Prologue
Shadow throbbed, twisting and
irregular, in the corners of the hospital room. Seething with
welcome, the ribbons of darkness crept past the cluster of too
cheerful sunflowers on the far table, through the quietly humming
machines, toward the bed where Kathleen lay.
Not long now. Shadow had always been
close, but soon the dark stuff would claim her.
Beyond the filmy layers, on the Other
side, the knotted and craggy boughs of Twilight trees swayed. Fae
whispers rose in an inarticulate hiss and
tick as they drew near to the thin veil
between the Shadowlands and the mortal world, looking on. Waiting
in heightening anticipation.
Not long at all.
Kathleen squeezed her sister’s hand,
urgency giving her the strength to make the squeeze hard. She drew
deep on the oxygen at her nose and said, “Don’t let them kick you
out of the room.”
Maggie’s lips went tight. Her O’Brien
red hair had gone frizzy and she had more makeup under her eyes
than on top. Her sister reached above the hospital bed with her
free hand and switched the light off.
Shadow coursed into the void, but
Maggie, as ever, was oblivious to the churn around her. “We’ve been
over this,” she said. “You need to get some sleep
now.”
In fact, Kathleen could barely keep her
eyes open. With Shadow so close, so intent, she needed to be rested
and ready for when the time came, but getting Maggie’s cooperation
was too important; it was part of being ready, like the intensive
care neonatal room, prepared for delivery, the on-call doctors, and
the machines to warn the nurses if she declined rapidly. All the
rest meant nothing without Maggie’s agreement. “You need to be
there to make sure that the baby comes first.”
“I hate it when you talk like that.”
Maggie looked away.
Lately Maggie couldn’t meet her gaze,
which was why Kathleen needed this last assurance. Just in case.
“You know it’s what I want.”
The baby’s heartbeat shush-shush-shushed rapidly over the monitor. Kathleen
focused on the sound and used its promise to draw another difficult
breath.
She could see Maggie’s profile: her
sister’s jaw clenched, her throat working silently.
When Maggs finally spoke, her voice was
rough. “And what about you, huh? You can’t think that . . . that .
. . I’ll just let you . . . You’re my sister.” Maggie braced her free hand on her knee and
worked for breath as well, lowering herself into the
chair.
“I’ll be okay.” He’ll
be waiting for me.
Maggie turned back, words tumbling in a
sob-clogged accusation. “You could fight.
You could try to get through this. At least
you could try.”
Kathleen inhaled through the tightness
in her chest to speak. “I am fighting. I
am trying.” She was giving everything she
had to see her daughter safely into the world. She had no illusions
about what would come after. How could she with the room darkening,
the Shadows reaching farther with each passing moment? But she had
no fears. Not with him near. Her gaze
flicked to Shadow, searching for him in the glossy layers. When she
didn’t find him, she returned her attention to her
sister.
Maggie frowned hard, shaking her head.
Eyes blazing. “Not for yourself, you’re not.”
Kathleen heaved for air again. “Maggs,
you know this is for me, too. This is better than I could have ever
hoped. I’m happy. Please let me be happy.”
How could she possibly make her sister
understand when it was so hard to speak? When the dark stuff filled
her lungs and choked her breath? Her own heart monitor started
jumping, its beeps closer together. Likewise, the baby’s
shush-shush increased, the digital number
climbing.
Instantly, Maggie was on her feet.
“Kathy, I’m so sorry. Honey, just breathe. In and out. In and out.”
She exaggerated the action on her behalf.
Kathleen concentrated on the flow at
her nostrils, willing the good air to feed her blood, move her
heart, and keep her baby growing for just a little while longer.
Twenty-five weeks was the golden number, but every day gave her
baby girl a better chance to survive. Every day was another 3
percent, that’s what the doctor said.
Maggie visibly swallowed, her face
reddening as she nodded and blinked back tears. “Okay. Don’t worry
about it. The baby first, like we agreed.” She swiped at her cheek.
“I swear I’ll be here. I won’t let them budge me from your
side.”
“The baby’s side,” Kathleen corrected
and managed a smile, her eyes fluttering closed. With Maggie’s
promise, her hold on wakefulness weakened and sleep sucked her
down.
“But I’m going to hope for you, too,”
Maggs said, her voice following Kathleen into slumber, the firm
grip on her hand never loosening.
Flying. Her favorite
kind of dream.
Kathleen skimmed the
topmost branches of the trees—higher!—then
burst out over the eastward cliff of Sugar-loaf Mountain to careen
into a turn above a storybook patchwork landscape. The air smelled
sharp and summer sweet as she rushed headlong into the dazzling
blue. She filled her eyes with the color until her heart could
hardly bear more.
Dizzy, she cast her
gaze downward, to the rocks she’d picnicked at with her family when
she was little. The scene was recalled in wondrous detail from the
murk of her memory. Lush trees, dark green. Screaming bugs. Grassy
patches, with large, white boulders. Rocky, rooty trails leading
off in a couple directions.
Mom was laying out
their lunches, waving away interested bees, while Dad dumped excess
water from their cooler. Her sister, Maggie, inched closer and
closer to the steep drop, yelling toward the woods, “Kathleen! I
can see our house!”
The dream suddenly
morphed, and Kathleen was seven years old, headed on foot into the
tall red and white oaks on the mountain. Old, dusty leaves crumbled
underfoot. The fragrant, humid air cooled as she moved deeper into
the forest. Her heart skittered in her chest and stars pricked into
her vision, but she didn’t care. The trees were sparkling and
sighing and swaying. Like magic.
“Stay away from the
edge, Maggie,” Dad called from somewhere behind
her.
Kathleen quickened her
pace, picking her way over the jut and hump of tree roots. If Mom
or Dad saw her, they’d make her go back. Sit down.
Rest.
She was sick of rest.
Of new treatments for her heart. Ever since she was born, something
had been wrong with it, a condition named
with big words she never wanted to learn. But she knew what they
meant: She might never grow up.
It was much better to
explore the woods than sit bored. She’d have all the time in the
world to sit bored at home. Later. This was her chance. How deep
could she go before they’d come after her?
Excitement made her
breath short, her heart glub-glub before
settling again. An adventure at last!
The air around her
shimmered. The shadows shifted from patchy grays and blacks to
purples and blues. The colors of a fairy tale. Beckoning. Drawing
her into a story.
I’m a princess, lost in a magical
forest.
She stumbled on a loop
of root. Her heart glubbed again. Once,
hard. She had to check her breath, but she wasn’t going back. Not
yet.
Silvery, tinkling
music, like from her jewelry box, filtered through the trunks. It
was that Disney song she loved that her mom said was really
Tchaikovsky.
Coming from . . . that
way . . .
She veered off the
trail onto the leafy, trippy ground. At the edge of her sight,
strange forms darted among the trees. Breathing became easier, the
air sweeter. Made her head buzz.
She lifted the skirt of
her gold, bejeweled dress. Because that’s what she’d be wearing.
Gold and jewels and a tiara with diamonds sparkling
bright.
Deeper, deeper into the
pretty purple. Her heart was strong here. This was where she’d meet
her prince.
Within the darkening
trees, the shadows unfolded like shiny black crows’wings, and there
he stood. He had long, silky black hair. He was tall and had way
more muscles than her dad. His eyes were black-black in a sharp and
serious face, but he didn’t scare her. He could never scare her.
He’d been there all her life, guarding her
dreams.
Her
Shadowman.
“Kathleen, love, go
back,” he said, voice urgent.
“But I feel so good. I
want to play!”
The shadows behind him
started to turn slowly, bruising with stormy eruptions. His dark
cloak trembled and snapped on the surface. Tendrils of darkness
curled around his legs and arms. One inky strand circled his
neck.
“Kathleen, you must
turn back now,” he said. “I can’t hold Twilight from you
long.”
“But it’s so pretty
here.”
The trees shivered in
the gathering storm. Chattering whispers filled the air. And at the
edges of her vision, swift, glittering movement among the trunks.
Faeries, everywhere.
“It’s a lie to trick
and take you before it is time,” he said. “Wake up!” The shadows
surged, and Shadowman flung out his arms to hold them back. One of
his hands gripped a long staff, topped by a curved blade that
glinted in the colored light. A scythe.
Death.
Oh, God! The baby!
Kathleen whipped
around, looking for the mountain, the rocks, her parents. But she
was in her hospital gown, her bare feet shuffling in the velvet
earth.
Trees surrounded her,
dark trunks thickening, branches stretching into a tight, dense
canopy, its scent intoxicating, muddling her mind. Where to
go?
“Run!” Shadowman
shouted, his voice tight with strain.
Kathleen bolted, the
frigid darkness licking at her heels and chilling her bare legs.
But there were only trees and trees and more trees, pressing in to
block her path.
Too soon! She had to
get back. Had to deliver her baby before Shadow could take her. She
had to find a way back to life, if only for a few
moments.
“Maggie!” she
screamed.
“I’m right here,” Maggie said. “I won’t
leave the baby. I’ll keep my promise.”
Pressure crushed Kathleen’s chest. She
gulped for air but was drowning anyway. Her heart clamored wildly.
No amount of forced calm would stop it.
The hospital room was a chaos of
movement. Nurses, doctors, blurring around her. Maggie was a flash
of red hair to her upper right. The young doctor, Cotter, was
there, a green mask over his face, gloved hands lifted, waiting. A
new machine was wheeled into position next to her and a strange man
tugged on her IV.
“. . . acute pulmonary edema . .
.”
She was lying flat, where before she
had been at a slight incline. Something pricked, burned. “The
baby,” she said, but her voice was a rasp. The
baby!
“. . . congestive heart failure . .
.”
“There was no way this baby was ever
going to make it to term,” a nurse was saying. “Someone with her
condition never should have gotten pregnant.”
“Shut up,” Maggie bit back. “You don’t
know anything.”
Kathleen’s vision sharpened as the
forest grew around her. Twilight had followed her into wakefulness
as her crossing neared. Trees speared the hospital room, floor to
ceiling, invisible to all but her. A woodsy scent filled her nose
and soft fae voices whispered excitedly. It was a place of magic
and dreams, of fantasy and nightmare. There was no escaping its
Shadows, not for anyone. No eluding it for long, even with
Shadowman holding the darkness back. Everyone eventually had to
travel the dark tunnel formed by its trees.
She’d been at its brink all her
life.
“Kathleen,” Shadowman said, a murmur at
her ear. Of course he would be near.
“Not yet,” Kathleen begged soundlessly.
Heart failing, her lungs filled with fluid. “Please.”
Maggie leaned in, face blotchy and
white. “Honey, it’s time. The baby needs to come out now. Stay with
me, okay? I need you, sis.”
She veered out of view as the doctor
brushed something across the mound of Kathleen’s stomach. The world
blurred as the colors of Twilight became more distinct—deep
vermillion, raging magenta, violent indigo. Static roared in her
ears. Her heart clutched. Sensation both numbed and heightened in a
frightening electric fission. A change.
Not pinned to a table. Not drowning.
Not gasping for air.
Held.
Shadowman’s arms tightened around her.
Touching her for the second time in her life. His skin brushed
hers. His hair tangled on her shoulder. His breath was warm at her
neck.
Their first union had led to this
moment, when he had crossed to her world, disregarding fae laws so
they could be together, to touch just once. They’d stolen time,
defied Fate, and created new life. She had never regretted it. Not
even now.
With the Twilight forest behind her,
Kathleen looked on the world through a thickening veil. Her mortal
body lay collapsed on the operating table, eyes glassy, unfocused.
A doctor worked at her belly. His hand disappeared into her
skin.
“. . . she’s in asystole. . .
.”
“Kathy!”
The doctor eased a small form out of
her womb. The baby filled his palm, her skin tinged slightly blue
and smudged with a whitish paste. Her face was scrunched,
beautiful, while her pink tongue touched air.
Her baby. Her little love. Talia.
A wail rose in Kathleen’s throat like
gorge. She reached out her arms, straining toward her child.
So small! Kathleen’s fingertips grazed the
mortal world.
But Shadowman held her tight against
the wall of his chest. Into her ear, he said, “Forgive
me.”
“Please let me hold her.” The
separation from her child was a vacuum of pain in her chest. Every
nerve screamed in protest. Her marrow burned while her skin went
frigid. There was no heart pain like this scoring need, no injury
or disease more vicious than tearing her from her
child.
His lips moved against her cheek. “You
know I cannot.”
How could he be so cruel? Did his cold
fae blood spare him this pain? The child was his, too.
Kathleen turned to face Death, bitter
recriminations on her tongue. Shadowman looked down on her, his
gaze filled with sadness.
“She’ll live,” he said. “Even so small,
her lifeline is strong.”
“I want her. She’s mine. Don’t take me now,” Kathleen said. But Death had
walked by her side since she was born, holding back the Shadows.
She’d always known that one day she’d have to cross. She’d known
that bearing her child would part the veil. She’d fought for this
very moment.
Kathleen whirled back to view the
receding world. Maggie was standing sentry next to the nurse,
watching her siphon mucus out of the baby’s nose. Prick for blood.
Enclose her in a preemie unit. Her sister looked back once toward
the action at the operating table, face gray, eyes aged, but she
followed the child out of the room.
“The babe is strong,” Shadowman said.
“Like her mother.”
Kathleen would have crumpled to the
ground without his firm hold. “I want to know her. I want to be
with her. It’s not fair!”
She trembled uncontrollably, gripping
his arms for support.
Shadowman was quiet too long, and a new
horror bloomed in Kathleen’s mind. She went very still. “Is she
like you? Or like me?”
The fae were bound to the Between
world, the twilight Shadowlands. They couldn’t exist on Earth, or
cross Beyond, like humankind, to the Afterlife.
“She’s both. A half-breed. Our daughter
has a foot in each world,” he said. “No one knows what she will
become.”
“So I may have lost her
completely?”
“I don’t know.”
“And when I cross, I’ll lose you,
too?”
His silence answered her.
Pain turned to rage. Strength surged
within her. “Nuhuh. No way. I’ll have you both.”
“I warned you before.” His face was in
her hair, and she knew he was memorizing her. Taking everything he
could before he passed her on to the Hereafter. The trees around
them were already stretching into a dark tunnel to oblivion. They
had only moments left.
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to accept
it.”
She felt a sad chuckle against her
body. “Your spirit has always awed me.”
“I’m not letting this
happen.”
“It has already happened.” He took her
face in his hands, traced her lips with his thumb. “It is the way
of the three worlds.”
Kathleen shook her head. “I was
supposed to die when I was a kid, and I lived to bear my own,” she
said, “so I think I can handle this. What we need is a
plan.”
“How I love you.” His gaze searched her
face, fierce longing tugging at his black eyes.
“The most important thing first: You
look after our girl. Keep her safe.”
Just uttering those words sent fresh
pain roaring through her.
He put a hand to her chest, as if to
stop the hurt. “Shhh. Yes. How could I not?”
Faery whispers rose on all sides. The
air thickened with magic. Kathleen felt Shadowman shift, drawing
his cloak around her. They turned together to face the dark canopy,
the tunnel to forever. A bright spark glimmered in the distance.
The Afterlife.
Kathleen steeled her nerve. “And I’ll
find a way back to you both.”