Irina Taylor, a girl who lives in the 1940s with the gift to see any human's soul, goes from a social outcast to a prophecy come true. But there is a realm that coexists with ours, invisible to the majority of mankind; only a select few can see thro...
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𝓘ꜱʟᴜɴᴋᴅᴏᴡɴ the hall to my mother's bedroom and swung open the creaky wooden door. Ma was sleeping soundly in her bed. I shut the door quietly and went to her bedside, sitting on the edge. I did not wake her up right away. I just took in her sweet smell of honey and lavender. The soft curls of her blonde hair. Her heart-shaped face. When I was ready, I put a hand on her shoulder. "Ma," I muttered softly. Her beautiful sea-blue eyes fluttered open. She smiled, but her lips curved downward when she saw my grim face.
"What is it, my love?"
I swallowed the lump in my throat. "Do you remember the story you told me when I was little about the Dark Shadows?"
Ma's face contorted into a startled expression as if I had done something to scare her. She nodded slowly.
"Well, it turns out I am right in the middle of that story. People saw something they couldn't explain, and now they blame me for it."
She was silent for a short beat, contemplating what I meant. After our talk, I suspected she knew more than she was letting on. Perhaps not everything, but enough to know what I was implying by my vague statement. Her face turned to one of misery. "Oh, my sweet girl, it will pass. When I tried to convince the police that something beyond this world killed your father, they started to point fingers at me as well. I might have earned that suspicion when I was found screaming on the street, pleading for anyone to listen to my concerns about how a man could die of frostbite in June. They told me I was grieving and that I was seeing correlations that were non-existent. They labeled me insane. However, the people of this town have a short attention span. They will forget, and everything will be alright again."
"They may forget, but that won't change the fact that everything is not alright." My voice wavered. "I have this responsibility to save everyone, and I don't have the first clue as to how and. . . I'm scared. I have to be strong, but I just," tears rolled down my cheeks, "I can't. It's all too much."
Ma cupped my face in her hands and sighed deeply. "I wish I could tell you the motherly statement that everything will be okay and that I can protect you, but we are not talking about a bully or a bad grade in school. There are darker forces at work than I can fend off. If there was anything I could do to stop this, I would do it."
I knew she would. Though Ma and I had our ups and downs, that never changed the fact that she would do anything to protect me. But I could see the pain in her eyes. There was nothing she could do, and that devastated her. "The 'dark force' wants me dead," I stated. "but my soul is different. It can't be taken like everyone else's. I used to want to be different, but now, I would give anything to be the average teenage girl who wears dresses and drools over Frank Sinatra."
My mother laughed breathlessly and sniffed. "I would give anything for you to have that life, but we—I—have to face the hard truth that you are different. You always have been."
