Page 1 of Lost in the Moonlight

Part One

An unstoppable fury consumed me at the news. The messenger took a step back, gaze darting to the door, but it wasn’t him I was imagining gasping for breath.

I would demand blood as payment.

I would exact retribution with my own hands.

We’d find hell together.

Chapter One

Lincoln

GHOST STORY

Performed by Carrie Underwood

My ghost had returned, and theshock of it sliced through me with a brutal force. But instead of talking to me, instead of pushing me to acknowledge her as she once had, she moved away as if she didn’t care that I was watching. She trailed through the ancient cemetery next door on light feet, looking more real than she ever had.

My pulse spiked, drumming itself through my limbs and making my stomach lurch.

I placed a palm on the window, and cold shot through me, reinforcing the fact I was awake. Awake and alive. The waxing moon flickered through the shifting fog as the spirit weaved between tombstones over frost-covered earth. I would have harshly rejected the clichéd image if an artist had dared bring it into my gallery.

Nothing unique about it. No new story being told.

A tired visual that was as old as death and cemeteries themselves.

Hair the color of the moonlight flowed behind the woman as she moved slowly amongst the decrepit graves. A translucent white skirt swirled about her ankles, echoing the spin of the mist. As if finally aware of me, she turned toward my house, lifting a sharp, narrow chin to the window where I stood shadowed in darkness.

Her hand grasped something at her neck, tugging nervously. The fine bones of her fisted fingers were echoed in sharply angled cheeks and a narrow, upturned nose. I’d once kissed those full lips. Ran my palms along the smooth skin of her face. Lost myself in the periwinkle-colored eyes.

The pain I’d thought was buried seeped into me.

And yet there was something slightly off about the image. The reality of her didn’t quite fit on top of the memory. A copy that hadn’t quite lined up straight.

She disappeared behind a family mausoleum, leaving me to stare at nothing but an aging façade. The granite was cracked, moss creeped over it, and the archangel atop its peaked roof was missing a wing.

I finally forced myself away from the window.

One step. Then two.

It wasn’t until I’d put half a dozen paces between me and the glass that I finally began to breathe normally. My lungs burned painfully after being denied a full inhale for a heartbeat too many. I tugged at a thick, dark eyebrow. An old habit that would leave my brows different shapes if I wasn’t careful.

I’d been free of Sienna since opening the gallery in D.C. Starting her dream business had finally allowed her ghost to move on. Or, as my therapist insisted, once I’d accomplished ourshared goal, it had allowed the guilt causing the hallucinations to begin with to disappear. Regardless of which was the truth, her ghost had vanished from sight six years ago and never returned.

Until now.

A chill passed over me, and I finally registered the ache seeping into my bare feet from the wooden floors. I hadn’t turned on the heater last night, and the house was now an icy tomb. I pushed my way past the boxes stacked in the center of the renovated bedroom suite to the walk-in closet. The cedar scent from the built-ins was almost overbearing, but it would settle. I had to give it time. Give myself the same.

Change was never easy. It always disrupted my barely-held together routines.

I scanned the labels on the boxes, annoyed to find some of them were my sister Katerina’s. The moving company had mistakenly grabbed hers along with mine from our family storage unit, and now I’d have to figure out what to do with them.

It took me several minutes to find the boxes with my clothes in them. When I finally pulled out a sweatshirt, I wasn’t at all surprised to find it was from the Kreeger Museum. It had been Sienna’s favorite place in the world at a time when my favorite place had been wherever she was.

My jaw cracked, the frustration carving through me growing another notch.

What right did Sienna have to return to me now?

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