Excerpt:
When her name was called, she walked across the stage on autopilot, shook hands with people whose faces she would remember forever but whose words disappeared into the white noise of her racing thoughts. The diploma felt thin and insubstantial in her hands, a piece of paper that was supposed to represent the culmination of twelve years of education but felt more like a participation trophy.
From the audience, Charles applauded with the kind of fierce pride that made her chest tighten. Beside him, Katy dabbed at her eyes with a tissue, playing the role of surrogate mother with the same dedication Elizabeth would have brought to the moment.
Elizabeth should be here, Alexis thought, and for the first time the grief hit her with full force. Not the numb acceptance that had carried her through the past few days, but a raw, violent sense of loss that made breathing difficult.
Her mother had planned for this moment. Had bought the dress that had hung in Alexis’s closet, had made reservations at Alexis’s favorite restaurant for the celebration dinner they would never have. Had died on a mountain road before she could see her daughter graduate.
The unfairness of it burned through Alexis like acid, and she felt power stirring in response to her emotional state. The air around her began to shimmer, and she gritted her teeth against the urge to let that power loose, to channel her grief into something that could remake the world according to her will.
Control, she told herself. Not here. Not now.
By the time the ceremony ended, and families began gathering for photos, Alexis had managed to lock her abilities down to a low simmer. But the effort left her feeling hollow, like she’d spent the past two hours holding her breath.
“Pictures?” Charles asked as they met up outside the gymnasium.
“Sure.” She submitted to the ritual, standing with Jamie and various classmates while parents and siblings documented the moment for posterity. But her attention kept drifting to the crowd, searching for faces that didn’t belong, for signs that she was being watched.
She found nothing obviously threatening, but the paranoia remained. Pitts had found her at Elizabeth’s viewing with no apparent difficulty. Who was to say he or others like him weren’t here now, cataloging her reactions, planning their next move?
“Earth to Alexis,” Jamie said, appearing at her elbow with two bottles of water. “You look like you’re about to vibrate out of your skin.”
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“About how we go from here to figuring out what I really am without getting everyone we care about killed in the process.”
The question hung between them like a loaded weapon. Around them, families celebrated and took pictures and made plans for the future, blissfully unaware that supernatural forces were moving in the shadows of their ordinary world.
“One step at a time,” Jamie said finally. “Starting with research. You said Pitts mentioned your real mother being something more than human. Maybe there are records, legends, something that can tell us what we’re dealing with.”
“And how exactly do we research supernatural beings? Check out library books on ‘So You Think Your Daughter is Part Deity’?” Keats chuckled aloud at that.
“We could start with your perfect memory.” His expression grew thoughtful. “You said last night that power felt familiar, like you’d been suppressing it your whole life. What if there are other things you know but don’t know you know? Information that’s been locked away in your subconscious?”
The suggestion sent a chill through her. If Jamie was right, if her abilities included access to knowledge she wasn’t aware of possessing, then the answers they needed might already be inside her head. The question was how to access them without losing control again.
“We should go home,” she said. “Start experimenting. See what I can dig up.”
“Agreed. But carefully.” Jamie’s expression grew serious. “Whatever happened last night was powerful enough to leave scorch marks. If you tap into something bigger—”
“I’ll be careful.” She touched his arm, feeling the warmth of human contact like an anchor to normalcy. “I promise.”
But even as she made the promise, Alexis felt the power stirring beneath her skin like a caged animal testing the strength of its bars. Whatever was awakening inside her was vast and ancient and not entirely under her control.
The question wasn’t whether she would tap into something bigger.
The question was whether she would survive it when she did.