PROLOGUE

## **AMARA**

The house was quiet, except for the low, jagged sound of my mother.

It was a keening so raw it seemed to vibrate through the very floorboards of the sitting room. I stood frozen in the center of the rug, my arms hanging uselessly at my sides, watching her. She was collapsed, her body folded in a way that looked physically painful, right beside a shape I couldn’t quite make out.

*Mum is crying?* I thought. The observation felt dull and flat, like a radio frequency that hadn't quite tuned in. *Why is she crying like that?* I wondered.

The front door stood wide open, letting in the heavy, humid evening air. A bag of groceries sat abandoned on the entryway table; a carton of eggs tilted precariously on the edge. They must have just walked in. They must have just seen... whatever was on the floor.

My father, Chris, stood a few feet away. He hadn't even taken off his coat. He was perfectly still—a gray monument of a man, his hands curled into white-knuckled fists. He looked like he was trying to hold the walls of the room up with nothing but his gaze.

"What happened?" I asked. My voice was a whisper, but it felt loud in the oppressive silence. "Dad? Is someone hurt?"

He didn’t blink or flinch. He acted like he didn't hear me, if I wasn't so sure I would even conclude he was ignoring me.

I moved closer, my feet feeling strangely weightless against the hardwood. I could hear my mother’s words now, muffled by the carpet she was clutching.

"Amara," she gasped, her breath hitching in a way that sounded like she was choking on her own heart. "My baby... Chris, do something. Call someone. She was just here... she just called me..."

The air in the room turned impossibly cold.

"I’m right here, Mum." I stepped toward her, trying to lean into her line of sight. "Look at me. I’m standing right behind you."

She didn’t turn. She reached out, her fingers hovering inches above the still figure on the floor, but she wouldn't actually touch it—as if touching it would make the nightmare she was seeing permanent.

“Mum, look at me!” I reached out to grab her shoulder, desperate to shake her out of this trance.

**My hand moved through her.**

There was no impact, no resistance. It was like reaching through a trail of smoke. I pulled my hand back, staring at my fingers. They looked solid. I could see the lines on my palm, the pale half-moons of my nails. But when I pushed my hand toward the wool of my father’s coat, it slid through the fabric, through his arm, through the space where his heart should be.

Panic began to boil in my gut. My brain scrambled for logic. *How was this even happening?* I didn't have an explanation for it.

*Is this the experiment, Dad? Is this the trick?* I muttered.

Dad dealt with physics and stuffs, was this what this was about.

I moved around them, desperate to catch a glimpse of what they were seeing, and finally, I forced myself to look down.

**The body was lying at the foot of the stairs.**

I noticed the clothes first. A cream blouse. I frowned, looking at my own chest. It was the same fabric with same delicate pearl buttons. Then I saw the arm, bent at an awkward, unnatural angle. On the wrist was a silver bracelet, the charms tangled together—the one Antonio had given me for my thirtieth birthday.

My stomach turned over. I fought the urge to look at the face, my mind throwing up walls of denial—*it’s a mannequin, I thought or maybe it’s a twin, it’s a cruel trick of the light.* It had to be something else.

This couldn't be me.

But then I saw the mole. Just beneath the left ear.

The world tilted. That was me. That was my face, pale and wrong, my eyes half-open and clouded like windows in winter. I was the reason the groceries were abandoned. I was the reason my mother was breaking apart on the floor.

**I was dead.**

“No!” I screamed, the sound tearing through my ghost of a throat. “I’m right here! I’m still here!”

But they remained locked in their grief. No one looked up. My words didn't even stir the dust in the air.

Suddenly, the silence shattered.

I heard footsteps thundered up the porch steps. Antonio burst through the open door, breathless, clutching a roll of fairy lights as if they were a lifeline. He skidded to a halt, his eyes darting from my parents to the stairs.

The lights hit the floor with a dull, plastic thud.

"What—" He moved toward them, his face contorting into a mask of horror that looked perfect. "What happened? I just left to get these... I was only gone ten minutes!"

He didn't wait for an answer nor did he check for a pulse.

"Did she slip?" Antonio asked, his voice cracking as he looked toward the staircase. "The stairs... oh God, did she fall down the stairs?"

I froze, watching him. He was already providing the answer. He was already shaping the story before a single doctor or policeman had even arrived.

Sasha, my sister appeared in the doorway a second later. Her scream was a sharp, jagged blade that cut through the room. She rushed to my mother’s side, her face already wet with tears. Antonio dropped to his knees, pulling them both into his arms. To anyone looking in, it was a portrait of a family destroyed by tragedy.

But as Antonio buried his face in my mother’s shoulder, his eyes stayed open. He looked across the room at Sasha.

It was a look that lasted less than a second—a cold, sharp moment of recognition. Sasha gave the smallest, nearly imperceptible nod.

At first it didn't make sense but then, the memory came back, crashing through the fog of my death. The bedroom door swinging open. The golden afternoon light. Sasha’s hand on Antonio’s back in our bed. And then the feeling of his palms—flat, hard, and desperate—slamming into my spine at the top of the stairs.

I looked at him—my husband, the man currently "comforting" my mother. I looked at my father, the silent anchor standing over them, his eyes fixed on the stairs with a distant, calculating flicker of doubt.

The cold in the room didn't feel like death anymore.

**It felt like a countdown to revenge.**