Page 34 of Starry with a Chance of Nightshade

Astria

Grimm Cove,South Carolina, present day…

Leaning forward, I tapped the fuel gauge of my 1980 Chevrolet Chevette, hoping the needle would move more in my favor. It didn’t. It was on empty. I had enough money to put a few gallons of gas in the tank and possibly get something to eat. Nothing more.

I had a lot in common with the old car. We were both running on fumes and had seen better days. I’d had the car for years and had become familiar with its quirks. For all its faults, it was mine, and I didn’t have much.

Torid lounged on the front passenger seat, loving having the window down. He lifted his head, his stomach growling loudly.

I knew he was hungry. I patted his hip gently as I took the exit ramp from the highway. “I’ll get you something to eat, buddy.”

Demon?he asked.

I snorted. “If one should happen to pop up, sure.”

He licked his chops.

There was a large hand-carved wooden sign off to the right of the road announcing the town of Grimm Cove: A Last-Stop Destination. The sign was a new addition since I’d last been here. It had an enormous cauldron with a full moon behind it. The moon had bats flying by it. A wolf and an owl were to the side of the cauldron. Aside from the rather questionable town slogan, the sign was beautiful, but it didn’t tell the full truth of what lived in the town. Of the darkness that resided there. And it certainly didn’t warn anyone away.

The sign should have read “If you want to live, keep on driving.”

It had been eighteen years since I’d last set foot in Grimm Cove. Eighteen years since the life I’d managed to carve out for myself, that I’d thought was as close to perfect as I’d ever get, had been upended. And eighteen years since I’d had the harsh reminder that escaping my family’s legacy—its curse—was impossible. It would follow me wherever I went.

Now, at age forty, I understood the fact that death and violence were part of my life.

For a few years, right after everything had gone to hell in a Light-as-a-Feather handbasket, I’d thought I’d outrun it all. That I’d led the darkness that had hurt my friends far from them, from anyone. But that wasn’t the case. All I’d done was drag my issues and my curse from city to city with me. It never mattered how many miles I put between myself and the last incident. Inevitably, after a few weeks, maybe even months, there would be a rash of murders in the area. The victims would be missing body parts along with their brains. That was their signature calling card. Prooftheywere in the vicinity. Shortly thereafter they’d make themselves known to me. It was me they seemed to hate. Me they seemed to want to hunt to the ends of the Earth.

I never got a firm count from my father on the number of monsters he’d made when he’d done the unthinkable. I’m not sure he even knew. His journals from that time period were filled with the ramblings of a man who had been spiraling out of control and who had lost touch with reality. Asking him outright wasn’t an option. He’d gone around the bend years ago and had never found the road back to sanity.

Since I’d been little when it had all taken place, my memories were fragmented at best. It had felt like hundreds of monsters had poured out of the basement of my childhood home, but I don’t think that many would have fit down there, no matter that it had been a large area.

It sure felt like hundreds all these years later too. There were always new ones popping up. Sometimes the monsters would meet their end and I’d mark the tally in my own journal. But after a while the count wasn’t adding up right. There shouldn’t have been any more of them to deal with. But there always was.

A small piece of me worried that someone else in the Frankenstein family had decided to dabble in things best left in the past. If they were, I didn’t even want to think about what the Nightshade Clan would do.

However the monsters were managing to multiply, one thing never changed—their hunt for me. It was like someone had gotten them wet after midnight or something.

Over the years, I stayed on the move, never bothering to form close friendships with anyone. There was no way I’d let anyone else close to me be harmed because of them. I’d cut ties with my aunt and my cousin after the attack in college, positive I was the reason they were being hunted by the monsters. I missed them horribly but wouldn’t risk their safety.

I did my best to limit my time in each city and each town I stopped in. I’d find an odd job, like bartending, doing it for a few weeks or even a few months if I was lucky, pocketing as much cash as I could and then moving on to the next spot.

It wasn’t a totally lonely existence thanks to Torid. He’d remained by my side the entire time.

A few months back, I’d started to have the strongest urge to return to Grimm Cove. At first, I ignored it, wanting to avoid the painful memories associated with it all. But the urge remained. It was strange because never once did I feel the need to go back to Tarrytown. Yet, here I was, back in Grimm Cove for reasons even I didn’t understand. All I knew for sure, Ihadto be here.

Something was calling me back, and if my suspicions were right, it was the house. Enough lives had been forever altered and ruined. There was no need to sacrifice more. If whatever had caused the violent reaction from the Light as a Feather game was active again, it needed to be stopped.

I wasn’t the same girl I’d been when I’d lived there. Yes, I’d seen a lot of crap by that point and had outrun my fair share of monsters and demons—which always seemed to go hand in hand for some reason—but the key word there was “run.” I’d not been what anyone would have termed a fighter.

The last eighteen years had forced my hand. It made me dig deeper into the world of the supernatural. It left me going down darkened paths no one should travel. It hardened me, while also isolating me from others. Maybe that had been my father’s goal all along—to leave me feeling as alone as he’d felt after my mother had died.

I didn’t know. And frankly, I was too old to care.

My plan was to stay a few weeks, maybe even months, figure out what was making me feel the urge to return here and get to the bottom of what had really happened in that house all those years ago. Because none of it made sense. Too many different types of things had laid siege to us at the very same time. It was like the house had become a supernatural washing machine, everything going into the same load on the spin cycle.

I had a lot of theories on what had gone down in the house, but they were just that—theories. They hadn’t been substantiated. But the memory of it all still haunted me, and I needed answers. Maybe those answers would help me figure out what had happened to my friends and to those who had come to help us.

As it stood, I had no idea if any of them had survived.

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