gone. He couldn’t be gone.

“Dad! Daddy!” I screeched, fumbling up the staircase. I threw open the door to his room.

His bed was made. There were no slippers on the throw rug next to it. No worn novels on the nightstand. No glasses, no coffee mug, no piles of dog-eared manuscript pages. Tears spilling over onto my cheeks, I staggered to the closet and tore it open. Two dozen empty hangers stared back at me. Everything was gone. Everything.

“No!” I shouted, whirling around. “No!”

I ran over to Darcy’s door and reached for the knob, when it suddenly turned and the door swung open. Darcy, wearing a black nightgown, stood before me, her hair in a tangle.

“What are you shouting about?” she demanded through her teeth, her eyes at half-mast.

“Where’s Dad?” I yelled.

There was a long, silent moment as Darcy’s face slowly screwed up in confusion. “Dad?”

She pronounced the word as if she’d never heard it spoken before. Her eyes were a total blank.

My sister had forgotten our father.

“Omigod,” I said under my breath, turning around on knees so weak they buckled. I forced myself to breathe. How could this be happening? I was the one who was supposed to take him. And they’d all promised. No one else was to leave the island. They’d made a pact.

And just like that, it hit me. The pact. Nadia. Nadia had looked so betrayed when the mayor had agreed to my plan. She hadn’t wanted to stop ushering souls. Why? Because if we stopped ushering souls, there would be nothing else to frame me for. It was her all along. She was the one doing all this and trying to pin it on me.