Liminal

LIMINAL

By Maree Anderson

Book One of the Liminals series

Now you see me, now you don’t!

My name’s Wren, and I’m a liminal who can phase in and out of the real world.

Sounds like an awesome trick, right? Yeah. Like everything that’s supposed to be cool, it’s complicated. I’m caught between two warring factions who’d kill to get a piece of me. Someone’s blocked my energy flows so if I phase I’ll get trapped in a ghostlike plane called Between… and die. And to top it all off, I’m totally crushing on my only ally, mysterious bad boy Kade. Sad thing is he’s keeping secrets from me, just like everyone else. My life’s spinning out of control. I don’t know who to trust anymore. And what I find lurking Between is the biggest shock of all.

REVIEWS

iBooks Stores AUS/NZL Best Books of August 2013: Self-published Kiwi author Maree Anderson has already established a loyal following with her Crystal Warriors series. In this novel, she embarks on a new storyline featuring Wren, a sassy 16-year-old who finds she’s starting to disappear from her life–literally! She teams up with mysterious bad boy Kade and learns a thing or two about living between worlds. This is great young-adult fun for fans of paranormal fiction.

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I found myself getting lost in Wren’s world in the first few pages of this book. Wren is an typical, innocent teenager whose life starts to spiral out of control. It was gut-wrenching reading her struggling with what was happening to her. Slowly disappearing from the world she knows. Then in walks Kade—and who wouldn’t fall for this beautiful, sweet, hunk of a young man. I fell for him instantly—and could not wait to see what transpired between him and Wren. The whirlwind that Wren and Kade endures—with Wren finding her birth family and fighting to steer clear of the bad guys—left me wanting to not put the book down. The ending was an epic cliffhanger—one in which makes me want the second book right now! Can’t wait….

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"[…] There were some absolutely heart breaking moments between Wren and her family. I really felt for her, some of the things that happened were just gut wrenching. The poor girl literally has nowhere to go and no-one to turn to—well no-one that remembers her anyway!

I really like Wren. I think she is a great main character, she had some awful stuff happen which she has to figure out how to deal with but she doesn’t cry about it all the time!

Then she meets Kade. I really fell for Kade.

Sexy leather pants, check!

Sexy motorbike, check!

Sexy sarcastic persona, double check!

Wren and Kade have some great banter, and the tension between them is quite fun to read. They embark on a journey to save Wren and uncover an array of secrets and lies along the way. […]"

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Phase Excerpt

Freaks of Greenfield High Excerpt

Other Books by Maree Anderson

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

***

Chapter One

WREN

Something compels me to glance down at my hands and my stomach twists into knots. They look wrong. The skin is fish-belly white, leached of all color from wrist to fingertips. It’s such a stark contrast to the tanned skin of my arms, it’s like a corpse’s hands have somehow been seamlessly grafted to my wrists.

I start to tremble as I inspect my hands more closely, trying to make sense of what my lizard-brain already knows at some deep instinctual level. And when I finally understand what I’m seeing, trembling turns to full-body shudders. It isn’t static, this process. The remaining pigment in my skin is draining away. My hands are turning transparent save for a darker outline etching the shape of outspread fingers—fingers that are twitching like they’ve been zapped with an electrical charge… and I am powerless to prevent it.

My hands vanish.

Someone’s whimpering— Oh God, it’s me, the frantic sounds torn from my throat as I try to shake life back into fingers that I know must be there. Except I can’t feel them anymore. I. Can’t. Feel. Them!

Worse, so much worse, the strangeness is spreading, crawling up my arms to suck the life from them, fading my skin tone to the nothing color of watery milk. My chest heaves. I feel my lungs inflating, my mouth stretching into a scream. And in the blink of an eye, I’m standing before a full-length mirror and the scream strangles unborn in my throat.

I’m naked. And my face, my body—all of me—is now colorless and insubstantial, the merest suggestion of a human figure an artist might sketch with a soft charcoal pencil.

I lower my eyelids, shuttering the smears of blackness my eyes have become. And when I open them again, the mirror reveals no reflection. I know I’m standing right in front of the mirror. I know it absolutely. But I’m invisible. To the rest of the world I no longer exist.

~*~

If I could force a genie to grant me three wishes, my first wish would be simple: I’d wish to be gently coaxed awake by warm streams of sunlight stroking my face. I’d even settle for twittering birds. Or my mom calling Wren, you’ll be late if you don’t get a move on! and the hiss of the drapes as she yanks them back to drench my room in early morning light. But she hasn’t rousted me out of bed since all this weird crap started.

Anyway, never thought I’d be saying this, but I miss Mom’s too-cheery morning voice. Heck, even suffering my brother bouncing on my bed and whacking me with a pillow, like he used to when we were bratty kids, would be a welcome change. Anything would be better than this recurring nightmare that rips me from sleep with a desert-dry mouth and my heart drumming on the walls of my chest like it desperately wants to escape.

I’d love to escape, too, if only I knew how to go about it. If only I could be certain it wouldn’t follow me. If only I understood exactly what it was, and why it had chosen my life to ruin. Karma, maybe? Mom says karma always comes back to bite you in the butt. But aside from some pretty intense make-out sessions with my ex, I’m that good daughter all parents pray for. So I figure I must have been bad in a previous life. Real bad.

I lay in bed with my eyelids squeezed tightly shut, debating whether to bother getting up. But I’d missed dinner last night—again. My mouth watered at the mere thought of food and the hunger pains stabbing my insides were too insistent to ignore.

The blackout drapes that shrouded my room with a cozy gloom didn’t prevent the headache kicking in the instant I dared peel open my eyelids. I ignored the throb behind my temples, and flopped out a hand to grope for my alarm clock and fumble the buzzer switch to off before it could blast my eardrums. Because I couldn’t help myself, I lolled my head to the right to check the time.

Yep. Same old, same old. I’d awoken five minutes before the alarm blared. Uncanny. And probably a good thing, considering the shrill screeching would probably make my head explode.

Time to get going.

One. Two—this was so gonna hurt. Three. I tensed my stomach muscles and hauled my protesting body upright. The ache in my skull ratcheted from a dull throb to bite-your-lips-so-you-don’t-cry.

Guess I could spend my diminishing allowance on a jumbo packet of painkillers—swallow a handful and wait ’til they kicked in before even attempting to get out of bed. But that would be giving in. The headaches are linked to the now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t stuff. I don’t know why I know this, but I do. Somehow. And although I can’t control much in my life right now, I can control whether or not I pop pain meds.

I tell myself this is exercising my right to choose—that it helps me stay strong. But the truth is I’m scared. Medicating the headaches might numb everything—the pain, the frustration, the anger. The hope, too. And then I won’t care enough to fight anymore.

Through sleep-bleared eyes, I picked at the knot of sheet that’d wrapped about my legs during the night. A few years ago Dad took me and Dan camping, and spent all weekend trying to teach me how to tie a decent knot. The verdict? An affectionate ruffle of my hair and the wry comment that I’d better hope I never had to tie a knot to save myself. Bet he’d be impressed by this purely unconscious sheet-knotting ability—

Ah, who am I kidding? Nothing I do these days impresses either of my parents. Parents have to remember you exist before you can impress them. And just so’s you know, when I go on about my parents not remembering I exist, I’m not being a poor me drama-queen. I can see it in their eyes—that instant of blind panic as they wonder who this strange girl is, and what the heck she’s doing in their house, before something clicks in their brains and suddenly they know me again.

Every time it happens I silently chant to myself over and over that it’s temporary, that things will go back to normal soon, and everything will be peachy keen again. But I wonder whether I truly believe that anymore. It is happening more and more frequently, and lately I seem to be more invisible than not. It’s like the nightmare is becoming my reality.

I swung my legs to the floor and stumbled from my bedroom, careening off a wall and bruising my elbow as I headed down the hallway to the bathroom I share with Dan.

I didn’t bother switching on the light. Getting up close and personal with my first-thing-in-the-morning reflection isn’t for the fainthearted. I stuck my head under the faucet and turned the cold on full, letting the water pound the base of my skull. When everything felt comfortably numb, I slowly raised my head, testing the pain. Better. Bearable, even. And cheaper than painkillers. The tension in my shoulders eased as I straightened from my hunch to blink water from my eyes, and sluice the moisture from my face with my hands.

While I was towel-drying the sopping wet ropes of my hair, the bathroom door burst open. Dan wandered in, yawning and scratching his butt. Classy guy, my little brother.

Bending at the waist, I shook out my hair and positioned the towel at my nape. I gave the towel a couple of twists at forehead level before flicking the tail over my head and tucking it under at the back as I straightened. Experimentally, I shook my head. Perfect turban. Nice.

Before I could tell Dan the bathroom was all his, he lifted the toilet seat and yanked down his boxers.

Getting an eyeful of my brother’s bare butt? Ewww. A new low, even for me. Beyond speech, I clapped one hand over my eyes and whacked at the light switch with the palm of my other hand.

Dan yelped. And then swore. What the fuck?

And when I dared peek, blinking in the harsh brightness now piercing the bathroom, he’d whipped up his boxers. Goody. I wouldn’t be gouging my eyes out with a spoon today.

I couldn’t be sure he’d seen me, though. He might have been reacting to the weirdness of a light somehow switching on all by itself. So I unwound the towel from my head, shook it out, and flicked it at him.

The hemmed edge got him right on his boxer-clad butt.

Dan yelped again and skittered to one side. His gaze locked onto mine. He gave me a long, slow head-to-toer. And then his eyes widened. Shit! Sorry— Uh, hang on…. Who the hell are—?

The f-bomb and flashing your butt? I interrupted before he could finish his sentence and totally sink my day before it even started. Not to mention forgetting to knock. Jeez, bro, way to go. You’re so lucky it was me you barged in on and not Mom. If she’d been using this bathroom you’d be getting a monumentally huge lecture right now.

I watched him processing my words, absorbing the subtext. Wait for it—

Ah, there. Recognition smacking him upside the head, alarm at discovering a strange girl in the bathroom receding. Shit, he said again, scrubbing his fingers through his hair so it stood up in untidy hedgehog spikes. Sorry, sis. Didn’t see you lurking there.

Story of my life, I muttered.

Still half asleep, yanno? Can you—? Slashes of crimson painted his cheeks as he flapped his hands and made shooing motions.

I left Dan to it rather than claiming first dibs on the bathroom and making him suffer. I’m nice like that. My little bro doesn’t know how lucky he is.

It took mere minutes to get ready for school. When your classmates generally don’t notice you unless you make mammoth efforts to attract their attention, there’s little point angsting over your appearance. Faded jeans washed so many times they were butter-soft and the first t-shirt I grabbed from my drawer were my look for today—and pretty much every day, to be honest. Grungy canvas sneakers completed my who cares? ensemble. I finger-combed my hair and tucked it behind my ears. That was it for grooming. And that’s me these days: every high school fashionista’s nightmare.

Some remnant of the girly-girl who’d once been Mitchell’s girlfriend halted me mid-step.

Mitchell’s a jock and a real sweetie—the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive. We were inseparable until all the weirdness started. In fact, my first real clue all was not right in Wren’s World was Mitchell morphing overnight from best boyfriend ever, to a guy who didn’t know how to react to me rushing up to hug him in the school corridor, like I usually did. Instead of enthusiastically planting one on me, like he usually did, he acted like I’d just flown in from another planet—as though I was a total stranger. And within the week he’d scored a shiny new girlfriend.

I’d been gutted by Mitchell’s oh-so-humiliating public rejection—still was, even if I now understood the reason for it. Well, as much as I understood anything about any of this.

I ducked back into my room to grab a comb and drag it through the mess of still-damp tangles. Seems I hadn’t lost all sense of pride. Not yet, anyway.

I was perched on the countertop, scoffing a bowl of Dan’s favorite cereal—one perk of the whole invisibility thing, ’cause he’d never realize it was me emptying the box—when Mom careened into the kitchen. As per every weekday morning she was on auto-pilot, her gaze unfocussed, mind busy with important Mom-stuff as she slapped a stack of sandwiches together for Dan’s lunch. I watched her grab one of the heinously expensive protein bars he’d nagged her into buying from the cupboard, an apple and two kiwis from the fruit bowl, and pop the lot in a sturdy brown paper bag. A couple of bucks from the change jar on the counter joined the food in the bag.

Mom tells anyone who’ll listen that our school cafeteria food has the nutritional equivalent of cardboard. Of course that doesn’t mean Dan can’t have a treat if he wants one. Aside from coming down real hard on us for swearing, Mom’s a bit of a soft-touch. Even so, Dan’ll be toast if she finds out he usually tosses the sandwiches because he wheedles Dad into slipping him lunch money, too. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that conversation.

Mom rolled down the top of the bag and twisted the ends to make a secure package. Being Mom, she wrote Dan’s name on the bag with a purple Sharpie—you know, in the highly unlikely event another student might be tempted to swipe a homemade lunch.

I snickered. Today’s guaranteed to embarrass special addition artwork was a big purple smiley face with zigzag hair. Dan would pretend to have a cow when he saw it but he’d be secretly disappointed if she didn’t bother.

The snicker got all mixed up with my mouthful of cereal and the lump of wistful sadness in my throat. One lunch bag. Guess it was too much to hope she’d remember to make my lunch, too.

I choked down the sadness and thumped my breastbone until I managed to swallow the lump.

Mom slanted a glance in my direction. Her brow was pleated, face all scrunched up like it gets when she’s thinking about something important.

I froze, my heart skipping a beat and then racing like a mad thing and echoing thunderously in my ears. I’m right here, Mom. It’s not that hard. All you have to do is notice me… and then remember you have a daughter. Remember me. Please?

Tiny dark blobs danced in my vision as I held my breath. Waiting. Hoping. And when I couldn’t bear it any longer, my breath whooshed out and I leaned forward to nudge her arm, forcing her to see me. M-Mom? A-are you gonna pack me a lunch, too? My voice was thick and rough with tears I stubbornly refused to shed.

She blinked. Her eyes glazed with shock.

I waited, stomach muscles tensed so hard they ached, and lips compressed in a tight line to stop them trembling. It’s like an on switch is flicked in people’s brains and I abruptly become part of their reality again. And right now I could almost see the memories flooding back and lodging in her consciousness.

Her panicked expression finally smoothed and she smiled. Of course I am, sweetie, she said. Bologna okay?

I puffed out a jagged sigh. I despise bologna. The texture, with its almost slimy coating, and the too-pink-to-be-real color of it, makes me want to barf. She’s my mom. She’s supposed to remember that stuff, right? Just like she’s supposed to remember to wake me in the morning when I oversleep so I don’t have to set the alarm. Hey, don’t worry about it, Mom. You go finish getting ready for work. I’ll grab something.

Thanks, sweetie.

She dropped a kiss atop my head and I resisted the desire to lean in and hug her tight. Or scream at her and demand to know why she couldn’t fix this—aren’t parents supposed to be able to sort all their kids’ problems? But it wasn’t her fault. I was the one with the waaay the heck out there problem that was waaay beyond anyone’s comprehension, let alone a parent’s ability to fix.

Yeah. Back to my problem. Remember that genie? Wish number two would be to know the exact nature of my problem so I could fix it. And number three, the most important wish of all, how to stop it from ever happening again.

As soon as Mom rushed off upstairs, I grabbed my backpack and fled the house. Dan would be running late, as usual. And Dad would offer him a ride to school, as usual. But it was more than I could bear to hang around and wait in vain for Dad to offer to drive me to school, too. Sure, I could race upstairs and confront him, launch myself at him and hug him tight… then quickly back off and wait, my heart in my throat and my mind yammering worst case scenarios, until he remembered who I was. Sure, I could make an effort to bring myself to his attention, like I’d done with Mom, but his horrified, omigod-how-could-I-have-forgotten-Wren expression would only smother me with guilt, and I’d end up feeling even more helpless and depressed. Sometimes it’s easier—less heartbreaking and soul-destroying—to run rather than stay and fight a losing battle.

I kicked at a stone, skittering it ahead of me along the sidewalk. With any luck there’d be someone already waiting at the bus shelter so I wouldn’t have to walk. See, I’m not usually so slow on the uptake but it’d taken me an entire month to realize the school bus wasn’t zooming past my stop because the driver was a grade-A jerk. When I finally worked through the logic and figured it out, I was so freaking relieved I bawled like a baby. The driver hadn’t taken an instant and violent dislike to me, it was simply that most of the time he didn’t see me at all. If I was the lone person at the stop, nine times out of ten he’d drive on past, seemingly ignoring my frantic waving. If I had company, though, he’d always slam on the brakes and bring the bus to a screeching shuddering halt. Logical. Kind of.

This morning I lucked in. A shaggy-haired guy was leaning against the bus shelter. Mmm. Hadn’t seen him ’round before.

Chances were ridiculously high he wouldn’t notice me unless I got right up in his face, so I grabbed at the perfect opportunity to check him out. Blatantly. Maybe a year or two older than me. Taller than Dan—and my younger brother’s no slouch in the height department. Tanned. Muscles in all the right places, but not gym-junkie overdone. Light blue Siberian Husky eyes, the kind that are so intense and bright they look almost unnatural.

Nice.

Very nice. Yum, in fact. The kind of guy who makes even ultra-confident girls swallow their tongues and drool.

He had the whole bad-boy thing going on, from his bored I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass expression, to a rumpled t-shirt that was so faded I couldn’t make out the slogan. Looked like his scuffed leather pants weren’t just for show, either. They’d had more than a few encounters with hard surfaces. Even his boots looked hardcore genuine. I was pretty sure they were Joe Rocket leather motorbike boots, the same ones Dan had circled in the catalog and kept begging Mom to buy for his birthday. Which, honestly, was plain stupid considering my brother would never own a motorbike in a million years if Mom had anything to do with it.

The leather jacket slung over his shoulder shouted real deal, too. All he was missing was the tricked out street bike and a helmet dangling from his wrist. Or maybe not the helmet. He looked too cool to be worried about safety.

It hit me then that his bike could be parked nearby, and he might be hanging here waiting to meet up with someone. Meaning if he got tired of waiting and took off in the next few minutes, he’d leave me stranded if—when—the bus driver drove right on past my stop. Wouldn’t that be the frosting on this craptastic start to the day cake? I sighed, feeling sorrier for myself than usual.

Fingers crossed, I glanced around the bus shelter. And for good measure, up and down the street. Nope, no sign of a bike. Looked more and more likely Leather Pants Dude was slumming it this morning and catching the bus.

Relief made me slump. I’d jogged what would usually be a fifteen minute bus ride every day this week, and today I was beyond grateful to catch a break.

I leaned against the trunk of the large tree shading the stop, and tried to figure out if I was doing my invisible-thing right now, or merely beneath his notice. Hard to tell. He wasn’t giving anything away.

Acting purely on impulse, I levered myself upright and clicked my fingers at him.

Nothing.

Some little devil inside prodded me to be really uncool and do a few jumping jacks.

No what-the-heck-is-she-nuts-or-something? reaction. No reaction at all. So yep, I’d say that confirmed I was doing the whole unseen and unnoticed thing again.

Hmmm. Would he spot the clumps of long grass flattened beneath my invisible feet, and wonder at them?

His expression didn’t change as he crossed one booted foot over the other. Apparently he wasn’t that observant. But then, in my experience most people aren’t. It’s like on TV shows with paranormal storylines—if characters do spot something weird, either their minds come up with some halfway rational explanation to justify the weirdness or they just shrug it off.

I sank into a daydream. Pathetic I know, but I pretended Leather Pants Dude could see me. And, even better, liked what he saw. I pretended he was trying to pluck up enough courage to talk to me—maybe even ask for my number. I pretended I was a normal girl, with a normal life.

My headache eased. A buzz of warm contentment filled the emptiness inside me. I stretched the cricks out of my back. Wow. I hadn’t felt this great in ages.

Thank God, LPD said, sounding all I’ve-just-crawled-outta-bed-after-partying-half-the-night husky. About bloody time.

English accent. Yum. His hotness factor blew past ten out of ten and headed into the stratosphere, and—

Hang on. Had that comment been directed at me? My gaze whipped to his in time to see his lips curve briefly upward before they flattened again to a neutral line.

Had that been a smile? I searched his face for clues as he stared past me at something in the distance.

The rumble of the approaching school bus gave me my answer, and the rush of hope zinging through me seeped away, leaving me wrung out and weary. Riiight. About bloody time the bus got here. Wren Gibson, you are three kinds of idiot. I mean, invisibility issues aside, why would a totally gorgeous guy like him condescend to notice a girl like me?

The bus slowed and pulled up to the curb. My headache rocketed from barely noticeable to whimper-worthy in the mere seconds it took the doors to squeal open. The sound was a thousand times worse than nails raking across