When her mom died she had found it hard to quantify the loss and understand what had happened. Her dad had talked of her going to heaven, though he’d never really believed that and neither did Sammi. It was just a thing adults said to kids. It wasn’t that strange explanation that had confused her, however, but the suddenness of absence. One day her mom was there, the next she was gone, she would never see, touch, or speak to her again. That had been a strange concept for her to grasp. Her mom had always been there for her, a presence in her life even when she was not in the immediate vicinity. She was a very personal gravity, a star around which Sammi orbited. Her death had taken that star away and negated the weight of her presence, sending Sammi into free-fall.

Her dad had saved her from falling too far, even though his own grief had been crippling. Now he was gone too. Sammi had been made to grow up quickly, and while her entire safety net had been ripped away, she’d then been opened to the world of the Kin.

The strange power she felt growing inside her was staggering, and yet she could not help feeling that it was gradually scorching away whatever it was that made her Sammi. Her life was bleeding away, sucked down by that power and let loose into the vast open space surrounding it. There was nothing she could do to hold it back. She could only make the most of things while she was still here.

I never wanted to be a fairy, she thought, and she chuckled, because what little girl could honestly say that?

“You okay?” Angela asked. Her aunt had stepped forward to help her when everything seemed lost, and in her eyes Sammi often saw a reflection of the woman her mom had been. Even though the sisters had not been close, and had spent long periods not communicating, the childhood they’d spent together meant that they’d had more in common than either of them would have admitted.

“I’m fine,” Sammi said. They both knew that she was not.

“There’s something coming,” Angela said. “A Kin. Vince says he knows it, and he doesn’t think it’ll hurt us.”

“I sensed it a while ago,” Sammi said. “I don’t know if it means harm. I don’t know everything.”

“I’m sorry,” Angela said.

Sammi hadn’t meant to sound harsh. The more she felt her senses expanding with the fairy magic settling around her, the more they would ask of her. She wasn’t bitter about that, and she understood, but it hurt. It hurt all the time.