Praefatio: A Novel Read online

  Then I was shivering, shaking my head, trying to push away the memory of what I had just seen, vivid as if I had been there. I felt the wind in the air and the fear, like cold pinpricks on my skin. My heart pounded in time with the pounding of Remi’s feet on the frozen earth beneath him. And then it stopped. Remi’s feet—not my heart—I don’t think. I wiped frigid tears with my sleeve. Looking down, I saw that my hands were fists, my knuckles devoid of color, as that of the dead.

  Normal is Relative

  A small voice came from the other side of the two-way mirror. “What just happened? Someone get the power back on in there. Is she OK?”

  “Are you OK to continue, Grace? Do you need a break?” It was Mullane this time.

  I must have blacked out or something. In the darkness, the overhead lights flickered and buzzed in protest, and the video camera’s red light was out. My heartbeat quickened as someone in the room with me whispered, “Memento mori. Respice post te!”

  But there wasn’t anyone there. I knew enough Latin to know the phrase had to do with death, my death to be exact, and felt a sickening sense that whatever had spoken was determined to keep his word.

  The fly from earlier landed on my hand. I considered swatting him for leaving me in the dark, but I preferred the company. “No … I’m okay.” I cleared my throat.

  Just then the lights came on. I looked around, and there was still no one there that I could see. But then, I heard faint breathing, and it wasn’t the fly.

  “Go ahead, Grace. Just finish up now,” Vivienne urged through what I imagined were tight lips.

  ***

  Aside from the visions and ability to levitate things and the voice in my head, I considered myself pretty ordinary. And judging by the two dates I’d had since officially entering the “scene” at age fifteen, my status as ordinary seemed to be well confirmed by the boys at school. Leave it to my mother, Vivienne Lenore Crescent, to give me, Grace Anne Miller, the most ordinary name in the world. Dad, on the other hand, seemed to truly believe I was special.

  “One day, you are going to find out just how special you are,” he would say. “Your life has meaning, Grace Ann Miller, whether you ultimately decide to accept it or not.” He told me that when I was nine years old—the day I’d first heard His voice. Special or not, when I heard the voice for the first time, I locked myself in the closest, blasting music, as loud as it would play, through my headphones. Remi found me hours later, passed out in pee-stained shorts.

  Deep down I knew Dad was right, at least partially. There was something different about me. I was either gifted or crazy, and if it turned out that crazy won out over gifted, well, hiding in my closet seemed like the best solution.

  By the time high school rolled around, I had reconsidered. Perhaps my dad was mistaken. I’d seen the movies and read the books, so I knew the drill. No one was after me, I wasn’t guarding any special jewelry or ancient egg, and no one had invited me to wizard school—yet. Quite frankly, how special could I be? Aside from hearing voices and seeing things, I was as normal as anyone.

  The You Know What Hits the Proverbial Fan

  Remi struggled to divide his attention between music, girls, and hockey. After all, at fourteen, what else is there? He even took Mom’s abandonment of us in stride, saying, “Seriously, Grace. If Mom doesn’t want to be here, there’s not much we can do about it. You can’t make people be what you want them to be. They just end up hating you for it in the end.”

  Remi sounded wise and somewhat melancholy. He held me as my shoulders slumped in a ball of regret, shame, and nothingness. I was more exhausted than sad. I’d expended most of my energy playing Happy Family when she was around.

  “How can you be so cold, so matter of fact?” I sounded whiny, but I couldn’t help it. I fell to the floor, depleted of vigor. It was as though when Mom left, she took most of the energy with her; Dad, Remi, and I had to share what little remained. It had only been two days since she’d left that time.

  Remi sat across from me and stared. We sat in silence until Mr. Larson called us for dinner. No visions, thoughts, or emotions from either of us. Just a shared void.

  Aside from occasional fights with Jenny Larson, and strife in his sorry excuse for a band, Remi was perpetually happy. He never had a bad word to say about anyone, ever. Well, there was that one time when he was little and my dad took us to Chuck E. Cheese’s. Remi kept saying, “That mouse stinks, Daddy. He does. I wanna go home.” Dad was so embarrassed. Other than that, it was not in Remi’s nature to be unkind. And so, the events that followed came as a complete shock.

  Remi was at band rehearsal when it happened.

  After skimming my email, I found I had won the Rwandan lottery, had twenty-one new friend requests, and the government of Sri Lanka had located my long-lost cousin in need of an immediate organ transplant to the tune of fifty thousand dollars. They needed me to wire the funds from my bank account “post haste.”

  And then there was this.

  Subject: Between life and death: Which do you choose?

  Opened with immediate regret.

  “Grace Ann Miller,

  The plan has been set in motion. Join with us and unlimited power will be yours. Side with them, and you will die.”

  Hmm. Not much choice there. Jerks. I stared at that email, not fully discounting the comical nature of its content, despite the fact that it was like no other email I’d ever received. There was something about it that made me think I’d better read it again. After all, it wasn’t every day that I was threatened with death or the choice of unlimited power via email. Bad luck for not forwarding to seven people in the next twenty minutes—sure. Death? Not so much.

  I checked the email properties. Geeky.

  Sent from: [email protected]

  OK, so I’d heard of people hijacking email addresses before. No big deal. Some bozo had hijacked my email and sent me an email with my own freaking email address.

  Sent To: [email protected] (lamest email address ever!)

  CC: [email protected]

  Subject: Saving Grace (OMG. Lame, lame, lame!)

  “Remi,

  Return to your post and leave the rest to us. Join the cause, and they will be spared. If you fight or stay, she will die.”

  Someone was playing a sick joke on both Remi and me. I convinced myself that one of his friends would send me a text within the next few minutes claiming responsibility like stupid terrorist jerks did when they blew stuff up. Hard as they tried to seem like spooky kids, they’d never let me go for too long thinking I was in danger. Remi would come sliding through the door, laughing and begging me not to be upset by his buddy Sean’s latest stunt. I forced myself to ignore the troubling messages.

  I’d been getting loads of friend requests since being named a finalist in the Rock-N-Writing contest. Nearly sixteen thousand people had listened to my online submission. I think Remi secretly wanted me to win so he would have an in at Resolute Records and be able to drop the losers in his current band.

  The biggest-selling artist on their label, Gavin Vault, was to announce the winner in twenty-four hours. The winner was to receive a phone call from Gavin himself. Not that I was excited about that or anything. But winning that contest could have changed everything for me. Funny how I thought the biggest thing that could ever happen to me was winning a songwriting contest. Boy, was I lacking imagination.

  Will I even be alive in twenty-four hours? Surely I was being silly.

  I closed my eyes and tried deep breathing. One. Two. Three. It didn’t work. Return to your post. It was very specific, yet made no sense at all.

  My eyes jolted open at the realization that someone had come into my room. I must have dozed off.

  Light spilled in. Hadn’t the lights been on?

  “Hey, Grace,” Remi managed through a sigh. Something in his tone troubled me. My pulse began to race as Remi scanned the room, taking in the details as if he were seeing it for the first—or last
—time. Had he gotten the email that I’d supposedly sent? Was he thinking what I was thinking? Had he seen my last vision? Remi’s expression filled me with fear.

  He’d always looked like a cherub. Not like a baby, but innocent, untouched by negative things. Remi plopped down on the bed, wiping sandy brown ringlets away from his forehead and leaning on his elbows with his face in his hands. When he was happy, his eyes were the color of a cloudless sky. Any other emotion or a rainy day made them seem grayer. I tried not to notice the dull hue to his eyes that night.

  “You shouldn’t be so down, you know.” I attempted to sound chipper so he wouldn’t notice how effected I was by the emails. “We’re gonna be rich.”

  “Is that so?” he countered, failing to sound chipper as well. I squirmed as discomfort snaked into the room, slithered upward, and wrapped itself around me. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Yep! We won the Rwandan lottery, and I’m gonna split the entire three hundred eighty-eight million with you!”

  My attempt at humor was wasted. Remi’s facial expression was somewhere between fear and amusement, like a child watching a circus clown for the first time, unsure of which emotion to settle into: fear or happiness. In my gut, I knew something was wrong with Remi. With me. With everything. The day I’d hoped would come since age nine was here. I knew at that moment that everything was about to change. That Remi and I were about to find out why we had these abilities, that whatever was happening, that Remi had known all along. And yet, I immediately felt a need to comfort him, to make what he was about to tell me OK for him. For both of us.

  I steadied myself against the impending doom. “You can tell me anything, you know. You look a little green. Maybe you should—” But he was already lying down. I swallowed back a gulp.

  I had never seen him like this: so deep in thought and, from the looks of it, not a good one. He cracked a half-smile. Overwhelmed, I began to cry.

  “I have a strange feeling,” Remi started. He seemed almost in a daze, far away, as if he was seeing something. “Something bad is gonna happen.”

  “What? Why would you say that? Did you see something?” I reached for his hand.

  “It’s the same feeling I had before Dad died.” Remi took my hand in his.

  Tears fell in lines, one after the other, down my face. I began to shake softly. I sat staring at him, and he closed his eyes as if to block unpleasant images from his mind.

  A tear fell from his left eye, still closed. I watched as the singular tear made a slow and deliberate effort down the hills and valleys of his cheek, then jaw line, and thin at his chin. It was as if it was the only tear left in him, or maybe it had been waiting for a moment such as this to fall.

  I clutched my sides, which had begun to ache, afraid to accept what Remi had said.

  The night before Dad died, Remi told me he dreamed Dad had been in a car accident on Reddington Highway. He described in detail the time of day, the weather, the position of the sun and clouds in the sky. What stood out more than anything, he’d said, was the presence of huge, wide-winged birds. I tried to assure him that this was impossible since Dad was away on business and would not be back for two days. I didn’t know then if my attempts to calm him had worked. I ran from the room shortly after his revelation because I was afraid. I couldn’t let him see me that way. I didn’t want him to know the truth. I’d had the same dream.

  The next day, Remi had invited friends over. Jenny Larson and I cleared the table to the sound of both the TV and the boys in the other room.

  “Hey, sis, your phone’s ringing,” Remi called from the living room.

  With a plate in hand, I ran into the living room to get my phone. Remi threw it to me before anyone noticed how quickly he had moved. When had he gotten so fast, so graceful? I was neither of those things, and could either hold the plate or catch the phone. I reached for the phone, and that’s when things started happening in slow motion.

  The plate fell to the floor, breaking into three equal pieces, and the phone ringing stopped.

  I remember the time because I checked the phone to see who’d called. The display said 7:46 p.m., and the caller was Gavin Vault. I gasped. Jenny came running out of the kitchen just as the doorbell rang. But she didn’t come to help me. She ran right past me to Remi’s side. I saw her in my peripheral vision. I pressed the button on my phone to view “missed calls.” There were three from Dad’s friend Sergeant Mullane and none from Gavin Vault. My free hand moved to my chest.

  Remi’s friend Sean hopped over the couch and answered the door. I looked up, then blinked. My head hurt. Dad’s best friend, Sergeant Rocco Mullane, stood in the doorway looking as if all the blood had been drained from his body. The breath I’d been holding escaped. I dropped my phone. He’d called and now he was here, at our front door.

  Something pushed its way into my mind. I pushed it back with all my might.

  I was running out of air; the room was running out of air. I couldn’t breathe.

  He’s not dead.

  His voice echoed in my ears in the same exact moment that I happened to turn my head in the direction of the TV. The gravitational pull made me dizzy. Content, awareness, and acceptance at war with my heart, mind, and body.

  The newscaster and Sergeant Mullane spoke at the same time, but I could not hear Sergeant Mullane. “An unidentified man was killed in a head-on collision on Reddington Highway. Highway Patrol is investigating the fatal crash, including what caused the driver of one of the vehicles to swerve into oncoming traffic.”

  “Dad.”

  My legs gave out from under me as I grabbed at the cross around my neck. Then everything went black.

  It’s All Fun and Games Until Someone Loses a Boyfriend

  The memory of Dad’s funeral now brought back physical pain. We dressed in our best and least festive clothes, listened to everyone talk about how amazing Dad was, pretended we weren’t dying inside ourselves, and waited around while Mom presided over his funeral as if she was the grieving widow.

  Everyone had loved Dad, and so his funeral had to be held in the neighboring town with a church large enough to accommodate everyone. A closed casket meant we had to stare at a photo of Dad, wondering whether he was really inside the cherry casket at all. Remi was as handsome as ever, clothed in a black Armani suit that Mom had given him. Even in grief, Remi was full of light, comforting others who had much less to lose by Dad’s death.

  I watched Mom work the crowd after the services, Mrs. Larson dutifully a few steps behind her trying to mask the grief that threatened to explode from inside her. When everyone had gone, and we were alone in the massive brick church with Dad’s casket, flowers, and giant photo, Mom and Victoria Larson had a surprisingly short and hushed discussion ripe with tension that infected the entire church. After, they found Remi, Jenny, and me seated on the last pew awaiting news of their discussion. As they approached, Mom allowed Mrs. Larson to take the lead position while she stood behind her, something I didn’t understand at the time.

  Then, as if offering news of a second coming, Mrs. Larson smiled, wiped a tear from her tear-stained cheek, and leaned forward to take Remi’s and my hands in hers. Remi and I were to live with the Larsons. Mom was headed back to New York that evening, and we could stay with the Larsons as long as we like. Of course, we were to consider them as family, take as much time as we needed to grieve. She made sure to emphasize that she, Mr. Larson and Jenny would help us in any way they could, even though Mr. Larson had been too sick to attend Dad’s service.

  Mrs. Larson’s face was stretched into an expression that seemed like a combination of pity, duty and sorrow. Once again she would be left to deal with Mom’s mess. She would be left holding the bag while Mom rode off into the sunset gorgeous and unaffected. God knows she didn’t have to take us in. Jenny’s mom, Victoria, had once been my mom’s best friend. But Mom wasn’t satisfied with just winning the state beauty pageant, coming in first to Victoria’s second. She stole Dad, Victoria Lars
on’s then-boyfriend on that very same day. And well, everyone knows what happened after that.

  Praefatio

  Book 3, Chapter 18

  The Angel ascended.

  She loved him with everything that was within her. And he loved her, from before she was born on the earth. But she knew not a time before, only of the present, a new and enlightened time of love and of wonder. And just as her memory faulted on a past love, so was she unaware of the current danger.

  Still, she would be his; the promise had already been made. Silent war raged within him as he sought to protect her from the evil of which he was a part. She was stronger than him, and before long she would assume her rightful place.

  That he Fell to be with her would forever cause great friction in his family.

  When the one she called “brother” unwillingly succumbed, he waited as the very fibers of his being became that which he loathed.

  Dark forces gathered, for she was weak and as of yet unaware of her great power. He who sought to enslave rushed to seize her for the promise of great bounty and riches. He was not alone in this effort. For the one who would subdue her is the one who holds the power.

  Goodbye, Mr. Fluffy Rabbit

  That evening, I’d fallen asleep, happy I was still alive, and Remi was still Remi. From somewhere outside, I heard footsteps, heavy breathing, and growling. First there was a fluttering heat in my stomach like the sudden presence of hundreds of fireflies, flitting and flashing about. Then there was the immediate knowledge that whatever was outside was coming for me. The fluttering gave way to panic as Remi blew through my door.

  “Get up, get up! We have to go. Grace, let’s go! Now!” Remi wasn’t yelling, but determination marked his tone, and he was dressed for the outdoors. I looked at my clock. It was 1:46 a.m.