Sixteen-year-old Emma Hawthorne struggles to hide a life-long ability to pick up people's emotions and memories like radio waves. But when she discovers her best friend's lifeless body in the river, her own grief makes resisting the constant bombardment even harder.
Unable to shake her conviction
that the drowning wasn't an accident, Emma plunges into a lonely search for the
truth. Her investigation attracts a strange man named Patrick, whose memories
she suspects hold the clue she needs. But Patrick’s control of his emotions is
unlike anything she’s ever experienced and she’ll need to get closer if she
wants answers – if she can get over the fact that he terrifies her.
When Emma does unearth Patrick's
disturbing link to her friend's drowning, he proves even more dangerous than
she imagined. Patrick, part of an underground society of supernaturally altered
humans known as the Alterae, feeds on the souls of others--and Emma's empathic
soul is an irresistible morsel. If she wants to escape Patrick’s
deepening hold, she’ll have to learn to use her ability as a weapon before she loses her sanity – or her life.
---
Chapter 1
Lights flashed through the night, painting the woods in red and blue long after the sirens fell silent. Water dripped from Emma’s hair, trailing down the blanket wrapped around her and collecting in a puddle at her feet. She clutched her knees to her chest, captivated by each drip.
Her wet jeans clung to her legs and her thin tank top left her too exposed. She shivered, as much from shock as cold, and the rough wool of the blanket scratched at her raw skin.
She pulled the blanket tighter, as if it could ward off the sting of the emotions pressing against her. Her freakish sensitivity picked up the disappointment of the EMTs for arriving too late, the drive of the police officers to find answers, the shock of the bystanders clustered behind the crime scene tape, mostly neighbors dressed in pajamas but unable to ignore the spectacle.
Even if she hadn’t found the body, the confusing jumble of emotions would’ve been too much. Even if it hadn’t been her best friend.
“Miss?”
Emma’s head snapped up and she stared at the police officer. “What?” Her dry eyes burned, but she refused to cry. She couldn’t give in to her own pain or she’d lose it completely. Better to feel nothing, to absorb nothing, than to let the emotions take over.
“Why were you in the woods this late at night?” he repeated. Even crouching, he towered over her, the dark blue of his uniform blending with the night.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she said, rocking back and forth a little. “So I took a walk.”
“Do you know what the victim...?” He paused to look at his notes. “Lily Grayson. Do you know what Lily was doing out here in the woods?”
Victim. The word left Emma winded. She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit someone or break something – anything to make him take back that word.
But she’d already screamed until her voice gave out. Instead, she shook her head, digging her toes into the dirt to anchor herself. “This is where she comes to be alone.”
The officer’s pen scratched against the notebook propped on his knee. “Tell me what you saw when you got here. What made you look in the river?”
Unbidden, an image rose before her. Emma squeezed her eyes shut to block out the vision, but the nightmare remained. Lily under the surface of the water, like Ophelia caught in the current. Her black, empty eyes stared at nothing. The golden strands of her hair spread around her head like the rays of a halo in a Renaissance painting.
Emma fought against the panic squeezing her chest. It was just a dream. A terrible, horrifying dream. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t hurt her. She repeated the words drilled into her brain. The nightmares aren’t real. They can’t hurt me.
She’d almost learned to believe them.
Almost.
But this time it was real. Lily had drowned. The nightmare had become reality.
If only Emma had said something. If only she’d reached the river earlier. If only –
“Miss?”
She sucked in her breath, jarred back to reality. “I...” She stared straight ahead. “I tried to get her out, but she wasn’t breathing. I tried CPR, but it didn’t work. I tried...”
“You did the right thing,” the officer said. She sensed heartbreak brewing under his calm voice, feel some deeper sorrow despite his steady gaze. “But she’d been in there a while. There’s nothing you could have done.” He touched her arm, a simple gesture meant to console.
His hand grazed a bare spot of skin between her tank top and the blanket and Emma winced. His proximity was enough for her to pick up on what he felt, to get a feel for the memories lingering just below the surface of his mind, but with that touch, it all coursed through her like poison curdling her blood. The pain of old wounds, of another girl, another drowning. Someone he’d loved and lost. Each of his emotions flowed into Emma, stronger than her own.
“Where are your parents?” he said, having no idea of his effect on her. No one ever knew. How could they?
She bit the inside of her cheek, letting the physical pain mute the emotions raging throughout her body until they dispersed again. She lifted a shaking hand to point at where her parents waited on the other side of the tape.
The officer stood and shoved his notebook back into a pocket. “I’m sorry.”
Emma knew he meant it.
He walked toward the officers and crime scene techs still gathered beside the river. Someone had set up work lamps, flooding the riverbank with light.
Emma needed to call Katy and Damian. Their friends needed to hear it from her. Not from some stranger or the newspaper or an officer showing up at their doors.
But she didn’t have the words. Beside, her cellphone lay somewhere at the bottom of the river, useless and destroyed. Like her.
She waited until she was certain no one was watching and shrugged off the blanket. She had to get away.
The woods sloped upwards, away from the river. Away from the people and the emotions and the questions. She hurried on, picking up speed and tossing leaves behind her. Branches tore at her face and hair, but she kept running.
Beyond the trees, she reached a crest overlooking the city and stopped short. The wind caught her dark hair, twisting it into damp, tangled tendrils. Below her, West River looked peaceful, untainted by tragedy.
The college rose from the farthest end of the town, silhouetted against the sky. Hundreds of yellowish lights twinkled, marking out houses and businesses and streets. Through it all snaked the river, cold and black and deadly, reflecting the glow of the full moon.
How the hell did Lily end up in the river?
“Emma?” Mom’s panic reverberated through the woods.
Emma clenched her fists, bracing for her parents’ emotions to reach her. She’d given them every reason to freak out, disappearing without a word. But their hovering didn’t help. It never had. She needed space.
Her parents didn’t even know the worst of it. They knew about the nightmares. She couldn’t hide those after she started to wake up screaming as a kid.
But they had no idea how strong her sensitivity was, no idea she picked up the emotions of everyone around her, unable to tune out the constant static. No idea of the kind of weight she carried around because of it.
And she hoped they never would.
Her parents broke through the tree line, anxiety radiating around them.
“Oh, Emma,” Mom said, reaching for her.
Emma shook her head and backed away, arms wrapped tight around her body. “I have to be alone. Just leave me alone.”
“We’re not leaving you out here,” Dad said, his voice still and deep, the same voice he used to calm her back to sleep after a nightmare.
“I can’t...” Her words faltered and she stumbled away, deaf to her parents’ pleading. “I have to go home.”
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