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I gave him a shaky smile, hoping to put him at ease when my own heart was pounding like mad in my chest. “Hey, Ren.”

He blinked at me.

I swallowed several times, sorting through the noise, narrowing everything down to what I needed to tell him. “They want me to tell you, they don’t blame you.”

He jerked back, but I couldn’t let him retreat, not until he heard it all. I took his furry face in my hands, not letting him pull away. “Your guilt is keeping them here, Ren. They can’t move on. They can’t be at peace until you try to find it as well,” I choked out, emotion welling inside me.

Ren shifted suddenly into his human form, stumbling several steps away from me. He looked around startled, as if he hadn’t meant to shift. Tears trekked through the dirt on his cheeks.

“Ren!” Willow called.

“Ren,” I whispered. “Don’t go.”

He backed up, then spun and ran into the woods.

Willow cursed behind me, her pain sharp, jagged.

The souls surrounding me retreated, satisfied that I’d delivered their message, but I barely noticed because all I could see was the horrified expression on Ren’s face, the agony in his amber eyes. These souls were all people Ren had killed while possessed by an evil spirit, his body used, forced to commit all kinds of evil while he was taken along for the ride, witnessing every disgusting, twisted act. His guilt, that he hadn’t been able to stop it from happening, was drowning him.

I forced myself to stand and walk back to Zinnia and my cousins, though it was the last thing I wanted to do.

Something new and powerful filled me, like a tether in the center of my chest was trying to tug me back, telling me to go after Ren, that he needed me.

It was hard, but I ignored it…because I didn’t understand it.

Why would Ren need me?

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Chapter 1

Jasmine

* * *

“This place is the creepiest we’ve been to by far,” I said and peered into the shadows.

“Agreed.” Zinnia’s fingers unconsciously slid over the hilt of the knife strapped to her hip.

The private cemetery was seriously old, the final resting place for the people who’d owned this land through the generations. Human teenagers dared one another to come here at night, trespass on the grounds, and walk through the crumbling headstones.

“I can feel them,” I said. There were several spirits lingering here.

Zinnia nodded. “Me too. They’re calm.”

I hitched my bag higher on my shoulder. “Definitely not feeling anyone pissed off enough to try to burn a house down.”

Zinny looked toward the old groundskeeper’s place. “We should probably check out the cottage.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.” I reluctantly followed her. The old building was nestled among weeping willows, their branches swaying, making them look like bony monsters and shrouding the place in darkness. The cottage was mainly made of stone, except for what was left of the shutters on the windows and the wooden door that was currently creaking and banging against the half-rotting frame in the wind. You could guarantee if a place looked like something from a grizzly horror movie, that was the place we needed to “check out.”

“Don’t worry, baby sister, I’ll protect you.” Zinny chuckled.

I snorted and rolled my eyes, but I was glad as hell she was here.

As we got closer, a chill breeze brushed past me, lifting goose bumps across my arms. “You feel that?”

“I felt it.”