Until I Disappeared Novels & Stories

"What kind of help?" "She'd ordered some necklace from a jeweler — custom piece, silver thread — and the guy disappeared with her deposit. She asked me to track him down." I repeated it back to make sure I'd heard right. "Jewelry." "Yes." I had been lying in bed with a fever of a hundred and three. He had been chasing down someone's missing jewelry order. "Got it," I said. I looked away. "It's fine." He took my hand in his. "Before the Turning, I'm not going anywhere. I mean it."

Weakness wastes time. I press my forehead to my knees. Think. I can’t outrun them forever. I need somewhere invisible. Somewhere forgotten. Somewhere like me. The orphanage taught me one thing well how to disappear. I push myself up again, gritting my teeth through the agony, and limp toward the industrial district where no one looks twice at broken girls limping through the rain. Behind me, unseen but relentless, the hunt continues. And somewhere in this city I know it now with terrifying certainty

I swallowed hard. “I saw…” My voice trailed off. Because how was I supposed to explain that? How was I supposed to say I met myself and she said she won’t let me leave next time like that was normal? “I don’t know,” I said instead. And that was the truth. At least part of it. His jaw tightened slightly. “You disappeared,” he said. “One second you were there then it was like something pulled you out of this world.” My chest tightened. “That’s not far from what it felt like.”

My mother reached over then and touched my face briefly the way she used to when I was younger and sick and pretending I wasn’t. “We hated watching you disappear from us,” she said softly. That one almost broke me completely. Because I didn’t realize until now that that’s exactly what I did. I disappeared. Not physically. Just slowly, quietly, one missed dinner at a time. I swallowed hard and looked away toward the windows. The city lights blurred faintly against the glass. “I thought you blamed me too,” I admitted. “For what?” my father asked. “For not seeing it.” He looked genuinely confused by that.

I hope we never meet again. As soon as I hit the water, I swam quickly towards the shore. There, in the blind spot of Fenris and Caspian, a black SUV was waiting for me. High above, the gut-wrenching screams of Fenris and Caspian echoed as they scrambled frantically toward the edge of the cliff. "EMMA!!!"

“I just… want to disappear.” The words slipped out. Quiet. But real. Too real. Tears filled my eyes again. I blinked, trying to stop them, but they kept falling. This time, I didn’t wipe them away. I didn’t care anymore. My hair fell around my face. Messy. Lifeless. Just like me. I knew how I looked. I knew I had stopped trying. But what was the point? The woman I used to be… felt far away now. Gone.

My husband said he was going to Montreal to handle a deal at the port. I went to the hospital alone for my eleven-week test results, planning to surprise him when he got home. Four years earlier, I’d taken a knife to the stomach protecting him. After two surgeries to repair the damage, I’d finally gotten pregnant, but I’d waited until the doctors said everything looked good before letting myself celebrate. As I passed the maternity ward, laughter drifted through an open door. “Look at them. The girl’s all Celeste, but that boy is his daddy’s double.” “You stayed with her through labor all night, Dante. Now you’ve got one of each. What more could you want?” “Their mother’s safe. That’s all I

“On the night Mrs. Alberti disappeared, an unregistered black sedan was seen about seven kilometers from the cliff.” Jonathan’s head came up sharply. “What do you mean?” His right-hand man placed a photograph on the desk. The image was badly blurred, revealing little more than the outline of a black sedan. Jonathan stared at it. “Find out everything you can about that car.” He rose abruptly from his chair. “Start now.” “Yes, sir.” His right-hand man had almost reached the door when Jonathan stopped him. “Wait.” Jonathan’s breathing had quickened, and something that had been absent from his eyes for three months was slowly returning.

The second I was alone in the bathroom, I dialed Cleo with shaking hands, the phone pressed so hard against my ear. She picked up on the third ring. "Rhea? What's…” "Sir is going to be so disappointed in me." My voice cracked apart the moment I started talking, four years of careful invisibility suddenly feeling like it was collapsing in on itself in real time. "I've been so careful. So careful, for four years, and now it's just, everyone, everyone knows my name now, Cleo, everyone's looking at me and I don't know how to make it stop…”

“That was the point.” “The point of being kicked?” “The point of being invisible.” I tried to smile and it wobbled. “I spent nine years learning to disappear. I hated every minute. But look, Briar. We just walked through a border full of Titus’s friends, and they did not see me once.” She stared at me. Slowly, her anger melted into something like awe. “You used it.” “I used it.” The words felt strange and wonderful in my mouth. “My old shame did something useful for once.”