I sighed to myself. Here I was, being crazy, impetuous, and unsafe, or so Himself would say, but I’d still shown up early. At least I hadn’t lost all grasp of my adult responsibilities.

Himself would probably disagree. He tended to disagree with anything I did. My mouth tipped downward into a tired grimace thinking of Himself.

Slick-as-snot divorce lawyer that he was, I should have seen it coming a mile and a half off. Well, that’s not entirely true, I’d seen it coming. What I hadn’t seen was how he’d hung me out to dry. But there you go, that’s what I got for being trusting. A high-speed chase and some assorted hijinks later, here I was back in Savannah, a place I’d spent my childhood loving, a place my grandmother had lived her whole life. A place where bogeymen were real, ghosts could talk to you if you listened closely, and black magic could catch you if you weren’t careful. Or so she’d always said.

I leaned my head against the wrought iron, the coolness of it offsetting the heat of the air, only a little. “Gran, I wish you were here.”

She died six months ago, and the guilt of not being there for her threatened daily to undo me. I’d left at eighteen, told her that I didn’t believe in a shadow world that didn’t exist, and ran as far away as I could. Because that’s what Himself had said, that it was crazy.

She’d told me I was welcome home whenever I needed a safe place to land. She’d loved me unconditionally, and it had taken me years to grow up and realize that.

Because, fool that I was, I’d let Himself convince me that my life had been a lie, his love would save me, and the world was a place governed by unshakeable truths. The first of which was that magic was a lie, and if I believed in it, then I was nothing more than a child. Someone who needed protecting from herself.

Desperate to be normal, I’d . . . I shook my head at the memories. “I knew better,” I whispered to myself.

I damn well knew better.

I’d followed Himself to Seattle and tried to forget it all, tried to forget everything Gran ever taught me. To pretend it wasn’t real. But that’s not how the shadow world worked.

There were shadows everywhere the light touched, and the creatures that hid in them—while not so numerous in Seattle—recognized that I could see them.

My jaw tightened over what he’d done when I’d woken screaming that there was a bogeyman standing over our bed. A bogeyman who laughed at me, chased me onto the street, and through early morning traffic.

Naked.

Screaming.

Someone had taken pictures and I’d made the paper.