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She kind of won. I did raise the river, which is new. I’ve never been able to do something major like that before.

Eyes on the nightlight, I rest my hands on my stomach, feeling the way it expands with each breath. Real. I’m real. This is real. The cemetery wasn’t.

Why that cemetery? Why a cemetery at all?

Thanks to last night’s escapade in the pool, the river makes more sense. Sometimes I dream of my room. Other times it’s places I’ve been or have been thinking a lot about. They’re always warped versions though, making the locations familiar but also not. The only thing familiar about the cemetery was the longing I felt waiting for…

I don’t know who I was waiting for.

Unfortunately, the red-eyed demon is always the same. She plagues me. Not just in dream worlds, but in this world, too. Some nights all I can do is lie awake, eyes locked on different parts of my room, half expecting her to materialize out of the furniture.

A shiver runs through my body at the memory of her crawling out of that grave. Was it hers? Was it someone else’s? I didn’t get a look at the engraving to read a name.

She was all I could see. All I could feel.

My throat tightens.

“Enough,” I croak, my voice just as hoarse as if I was screaming in real life.

I wasn’t screaming in real life.

I don’t think I was screaming in real life.

Guy said I don’t scream in my sleep. He assured me and I believe him. I trust him. That’s why I haven’t asked him about the porn Khaos overhead him watching. That and I don’t want it to turn into a bigger conversation. As far as I’m concerned, that night, actually that entire day, shouldn’t be revisited for any reason. Everyone just needs to move on.

Knowing it’s pointless to stay in bed another fifteen minutes until my alarm goes off, I get up for the day.

First place I stop is my dresser, my movements slow as I open the top drawer.

When no shadow springs out, I breathe a shaky sigh of relief.

“Okay. I’m all right.” I dig around, searching for something small and black. “Normal. I’m normal. Normal things for a normal girl on a normal day. I just need… Where is it…” It has to be here.

Taking huge handfuls of underwear, I start dumping them out on the floor until the whole drawer is empty. Where is my black thong? I know I sent it out to be cleaned, but did I get it back? I think so. I don’t remember wearing it after that, but maybe I left it somewhere else. Guy’s house? No, I haven’t been over there in months. His car? When would I have taken it off in his car?

I run through all the places it could be before deciding it probably ended up in my mom’s pile. That hasn’t happened since my mom labeled the baskets for the dry cleaners, but I don’t know where else it could be.

I take my time showering and getting ready, then go downstairs. Surprisingly everybody’s in the kitchen when I walk in, even Khaos. Not counting his first couple days here, I never see him up this early.

I’m a little taken aback by the scene that could almost pass as cozy.

Mom is parked at the table as Graham cooks something on the stove. Meanwhile, Khaos is using the blender to make some kind of shake.

“Morning,” I say to the group, only earning myself a couple mumbles of acknowledgement.

Definitely not cozy.

My mom smiles at me, and for a moment, I forget all about the demon.

Until that smile disintegrates as her gaze falls down my outfit, her face morphing into something that has me thinking about the demon all over again.

I try to shake the feeling away but it’s hard when she’s here and looking at me like that.

“Is that outfit supposed to distract from that zit? You didn’t wear a patch last night, did you?”

My cheeks heat. It was already hurtful when she’d say these kinds of things to me without an audience, so now it’s also humiliating. How is she so unashamed about tearing me down in front of others?

That’s her job, to point out what needs fixed. But I’m not her project, I’m her daughter.