Forks, Washington – December 2004
The back door of the house opened without a sound, a whisper of air in the sleeping world. She emerged not into a manicured lawn, but into the wild, untamed edge of the Olympic National Forest. The night air, thick with the scent of damp earth and pine, wrapped around her bare arms. Her feet, also bare, made no impression on the soft bed of moss and fallen needles as she moved toward the trees.
Her hair, a river of spun moonlight, floated behind her, catching the faint lunar glow that filtered through the dense canopy. She wore a simple, flowing nightgown, its fabric thin and ethereal, moving with a life of its own as if stirred by an unfelt breeze. Her eyes were open but saw nothing of the world in front of her. They were fixed on a point inward, lost in a dream from which she could not wake.
There was no hesitation in her steps. An invisible path, known only to her sleeping mind, guided her deeper into the woods. Branches, like skeletal fingers, seemed to pull back just before they could snag her gown or scratch her skin. The forest, a place of deep shadows and hidden things, made way for her. It recognized the ancient rhythm in her blood, the sorrowful cadence of her soul. She was being called.
After a time, the trees thinned, opening onto a secluded cove. A small, still lake lay nestled there, its surface a perfect mirror of black glass reflecting the star-dusted sky. In the center of that sky hung the moon, a waning gibbous, luminous and slightly lopsided, a pearl of impossible size. It bathed the clearing in a silver, holy light.
She stopped at the water's edge, a pale specter in the gloom. For a long moment, she was utterly still, a statue carved from longing. Then, slowly, she lifted a hand, her slender fingers reaching not for the trees or the water, but for the moon itself. It was a gesture of profound, aching familiarity, as if greeting a long-lost mother.
A silent hum vibrated through her, a song only she could hear. It pulled her forward.
She stepped into the lake. The water was shockingly cold, but she did not flinch. It rose around her ankles, her calves, her knees, the hem of her gown floating around her like a ghostly shroud. She walked until she stood waist-deep in the center of the clearing, directly under the moon's gaze.
And then, she began to dance.
It was not a dance of joy, but a lament. Her movements were slow, fluid, and deeply sorrowful. Her arms rose and fell like the wings of a wounded swan. She turned, her silver hair fanning out across the water's surface, her body swaying to the silent, mournful music of her bloodline. The water swirled around her, and where her fingers trailed across the surface, the moonlight seemed to cling, creating tiny, glittering stars that floated for a moment before winking out.
She was a creature of myth, a spirit of the woods performing a ritual as old as the trees that watched over her. She was beautiful, and she was utterly alone, lost in a grief that was not entirely her own.
Maeve 🌹
My eyes snapped open to the familiar gray light of a Forks morning.
The first thing I felt was the cold. It was a deep, bone-leaching chill that had nothing to do with the temperature of my bedroom. The sheets were tangled around my legs, and my feet were caked with dried mud. My hair, damp and smelling of pine and lake water, was fanned out across my pillow.
It happened again.
With a sigh, I swung my legs out of bed, my muscles aching with a strange, phantom exhaustion. The sleepwalking had been getting worse lately. It used to be just a few times a year, but now it was almost every other week. I padded to the bathroom, avoiding my reflection until I had to, and turned on the shower, letting the hot water sluice the forest from my skin.
As I scrubbed the dirt from between my toes, my mind drifted. They used to whisper about my mother, Sabrina. The old families in town, the ones who remembered her before she was Sabrina Sable, wife of the ambitious young lawyer Arthur Sable. They said she was possessed, that she danced for the moon in the woods behind our house. They said she had a sadness in her that the forest understood. I always dismissed it as small-town gossip, the kind of romantic nonsense people invent to make a tragedy more palatable.
But then there were nights like last night, and I wondered.
I finally looked in the mirror, water dripping from the ends of my hair. It was her hair. Not blonde, not white, but a pure, liquid silver, the color of moonlight on water. It was the only thing she'd given me that had stayed. I'd inherited my father's eyes—a turbulent, stormy gray that matched the perpetual sky outside. I often wished I'd gotten her eyes instead. In the only photograph I kept, a faded Polaroid hidden in a copy of *Wuthering Heights*, her eyes were the color of a deep, starless ocean at midnight.
My father, Arthur, never spoke of her. Not since I was five, not since the day they pulled her body from that lake I sometimes visit when I need a quiet place. An accident, they called it. A misstep on the slick rocks. But her death had been a stone thrown into the placid waters of our family, and the ripples had never stopped. Arthur's grief had calcified into a cold, hard ambition. He was all about his work now, climbing the ladder of state law, with his sights set firmly on the world of politics.
Our relationship was a carefully curated image. To the world, he was the devoted single father and I was the quiet, studious daughter. He made sure I had the best clothes (always in muted, respectable colors, which I'd long since replaced with black and shades of gray), the best grades, the best of everything that could be seen. What he didn't see, or chose to ignore, was me. The real me. The girl who found more comfort in the tragic romance of Poe than in people. The girl who knew, with a quiet certainty that needed no announcement, that her heart would never belong to a boy. He didn't care about my well-being, only the optics of it. A gothic, lesbian daughter didn't fit the campaign posters.
I finished getting ready, pulling on my chosen armor for the day. A black mock-neck top was tucked neatly into a grey plaid skirt, the kind of dark academic look that was both a comfort and a quiet rebellion. I pulled on sheer black tights and laced up my chunky platform oxfords, their solid weight grounding me on the old floorboards. Over it all, I shrugged on a heavy, black knit cardigan, its comfortable weight a familiar shield. A delicate gold butterfly necklace rested at my throat, a fragile secret against the dark fabric. After shoving a worn-out copy of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire into my round, dark green bag, I headed downstairs.
I could already hear my father on the phone in the living room, his voice sharp and commanding, overpowering the news on the television. I could have slipped out the back door, bypassing breakfast entirely. He wouldn't have even noticed.
But the promise of coffee, hot and black, was too strong to ignore.
Standing at the back door, I looked out at the wall of ancient trees. A strange feeling washed over me—a deep, hollow ache of longing. It felt like I was forgetting something important, a name on the tip of my tongue, a song I couldn't quite remember the words to. It was the same feeling I got every time I woke up after a night of sleepwalking. A feeling that out there, in the silver-lit dark, I was someone else entirely. And she was waiting for me to come home.
Downstairs, my father stood at the granite kitchen island, a fortress of polished stone that served as the border between our two separate worlds. Already in a crisp suit, his attention was a laser focused on the BlackBerry in his hand. He moved with the sharp, economical precision of a man who billed his time in six-minute increments, even at home.
I moved past him, the silence of my chunky soles on the tile a stark contrast to the frantic clicking of his thumbs. I pulled a black travel mug from the cupboard and filled it from the pot he'd brewed hours ago, now lukewarm. A splash of hazelnut milk from the fridge door turned the bitter liquid a soft, creamy brown. As I screwed the lid on, his voice cut through the quiet, not a greeting, but an acknowledgment.
"Maeve."
I paused, my back still to him. "Morning."
"Your allowance has been transferred," he said, his tone clipped and final. "See that it's used for... appropriate things this time."
The unspoken words hung in the air between us: Not more black clothes. Not more strange books. Not anything that makes you look like your mother.
"Okay," I said, the word a hollow echo in the cavernous kitchen. I turned, my bag in one hand and the warm mug in the other.
He made a small, dismissive noise in his throat and his thumb resumed its frantic scrolling. The conversation was over. It was always over before it began. Our relationship wasn't built on shared moments; it was a simple, cold transaction. A monthly payment for services rendered: the quiet performance of a daughter who didn't cause problems. The hazelnut-laced warmth in my hands was the only real comfort in the house.
I turned to leave, moving through the archway into the living room where the television was broadcasting the local morning news. My father remained at his post, oblivious.
As I passed the flickering screen, a news anchor's somber voice snagged my attention.
"…a tragedy in the county this morning," she was saying, her expression professionally grave. "The body of 42-year-old construction worker Robert Markham was discovered by his crew at the new logging access site just off Highway 110. Officials have not yet released a cause of death, but foul play is not suspected at this time."
I paused, my hand on the doorknob. It was the kind of sad, ordinary news that was common enough in a town surrounded by dangerous wilderness and heavy machinery.
"The crew's foreman," the anchor continued, "told reporters that one of the loggers, who was first on the scene, mentioned hearing a strange sound just before dawn. He described it as a high, mournful wailing that seemed to come from the woods themselves, a sound he'd never heard before."
A chill, completely separate from the morning air, traced a path down my spine. The warmth of my coffee mug seemed to vanish. A lament. A grief that was not entirely her own. The words from my dream echoed in my mind, a phantom whisper against the news anchor's professional tone. The strange, hollow ache of longing I'd felt upon waking intensified, twisting into a knot of inexplicable sorrow for a man I'd never met.
My father cleared his throat from the kitchen, the sound sharp and impatient, and the spell was broken. He hadn't been listening to the news; he was annoyed I hadn't left yet.
Without looking back, I opened the front door and stepped out into the gray, misty morning. The scent of the damp forest was heavy in the air, a constant reminder of where I had been only hours before. The anchor's words followed me out into the quiet street, mingling with the memory of the moon and the mournful dance in the water. A man was dead, and somewhere in the deep, dark woods, a woman had been heard wailing.
I escaped into the cool, misty air. My Jeep was my sanctuary, a place where I could surround myself with the words of others. The satchel on the passenger seat was heavy with them: Poe, Anne Rice, and a well-worn collection of sapphic poetry. I didn't need to draw the world; I preferred to lose myself in ones that were darker, more passionate, and more beautifully tragic than my own.
At Forks High, I parked in my usual spot at the edge of the lot, a silent ghost in a sea of chattering mortals. I found my place on the low brick wall bordering the forest and pulled out my copy of *Interview with the Vampire*, losing myself in the lush, dangerous world of Louis and Lestat.
I was so engrossed that I didn't notice the car until it was already parked. It was a black Jaguar, a sleek, predatory shape that looked utterly alien in the student lot. The driver's side door opened, and a hush fell over the nearest clusters of students.
A girl emerged, not stepping out so much as unfolding from the car with a liquid grace that seemed to defy the laws of physics. She was tall and impossibly elegant, dressed in a tailored black coat that made the surrounding students in their hoodies and jeans look like drab, clumsy children. Her skin was the color of pure alabaster, and her hair was a cascade of midnight black that fell in a stark, perfect line against her back.
But it was when she turned her head, surveying the parking lot, that my world tilted on its axis.
It wasn't a vision. It wasn't a sound. It was a phantom chill, colder than any Forks winter, that started in my fingertips and shot up my arms. It was followed instantly by a scent that wasn't a scent at all, but a feeling in my mind: frozen stone and ancient, dried blood. My death-sense, the quiet filter of cold and decay that had been the background noise of my entire life, didn't scream. It fractured. This girl was a void, an absolute, predatory cold—but beneath it, threaded through it, was something else. Something ancient, wild, and aching.
The conclusion was not a thought, but a certainty that settled in my bones: This girl was not alive. Not in any way I understood. The space she occupied felt like a tear in the fabric of life and death, a place of profound, beautiful, and terrifying stillness.
The new girl's gaze swept the lot, a queen surveying a new and uninteresting territory. Then, for a fraction of a second, her eyes—a deep, impossible onyx—locked with mine.
The world stopped. The chaotic sensory input—the impossible cold layered with a wild, aching warmth—snapped into a single, focused point. It was a feeling of being seen, not just by a person, but by an epoch. I felt the echo of a thousand years of silence, the weight of a loneliness so profound it was a physical force. I saw her falter in her stride, a microscopic hesitation that no one else would have noticed. A flicker of something ancient and predatory flared in those onyx eyes—shock, hunger, and a dawning, terrible recognition. It was as if she had been walking through a desert for centuries and had just found a spring she never believed existed.
The moment was shattered by the shrill ringing of the school bell. Students began to move, their chatter resuming, oblivious to the silent cataclysm that had just occurred in the space between a brick wall and a black car. The new girl's expression smoothed over, becoming a mask of cool indifference as she turned and moved toward the main building with that same inhuman grace.
My book was forgotten in my lap. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, living drumbeat in the sudden, echoing silence of my mind. The beautifully tragic worlds I had always escaped into had just become terrifyingly real. And I had the unnerving certainty that I was the final chapter.
The bell's echo faded, but I remained cemented to the brick wall, the cold seeping into my skirt and tights. The sensory assault had receded, leaving behind a strange and profound silence in my mind. The constant, low-grade filter of my gift—the faint scents of decay and the phantom chills that clung to everyone around me—was gone. It had been scoured away by a presence so absolute it left no room for anything else.
My heart, however, was a different story. It was a frantic bird beating against the cage of my ribs. Fear was a part of it, a cold and rational terror that recognized a predator of impossible magnitude. But beneath the fear, another feeling uncoiled, something dark, warm, and shamefully exhilarating.
For my entire life, I had felt like a ghost, drifting through the grey world of Forks, an observer of a life I couldn't quite touch. Now, for the first time, I had been *seen*. That onyx-eyed gaze hadn't just looked at me; it had pierced through every layer of my being, recognized the strange, morbid frequency of my soul, and answered with a darkness that made my own feel like a flickering candle in a hurricane.
A shiver traced its way down my spine, but it wasn't from the cold. It was the thrill of the abyss. The feeling of standing on the edge of a cliff, the terrifying, seductive pull of the long drop below. The girl in the Jaguar was the abyss made flesh.
Walking into English class was a surreal, dreamlike experience. The familiar scent of old paper and floor polish, the drone of student chatter—it all seemed flimsy, a paper-thin reality stretched over the profound truth I had just witnessed. I slid into my usual seat in the back corner, the worn cover of my book feeling like a childish talisman against a force of nature.
Mr. Banner, a man whose passion for gothic literature was the one thing I genuinely admired, was already writing on the whiteboard.
"'*Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same,*'" he read aloud, his voice resonating with a familiar dramatic flair. "Catherine Earnshaw on Heathcliff. Not a declaration of love, but a confession of identity. A recognition of a shared, wild, and ultimately destructive nature."
His words, usually a source of academic comfort, struck a new and terrifying chord within me. *A recognition of a shared, wild nature.*
I tried to focus on the text, but the world had been tilted on its axis. The words on the page were just ink. The only reality was the memory of that onyx gaze, the phantom chill, and the profound, echoing silence that had replaced the constant whisper of my gift.
A hushed but insistent conversation started in the row ahead of me. Lauren Mallory—a girl whose sharp, classical beauty I'd once found myself foolishly drawn to, before I realized it was just a pretty container for a petty, gossiping soul—was leaning conspiratorially toward Mike Newton.
"Did you see her?" Lauren hissed, her eyes wide. "The new girl? The one with the Jaguar?"
Mike, ever the follower, nodded dumbly. "Whoa, yeah. She looks like… a model or something."
"Or something," Lauren agreed, a note of suspicion in her tone. "Jessica did some digging in the office. Her name is Duvessa Ingram."
*Duvessa.* The name landed in my mind not like a new piece of information, but like a memory. It sounded ancient, carved from stone and shadow. It fit her perfectly.
"Ingram?" Mike mumbled. "Never heard of them."
"Of course you haven't," Lauren scoffed, clearly relishing her role as the purveyor of information. "They're not from around here. Her mom—or one of them, anyway—is some big-shot lawyer from Seattle. Deidre Ingram. Apparently, she's loaded. She and her wife, Carine, just bought the old Blackwood Manor estate."
The Blackwood Manor. The sprawling, gothic mansion on the cliffs overlooking the river, hidden behind a high stone wall and a forest of ancient pines. It had been empty for over fifty years, a local legend, a place kids dared each other to approach on Halloween. A perfect, isolated kingdom for a creature that felt like it belonged to another age.
"Wait, wife?" Mike asked, his brow furrowed. "So, Duvessa's adopted?"
"Obviously," Lauren said, rolling her eyes. "But that's not even the craziest part. Get this. Carine Ingram… is Dr. Cullen's twin sister."
The final piece of the puzzle clicked into place with the force of a physical blow. The Cullens. Forks' other mystery. The impossibly beautiful, graceful, and aloof family who kept to themselves, whose eyes held a strange, golden depth, and around whom my death-sense had always been a confusing, muted hum. It had never screamed *danger* like it did with Duvessa, but it had always whispered *different*.
They weren't just another family of beautiful oddities. They were a coven. And now, they had relatives. A sister coven, perhaps, whose eyes were not gold, but a terrifying, absolute black.
"No way," Mike breathed.
"Way," Lauren insisted. "They're all related. Explains the whole super-gorgeous, super-weird thing, right?"
Mr. Banner cleared his throat loudly from the front of the room. "Miss Mallory, Mr. Newton. Is there something about Heathcliff's brooding nature you'd like to share with the class?"
Lauren flushed and mumbled an apology, sinking back into her seat.
But the damage was done. The lesson resumed, but for me, it was irrevocably altered. Mr. Banner spoke of Heathcliff as a force of nature, an outsider who was "more myself than I am," and every word felt like it was about the girl named Duvessa.
I was no longer reading a novel. I was reading a prophecy.
The rest of the period passed in a blur. I didn't speak, didn't move. I just sat there, the ghost in the back of the room, feeling the clock on the wall tick down the minutes. Each tick was a step closer to third period. Closer to the abyss. And God help me, I was leaning into the fall.
The bell shrieked, pulling me from my trance. The scrape of chairs and the burst of chatter felt violent after the silent intensity of my thoughts. I moved on autopilot, packing my book into my bag and joining the sluggish river of students in the hallway. The air was thick with the mundane scents of teenage life—cheap body spray, sweat, and desperation. It should have been a comfort, but it only made me feel more alienated.
I was scanning the crowd before I even realized I was doing it. My eyes searched for a slash of midnight hair, a glimpse of alabaster skin. The fear was still there, a cold stone in my stomach, but it was tangled with a desperate, magnetic pull. I needed to see her again. I needed to know if the cataclysm I'd felt was real.
I saw her near the lockers. She wasn't speaking to anyone, merely standing with her back to the wall, a black leather-bound book in her hand. She moved through the chaos not by pushing, but as if the students were water and she was a stone, the current parting around her without ever touching. She looked up, and for the second time that day, her onyx eyes found mine across the crowded space.
The hallway noise faded to a dull roar. The distance between us collapsed. It was the same jolt, the same terrifying recognition. But this time, there was something else in her gaze. A question. An invitation.
My feet were moving before my brain gave the order, carrying me toward my History class. My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs: *danger-danger-danger*.
I slipped into my seat in the back, my hands trembling slightly as I pulled out my notebook. I stared at the blank page, trying to will my pulse to slow. The classroom filled up around me, the usual pre-class chaos unfolding. I kept my eyes down, but my senses were stretched taut, waiting.
The door opened and a sudden quiet fell near the front of the room. I didn't have to look up to know. A familiar, impossible cold washed over the skin of my arms.
Mr. Varner, a man perpetually flustered by anything that disrupted his lesson plan, cleared his throat. "Ah, Miss... Ingram. Welcome. We have your records. You can, uh, take any open seat."
I finally risked a glance. Duvessa stood at the front of the room, her presence sucking all the color and noise from her immediate vicinity. Her eyes swept the classroom, passing over an empty desk by the window, another in the middle row, before they landed on the vacant chair directly beside me.
My breath caught in my throat.
With the same fluid, deliberate grace she'd shown in the parking lot, she moved through the aisle. The students she passed leaned away unconsciously, sensing the cold that radiated from her. She settled into the chair next to me without a sound, placing her leather-bound book on the desk. The proximity was overwhelming. The cold wasn't just a feeling anymore; it was a physical presence, a bubble of deep winter that enveloped our two desks. The silence in my mind was absolute, a vacuum where my gift used to be.
She turned her head slightly, her curtain of black hair shifting. She didn't look at me, but at my desk, and spoke. Her voice was low, a quiet melody that was somehow the loudest thing in the room.
"You dropped this."
I looked down. Resting on the dark wood of her desk was a small, silver charm in the shape of crescent moon. It must have fallen from my bag. I hadn't even noticed it was gone. Her hand, pale and perfectly still, lay inches from it.
I reached for the charm, my fingers clumsy and numb. As my skin was about to brush against the desk, a hair's breadth from her own, I hesitated.
A faint, knowing smile touched the corner of her lips. She finally turned to face me, and the full, devastating force of her onyx gaze hit me.
"Don't be afraid," she murmured, her voice like velvet over a blade. "I don't bite."