Prologue
Twenty Years Ago
Savanah Miles
The ghosts didn’t care that Savanah Miles went to church.
They followed her anyway. In the pews. Standing with the choir. Some even floated by the stained-glass windows like they were part of the service.
No place was off-limits.
Nobody yelled at them. Savanah had been scolded at church for telling the ghosts to knock it off.
It wasn’t her fault.
How was she supposed to focus on the preacher when the ghosts were messing around?
She just hoped her momma would forget to tell Daddy what she’d done and how everyone kept staring at them, as if she was the weird one.
After church, Savanah and her momma went to the police station to visit her daddy at work. Savanah was wearing the prettiest church dress she owned.
The cold spot between her shoulder blades made her shiver as if someone was blowing on her neck.
She wished she’d brought a jacket.
Her momma said church would help with the nightmares, but the ghostly dead people with their big empty eyes still whispered scary things in the dead of night. They liked to show up when the house was still and her parents were asleep.
They didn’t care about church and weren’t scared of her nightly prayers.
No matter where they moved or how many times she had to make new friends, her nightly terrors followed her.
Savanah spun herself around in Daddy’s chair, the smooth leather squeaking beneath her as she tugged at the funny little birthmark on her ear.
Momma always said an angel had kissed her before she was born, but Grammy claimed all birthmarks were wounds from past lives. Sometimes, she wondered who would have hurt her ear and why.
Maybe it was a punishment for not listening, like she hadn’t in church this morning.
She bet the ghosts in her past lives had been just as annoying.
But that still didn’t explain the cluster of marks over her heart.
She wondered what Grammy would say about those.
Momma was across the room, passing out her best chocolate chip cookies. The ones she only made on Sundays.
Daddy said they were better than store-bought, even the fancy kind.
Momma claimed chocolate could cure anything.
It was obvious she hadn’t snuck one this morning. Not with the way she was glaring at Savanah’s fidgeting, reminding Savanah of one of those haunted portraits with eyes that follow you around.
Momma’s raised brow warned Savanah she wouldn’t be getting any leftover cookies if she kept it up.
She slowed her spinning to a stop.
Daddy's new job had brought them to this town. He practically glowed whenever he talked about it. Momma's smile never quite reached her eyes, though.
Momma still didn't have any friends here, not real ones anyway.
