Changeling (Book 1) Rated R

Chapter 2

The guy from the bar turned out not to be a serial killer.

He did, thankfully, turn out to be gone by the time I woke up.

I sat up slowly, the room spinning and my stomach threatening to up heave its contents.

As I rummaged through my nightstand, in search of Tylenol for this goddamn headache, my phone started buzzing.

When I picked it up, I saw my mother's face on the screen.

Almost immediately her frantic voice filled my ear.

"Aimee, you're late! You can't tell me that you forgot what today is because I've been reminding you for weeks!"

I glanced at my alarm clock which read 4:50 PM.

Shit.

Had I really slept through the whole day?

"Uh, no, I'm on my way," I lied, jumping out of bed. I shimmied out of my leather skirt, a brief flash of the handsome man from last night springing into my head, the way he'd slipped that talented hand under my skirt...

"Are you even listening to me?" Marcy said. "Honey, you were supposed to bring dessert. You knew Richard's son was arriving today and joining us for dinner!"

"I'm on it."

"Are you really?"

"No. But c'mon, mom, what did you expect? You're practically forcing me to meet him."

"Aimee," she sighed "I know adjusting to all of this has been hard. Me, dating Richard and with your father gone- well I know it's been a tough couple of years. But this means a lot to me. Would you at least try? For me?"

I sighed.

"Fine, mom. I'll be there in 20." Thirty if traffic was good to me. The less time I had to spend with my Vaseline-smelling stepfather and his Vaseline junior son the better.

I knew it wasn't fair to resent mom for starting over. It'd been five years since dad's murder, after all.

Five years looking over my shoulder, thinking that whoever had killed dad could still be around, watching us, waiting on the right moment to attack.

Considering that the intended target had been dad and I and it had only been by some stroke of fate that Ally had been the one in our home that day, waiting for me to get back from soccer practice, it was hard to ever feel at ease.

Of course, after all that time, mom had every right to move on but that didn't mean I had to be happy about it.

I went to my mirror, in search of a brush.

When I looked up, I gasped at the two reflections staring back at me.

One was of myself— a young woman with naturally curly, waist length hair and bright violet eyes.

The other was of my dead father.

"Dad!" I gasped. "You scared me."

Despite it being an almost daily occurrence, I still wasn't used to it.

The first time, I, Aimee Matthews had seen a ghost, I'd been high. Back then, it'd been easy to chalk it up to a hallucination. A trick of my mind induced by bad weed.

Until I'd sobered up and the ghosts never left.

"Sorry kiddo. Why the sour face?"

"I've gotta go meet your replacement's son." I muttered.

"Oh, c'mon," He teased. "I'm the dead one and you don't see me crying over it."

"You would if you knew Richard. He's boring, has zero social skills and he smells like Vaseline."