Chapter One

I had found my way to the place the dead speak of in hushed tones—the threshold where breath ends and something else begins.

I signed away my ability to love in exchange for one chance to come back.

Watching my parents walk the girl through the front door again, I feel nothing of the madness that had torn me open the first time around.

This life over again: my parents' indifference, my brother's contempt, my fiancé's betrayal.

None of it can touch me now.

So then why are they all holding me, crying like that—like something precious is already gone?

---

"Rory."

Fingers closed around my arm.

"Hey—Rory." Ethan's voice, impatient and lit up with excitement. "Why are you just standing there? She's almost here. Come downstairs with me."

The name landed like a stone dropped into still water.

I had spent close to seven years not being called that.

I turned.

Ethan stood beside me—twelve years old again, slight and bright-eyed in a blazer that looked almost comically proper for a boy his size. He was staring at the entryway below with barely-contained anticipation, one hand still gripping my arm.

I looked down at that hand.

Long fingers. Clean knuckles. The hand of a child, still unmarked by everything it would one day do.

What rose in my memory had nothing to do with this.

I could still feel it—the shape of his palm connecting with my face. The sound of it. The particular force that had snapped my head sideways and left a mark that yellowed over three days.

I stepped back and pulled free.

"Hey—" Ethan let go, startled. He looked at me the way people do when they're certain they've missed something obvious. "Rory, what's the matter with you?"

"Don't grab me."

"I wasn't grabbing you." He tilted his head. "Did something happen? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine."

"Then don't look at me."

"Rory." His voice shifted—lower, the particular tone he used when he thought he was being reasonable. "I'm literally just trying to get you to come downstairs. What's going on?"

"Nothing is going on." I met his eyes steadily. "I said I don't like being grabbed. That's a normal thing to say. Can we move on?"

He opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again.

The front door swung wide before he found anything to say.

"Ethan! Rory!" My mother's voice floated up through the house, bright and round with a warmth I hadn't heard in a long time. "Come down—we brought her home! Come meet your sister!"

Ethan's face transformed instantly.

"Coming!" He was already moving, whatever he'd been about to say to me abandoned without a second thought. He took the staircase at a run, blazer flapping, not once looking back.

I stayed where I was.

"Rory, come on! Don't keep her waiting!" my father called from below.

"She's not waiting, Gabriel, stop rushing her," my mother said, and then, softer, angled toward someone else: "That's your sister, up there. She'll come down. Don't mind the delay—she's just a little quiet."

A new voice, small and carefully arranged:

"Did I do something? She doesn't seem happy that I'm here."

"Of course not, sweetheart." My mother's tone folded into something gentler, something I hadn't heard directed at me in years. "She's just adjusting. Give her a little time."

"Rory's like that sometimes," Ethan added, already fully absorbed in the scene below. "Don't take it personally. She'll be fine once she gets used to you."

"Rory!" my father called again, louder. "We're all down here!"

I didn't answer.

From the landing I had a clear view of the four of them gathered in the warm light of the foyer—my father's broad frame, my mother's smile, Ethan crouching to say something that earned a small, careful laugh from the girl standing between my parents.

The girl glanced up at the staircase.

Round face. Wide, guileless eyes. An expression of shy gratitude arranged with a precision I could now recognize for exactly what it was.

I pressed my palm flat against my sternum.

Strange.

There was something there—faint, like an echo, like static buzzing softly under skin.

But the other thing was gone. The feeling I had carried beneath my ribs through all the worst years of my last life. The one that lived just below the surface and felt, in the darkest hours, like someone drawing a blade slowly, deliberately, between my bones.

Gone.

I lowered my hand.

Good.