PROLOGUE

It was the time of year most people came out of their air conditioned homes and basked in the warm light while a cool wind swept across the land. It was also a time that Jeremy Todd always hoped to avoid by burying his head under a pile of work. It wasn’t that hard to do. There was always some person needing a shrink to listen to them, to tell them what they want to hear (if there’s something wrong with them or not), and then help them get through whatever’s wrong with them (hypochondria tended to be something that was like a disease, spreading to students, teachers, parents, C.E.O.s of big corporations…). The busiest season for those kinds of people would be around May or June as that’s when students panicked about passing or failing school (high school, college, or otherwise) and teachers were pulling out their hair trying to get the zombies that start attending school to focus and to get them out of the class room as soon as possible. The second busiest season would have to be August and September, when parents would stress about having enough money to cover school expenses and when students would cry and scream about having to move forward in life by something as little as…oh, say…move away from home and go to college?

Unfortunately for Todd, it had already passed the second busy season and was now mid-October. Hence, the cool air and warm sun. It never got very cold where he lived, and he was thankful for that as the cold just made him feel worse than he already did with the weather only being in the 70s.

It wasn’t as though he hated the cold itself—that would just be ridiculous and very hard to deal with come winter. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that he hated the memories that came with the feel of the sun warming the jacket he was wearing to ward off the cool wind, with the smell of people burning leaves and other debris that followed the heavy storms the town had suffered under, with the feeling that just came and sunk into one’s bones around this time of year. That feeling of uneasiness, the one that steadily grew stronger as the month of October began to wane, was something that used to excite Todd as a child and then a young man. Now, it was something that left him shaken, cold, and not just a little bitter.

And he hated knowing why he reacted this way every year. Being in his profession, it was hard not to know, after all. It was because he associated the feelings he got of a certain time to the feelings he would get at the present point in time. What was most odd about this association, however, was the fact that the event that left him so unsettled hadn’t even taken place in the fall. It had been early-summer (as there was never really a true “late-spring”)—in May. He never dwelt on it, though. It was just how his mind worked. The feeling of pent-up nervous energy was common around this time of the year, and he just related that feeling to the one he had that year in May. Nothing more, nothing less.

…so he liked to think, anyway.

As he strolled down the sidewalk in the small suburban town he lived in, taking in the scents of bon fires and October air, Todd allowed himself to remember just what it was he recalled from that period of time he’d been so excited, so scared, so hurt. He rubbed the metal that he always kept in his left pocket as if wanting to have it on hand for whenever it was needed. It never was and never would be, however. The person he had meant to give it to had long since disappeared from his life.

Jeremy, Jeremy! Don’t let them do this to me! Don’t let them!

He had been so helpless.

Please, Jeremy! Make them see reason! You can tell them I’m not—that I’m not…

He hadn’t been able to. They had been too close. People would have thought that he had only stood up for her because they had lived together for over two years. But he had tried—God, did he try. He tried to do all he could to talk them into reconsidering, into thinking of a different way to treat her. They had only stared at him with that distasteful look he remembered always getting whenever he’d visit.

She’s always been a sickly child, and she’s always needed help. Do you think we don’t know about those books she wrote under that name? Do you really think we don’t know how it was you who encouraged her? Do you even know what you have done by allowing her to do something like this?

It had been a way he had found to help her. Being what he was, he was supposed to see what was wrong, tell the person or have them realize it themselves, and then help them overcome their problems. She hadn’t needed him to go through the first two steps. She knew what was wrong with her, why her mother and father thought of her as a weak child when she could be strong enough to push his car out of the mud during that one trip to Arkansas. It wasn’t her physical strength they were seeing as weak. It was her mental capabilities they questioned.

When she’d first told him, Todd had been surprised as he had never seen any signs of something being wrong with her. She certainly wasn’t like the stressed, broken, hypochondriac people who would come into his office for their hourly session, leaving at the end of the hour and muttering how pointless the session had been. In fact, truth be told, he had always seen her as someone who had more sense than all the people he had seen combined. Still, she had told him what was wrong with her, or why her parents thought there was something wrong with her.

It had really started when she was four. She’d had an imaginary friend, and her parents—uptight sons of bitches if Todd ever knew any; the typical stereotype for rich and well-to-do Massachusetts folks—hadn’t approved. Every time something would happen (her dolls being thrown at them, her glass of milk always spilling, her crayons being found where there was a large drawing on the white walls, etc…), her parents wouldn’t indulge her in the fact that it had been her imaginary friend like most parents would while telling their child not to do it again by reprimanding said imaginary friend. Instead, they had punished her as any uptight, snobbish, and social-aware parents would. They gave her Time-Out and then told her that she would get no new toys for a certain period of time.

Upon hearing all of this, Todd had laughed, telling her that while he had never had an imaginary friend, if he’d done any of those things when he was a kid, his Southern-Baptist father would certainly not allow it and would smartly tan his hide while his Northern-bred, Southern-raised Catholic mother would screech about the wall and how it was never going to be fixed even if it only need a coat of paint (which he would have been forced to paint himself). Not only that, but he would have gotten all but his bed and his clothes taken from his as punishment.

She’d smacked him upside the head for daring to suggest she had been spoiled as a child and then moved on with her tale.

It turned out that her imaginary friend—Cabhán, she’d call him—had never really went away. In fact, sometimes when she was distracted, he would speak up in her ear and tell her stories, tell her to do things, tell her things she didn’t know about other people. It never bothered her. After a while, she just never told her parents about still talking to Cabhán and usually told him to stop suggesting things that would get her in trouble. Cabhán never listened and always continued the suggestions, leaving her to decide whether or not to follow through with them.

Ever the one to take a person seriously when they tell their problems, Todd asked her if Cabhán had any suggestions at the moment. She’d given him a roll of the eyes and told him that yes, Cabhán had a suggestion, and no, Cabhán, she was not going to shut up and get on with the sex, as the “imaginary friend” oh so charmingly put it. Todd had laughed and asked her to continue, which she did, quite happily.

Her parents hadn’t known about Cabhán’s continued existence until Cabhán suggested writing poetry. She had thought it was a fun idea and had joyfully started writing, getting ideas and tips from her “imaginary friend.” She’d used the pseudonym Gloria Nightbrush and had several of her poems published in a newspaper. Her parents, as insufferable as they were, enjoyed the poetry until they found a poem she’d been working on in her room. Making the connection, and understanding the connotation in the poems, her parents had forbidden her to write anymore, especially if they were going to relate to an imaginary friend who should have been forgotten years ago.

So, she’d stopped writing, though she missed it terribly, and Cabhán continuously filled her head with more and more ideas.

Todd found this to be somewhat sad. Apparently, Cabhán was what Todd’s old psychology professor Hash Albertson said to be her “voice of inspiration” or “muse.” And just keeping all of the ideas that her mind was creating via Cabhán wasn’t any good to anybody. So he’d gone out the next day and bought her several pens and notebooks he’d known writers to love.

And she did love it. Loved it so much, she had three books published in two years, all under the name Gloria Nightbrush.

Her parents had been furious.

How dare you go against what we told her to protect her! How dare you assume to know what’s best for her!

It had been a harmless bout of arguing that time they approached him. He’d never thought anything of it and just continued to smile and laugh at the newest book his love was in the process of writing.

He should have known her parents wouldn’t have just accepted it that way.

Jeremy…Jeremy…please…don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me here!

He’d had to let her go. They’d forced him to, no matter how much she pleaded, cried, or screamed. He couldn’t help her, couldn’t save her from that fate which had sapped her of all her strength.

He had visited, though. He had gone to see her many times. After the first months, she was still her old self and continuously pleaded with him to take her out of that place, but he couldn’t because he had no hold over her life like her parents did. Maybe if he had asked her to marry him sooner, it would have been possible…instead, he could only shut his eyes against her tears and pray that she forgive him. After the second month, she didn’t seem to notice his visits, seeming to stare off into space, and whenever she did speak, it was about that last book that she never finished. It was unnerving, hearing her only talk about that book as if it were her lifeline, but he’d listened, he’d put in some ideas and they’d laugh like old times.

After the third months…she stopped being herself.

Give it up, Todd. Those fuckers really screwed us over. Especially Laura here. What do you mean what do I mean? Don’t you know me, Todd? Laura’s friend Cabhán, of course.

Oh, how numb he’d felt when he’d heard those words. How could he have missed it? How could he have not seen the dangers? But of course, he would always argue with himself that he had been doing the right thing, that it was Laura’s parents that had messed things up, that had caused Laura to shield herself from her loneliness, from her constantly active mind by becoming her muse Cabhán.

And that’s all she was anymore. There was no more Laura, as Cabhán was fond of sing-songing when he would visit (which was becoming more and more rare as time went on). In fact, that was what Cabhán had said to Todd just that day in the middle of October.

I wish you would stop coming here expecting something different. You think I like always being up front? It’s boring as all hell and very lonely. No, she’s not here anymore! GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD, DUMBASS! I TOLD YOU TIME AND TIME AGAIN! THOSE MOTHER FUCKERS FUCKED US OVER, AND YOU DIDN’T DO A DAMNED THING! GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! GET OUT!

Todd stopped in his walk to see himself in front of his office, just as always. He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose as he chased thoughts of Cabhán’s anger and how Cabhán had taken to throwing things at him just to get him out of the room. It would mean that everything not nailed to the floor would be taken away and made Todd even more worried about what was going on with Laura and why she wouldn’t respond. He’d never dealt with something like this before…it was really as if there were two people in Laura’s head…

What did it matter? He wouldn’t visit for a while after what happened just thirty minutes ago. Instead, as per usual, he would find more work to bury himself with while trying to push memories of Laura out of his mind. Because whenever he though of Laura, he could only see Cabhán screaming at him, dark hair sticking to Laura’s face which was twisted in dark fury.

It probably would have been a better idea if he had went straight home, but Todd’s single-mindedness of working to get things out of his head won over. He entered his office and nearly had a heart attack right there on the threshold when he saw a pale, dark-haired young man standing just far enough out of the way so the door could swing open. The kid hadn’t even bothered with turning on the light, and that made the effect a lot more startling than it would have been.

Especially since the door had been locked.

Dark eyes stared up at him while he tried to control his shock. A guttural and harsh voice that sounded like it had either been overused or not used in ages spoke slowly and carefully, as if not to scare Todd anymore.

“They made me come here.”