Inherent Truth: Blood Secrets, #1

PROLOGUE

LIV

Iwas ten when I watched my cousin die. Granted, at the time I didn’t know the kid I’d seen through a light blue haze was a member of my family. To me, he was just a stranger, like all the rest. A specter sent from the depths of my brain to wake me up in the middle of the night. I still remember like it was yesterday.

The dream sent our household into a sleep deprived frenzy. Me, screaming for my parents to turn on the lights, tears running in rivers down flushed cheeks. My dad, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbed his hand in circles across my shoulders, consoling me. It took a long distance phone call the following morning for my mom and dad to understand that the dream had been more than a figment of my overactive imagination.

How did it happen? My mother’s voice was tight, wobbly as she spoke into the kitchen telephone receiver. It was the only one in the house that was still corded. I watched from the living room couch as she twisted the stretched curlicues of cord around her index finger.

When she slid into a chair at the kitchen table with her hand planted firmly over her lips, heaviness descended on the room, blanketing the air with cold finality. To this day I remember the lead weight in my chest, the struggle for breath. Maybe that’s what he’d felt in his last moments. My mother was still holding the phone in one hand when she turned to stare at me. Eyes wide with some emotion I couldn’t yet interpret. Now, sixteen years later, I can tell you for certain it was terror.

My sixteen-year-old cousin, Curt, had been killed racing home from a party to make curfew. I’d seen it all. Told my parents every detail. The skid on the damp roadway. The slam into a poorly placed telephone pole. Even the good Samaritans who’d stopped in the dead of night to try to dig him out of the twisted wreckage. Smoke filtered up from the heap of metal before I saw him, standing on the other side of the car, smiling at me.

Tell Mom, I’m sorry, he’d said. His voice cut short by the wail of a siren.

It’s funny. I can still picture that dream in lifelike detail. But now, instead of terror, there’s a peaceful comfort attached to the memory. I think that’s how it works for me. The visions can’t hold any power over me once I work them out–figure out how to help.

In those early days, I’d been scared senseless. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, flailing to turn a light on, to familiarize myself with reality again. For a while I slept with the bedside lamp on, hoping the luminescence would create some kind of barrier between this world and the next. It was my grandmother who helped me realize it was useless, of course. The dreams were a part of reality–my reality, anyway.

But that awareness of what my dreams were–what that made me–changed everything. The energy in our household sparked with frustration. My mother and father argued. Family outings trickled to a rare occurrence. My life consisted of school, home, homework, and bed, praying to whatever god would listen to let me sleep through the night. Every once in a while some deity would listen, most times, not. I learned to keep what I saw to myself. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Within two years, my mother had run through all the psychiatrists and magic pills she could find to make me normal again. By the time I was twelve, I was spending the majority of my time at my grandparents’ farm, away from the family I’d disgraced and the marriage I’d destroyed. At least, that’s how it seemed to twelve-year-old me.

I will not allow my daughter to be a freak. My mother’s words after a particularly heated exchange with my father regarding my condition are what drove me to become the Liv Sullivan I am today.

The f word, as I’d taken to calling it, hummed in my skull now, just as it had when I was a girl. Hunkered down on the steps of my parents’ home, eavesdropping through tears, the people I loved arguing about an affliction I didn’t fully understand and over which I had no control.

Of course, if it wasn’t for all of that, I might never have learned I had two choices in life–remain the small-town freak or reinvent myself as a big city fraud. I chose the latter, finding out pretty quick that the best place to hide was in plain sight.

I grabbed my headset off the chair and slid into position in front of my laptop, fresh cup of coffee in hand. Rays of early January sun filtered through the sliding glass door of my studio apartment.

Liv, you free? A clipped note of anxiety in Celeste’s voice crackled through the earpiece. Cee and I had worked together for almost two years now and although we’d never met in person, she was the closest thing I had to a friend. She worked from headquarters, dispatching calls, and always passed the most challenging cases off to me. But more calls meant more money. I glanced at the stack of unpaid bills on the corner of my desk. At this point, I’d take just about any loon she threw my way.

I’m here, Cee. What’s the story?

Won’t say. Came in on the direct line. Asked for you by name.

Gotta be a regular. Patch him through. The musical ding from my headset signaled the transfer. I waited for the line to click open before launching into the script. Thank you for calling Celestial Spirit, my name is…

Olivia. My name on his voice split my mind in half, emptying my lungs and echoing with an all too familiar surge of electricity. I cleared my throat, fighting the haze that pulled me in, raking over my skin like fingers of an unseen being. My scalp prickled against the force. He kept talking, unaware I had no breath to respond.

"They routed me through two other people before you, Gabriella. He dragged the pseudonym out, letting it roll over his tongue. I shivered, a snake of fear crawling down my spine. You should use your real name. They already know where you are."

I sucked in a breath, forcing air into my lungs and squeezing my eyes shut against the onslaught of memory that wasn’t my own.

I’m sorry, do we know each other? I fought to infuse my voice with some sense of normal.

Not yet, he said.

There was a pregnant stillness before the image slammed into me. I squinted against the hum in my skull, focusing on the yellow smiley face mug on my desk. Bright colors sometimes helped stave off the visions. But the image tightened its grip, seeped into my consciousness and blocked out the comfortable reality of my studio apartment.

Blue eyes, frightened and wide, stared at me–a moving image clawing its way into my consciousness, refusing to let go. Long honey-blonde hair swept crossways over pale skin. A gust of wind sent her locks flying, twisting them over her face and obscuring her features.

She turned to run, a yelp of fear filling the wooded space around her. Thunder broke the silence, followed closely by a bolt of lightning that lit the entire woods– a woods I knew.

It’s taken them a while to find you, the caller said, his voice cutting through the buzz, grounding me in reality.

I shook my head, the image dissolving from vibrant hues into shadows surrounded by blue haze. I picked up the mug of coffee from my desk, thumbing the hard smoothness of the ceramic handle, anything to maintain connection to the real world. As I brought it to my lips, my hand trembled, sloshing a bit of the black liquid onto the papers below. I covered the headset mic and forced an exhaled, Just get this over with.

Tell me what question urged you to call today, and my spirit guides and I will help uncover the answers you seek. Somehow, I managed to deliver the line without a hint of wobble in my voice. Although, the scripted nonsense still made my stomach twist.

It was bad enough when I had to say it to random hotline callers, the ones who wanted to know if they should take that job offer or if the guy they met on the train was the one. But callers like this? Thank God these guys didn’t call often.

You see her, don’t you? His breath hitched in the line between us. I caught the hint of an accent. Born somewhere else but raised in the States?

I replaced the mug on my desk and closed my eyes, allowing the blue haze to trickle in, like smoke under a doorway. The image flooded back, the panic behind her eyes punched through the fog as the image widened. She turned away, long pale legs beneath cut-off shorts pumping as she ran. Large hands reached for her. Tree branches stretched gnarled fingers, slashing the soft, exposed flesh on her face and arms.

She’s your sister. Somehow, I knew. The same way I knew he wasn’t lying when he said they knew where I was. If only I could figure out who they was. She’s missing.

I clenched my jaw as the image shifted. The haze intensified, the hum along my jawbone sending a slice of pain through my temple. She tripped. A panicked scream ripped from her lungs. Her attacker lunged. She faced him, scrambling, crab-style backward. Another bolt of lightning split the sky. And I saw it. The familiar boat house at the edge of my grandparent’s farm, two thousand miles away in Cascade Hills, Ohio.

Who are you? I managed into the headset through clenched teeth. Where are you calling from?

There was only breath on the other end. The open-air silence of satisfaction. Of someone who’d accomplished what he’d set out to do.

Large hands gripped the girl’s throat. Not girl exactly–a few years younger than me–twenty, twenty-two maybe?

"Don’t do this. Please don’t do this." Her voice was small, constricted by the hands wrapped around her throat. Her attacker squeezed, pulling her forward and thrusting her back with the force of a jackhammer. She dug dirty, chewed fingernails into the back of his hands, his arms. But he was too strong, she too fragile. Words became gasps. Widened eyes. Silent fish gulps of air. One last thrust sent her tumbling backward. Her limp body landing with a crunch against the leaf-strewn ground of Sullivan woods–my woods.

I squinted against the scene. My own muscles trembling in response to the force. A rollercoaster of terror roared through my gut. I jerked the headset from my head and bent to the side, over the trash can, waiting for the dry heaves to subside.

Breathe, I coached. Pushing out breath and pulling it in to ease the panic constricting my chest. The heat of a tear against my cheek completed the familiar cycle, evaporating the image and pulling me back from the brink of someone else’s reality.

Are you there? His voice was small and tinny from the headset speaker. I shoved the earpieces back onto my ears.

I’m here, I assured. Apologizing, I adjusted the mic so that my irregular breathing didn’t overpower our conversation.

How long has she been gone? I asked. Silence on the other end of the line.

You’ll be next, Olivia, he finally said, his voice dark, clotted with emotion.

I ignored the warning, jotting notes on the pad of paper in front of me. Girl, missing, blue eyes, strangled, Sullivan Farm. My fingers hesitated over the last words, a trickle of guilt joining the ranks of second-hand terror.

The corner of the script I was supposed to be using peeked out from under the short stack of mail on the edge of my desk. I tugged it free. Stick to the script this time, Olivia.

Have you called the police? I asked, flipping through the tabs, searching for the label marked, Illegal Acts.

My boss’s latest warning came just two days ago. Her bracelets jangled like rings of bells cuffing both wrists. She’d warned me more than once not to veer from the accepted attorney-vetted script. It seemed psychic call centers were less connections to the otherworld and more well-oiled money machines. Go figure. No one, not even my boss, thought I actually possessed psychic abilities. Little known fact, the more you claim to have them, the less people believe you.

It’s too late, Olivia. The police don’t care about people like us.

I closed my eyes, pulling the emotion from his voice. Anxiety. Hurt. Frustration. But deep down, a sensation I didn’t expect–honesty. The energy thumped, pulsing against my eardrums.

She trusted them. You saw how that turned out.

I pushed the script away. Screw protocol. How do you know who I am?

The heat of his frustration singed my ears as he responded. Don’t push us away, Olivia. They want you back in Cascade Hills, and they’ll find a way to make it happen.

The familiar beep of the ten-minute warning cut through the silence between us.

You deserved to be warned. You’re the only one with the power to stop them. Please, Olivia. We need you.

1

LIV

My grandmother’s voice pierced the haze of sleep. It’s time, Olivia.

Her spoken words transformed into the melodic chorus of Danny Boy, a song I’d heard countless times over lazy summer days spent at my grandparents’ farm. Perfectly in tune, and full of my grandmother’s usual warmth, only the intense melancholy in her voice signaled that life was about to change.

I roused as the shroud of sleep fell away–not completely awake, but somewhere in that in-between state that exists only in dreams. That fine line between reality and the whims of the subconscious. I knew the space too well.

My grandmother was not really here, not in my tiny apartment in Southern California. Yet this was more than just a dream, a fabrication of the typical sleeping mind. Walking the line of the normal subconscious would have been a blessing. But no, as usual, I’d gone beyond, straddling this world and the next.

I rubbed my eyes and turned toward her voice. She stood at the kitchen sink, not my own nondescript stainless steel version, but the old porcelain apron-front atop the aged wood cabinetry in the Sullivan farmhouse. I sat up on the edge of my bed and listened as she digressed from singing and began to hum the remaining stanzas of the classic Irish tune. A red and white gingham dishtowel flicked expertly around a bright floral-patterned dish, finally coming to rest across her shoulder.

She turned toward me, and the breath caught in my lungs. No matter how many visions I had, I never seemed prepared. Her apparition as real as if she’d landed that afternoon at LAX. More fully-formed than the intense grip of daytime visions, the nighttime images were easier to immerse myself in. I forced a breath and took in the full vision of my grandmother. She winked at me as she made her way from the kitchen toward the antique dining table that had materialized in my living room. All that remained of my studio apartment was the bed on which I sat. My familiar walls and décor slid away into the foggy abyss that framed the vision in front of me.

Grandma’s pale blue dressing gown fluttered gently against sun-starved legs. How many Saturday mornings had I come downstairs to the kitchen at Sullivan farm to see exactly this image? For anyone else, that’s what this would be–a memory-induced dream, a creation of the subconscious. But not for me.

The blue of her gown, coupled with the stream of light filtering through an imaginary window, added a shimmer to her eyes. My grandmother had the most beautiful eyes. Rich pools of pale cornflower blue that twinkled when she laughed. A knot rose in my throat. How I longed to hear that laugh.

Do you remember this one, Liv? She looked at me. Her gaze pulling like the fingers of some unseen force, coaxing me to join her at the table. I worked my toes into the carpet beneath my feet and I stood from the side of the bed, shuffling toward the vignette in front of me. She pushed a grainy photograph across well-worn oak as I slid into the chair opposite her. The spindles of the oak chair pressing into my spine were the only proof I’d moved from my perch on the bed.

I took that when he was on a weekend leave in Germany. Can you believe I flew all the way over there just for a weekend with your grandfather? A light chuckle, like a breeze through well-tuned wind chimes, escaped her lips.

I smiled at the mischievous glint in my grandma’s watery blue eyes. I bet he was glad you made the effort.

She reached her hand to cover mine and gave a squeeze. The warmth of her touch spiraled a note of helplessness down my spine as I battled the nugget of comprehension that explained her appearance. I clenched my jaw against the tears pricking at the backs of my eyes, determined to focus on the smiling faces of my young grandparents, primitively colorized in the photograph in front of me. They’d looked so happy.

It’s time. Playfulness evaporated from her voice. You ignored the warning, but you can’t ignore your legacy.

My stomach tightened as she took the photograph from my hand and replaced it in the leather-bound photo album I remembered seeing at the farm.

This is about the girl in the woods, isn’t it? My voice rose above the tentative whisper I usually used with visiting spirits. The call had come a couple months ago, just after New Year’s, but there wasn’t a day that slipped by it didn’t weigh on me.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her. Fearful, wide, blue eyes, freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose, but what haunted me the most were the familiar trees, the boat house where I’d played hide-n-seek as a child. The gentle lap of water against the nearby shore. All tarnished now. I once knew every square foot of that woods. But that seemed like a lifetime ago. The last time I’d been at Sullivan Farm was over three years ago when we’d moved my grandmother into an assisted living center.

I expect you’ll take good care of these. She ignored my question and patted the cover of the album gently, running both hands over it as if she didn’t want to let it go. There’s something I need you to find, Liv.

Before I could respond, my grandmother turned, ushering a little girl from the bluish fog behind her. I shoved away the flash of blue eyes that pricked from my memory. This wasn’t the missing girl from that mysterious call, the color and shape of her eyes was proof enough for me. I waited for her to speak, but she remained mute. Rosebud lips pressed in a hard line. She just stared at me with enormous deep green eyes.

Her strawberry blonde hair was arranged in pigtail braids and tied with blue satin ribbons, one of which was dirty, the bow bedraggled. She wore a pale yellow dress with short sleeves, the hem draping just above the dimples of her knees. Tiny blue embroidered flowers danced in rows across the smocked bodice. A pair of matching socks and well-worn Stride Rite Mary Janes completed the look. She was cute. Haunting, but adorable.

I shrugged off the eerie familiarity. Images of family photos flew like microfiche files through my brain. I searched each one for someone who could match the girl’s description but came up empty. One thought nagged. I shoved against it, but it persisted–she looked like me.

Who is she? My voice a whisper, a waver in the silence.

The answers rest with her. Come home, Liv. My grandmother’s voice hung like an echo as the vision faded, dissipating like sun-burned fog. I searched Grandma’s eyes. The knot in my throat thickened with the understanding that I’d never again see their sparkle in the light of day. She raised her long, thin fingers to her lips and blew me a kiss.

Early morning sunlight streamed from my balcony window. The heat of it warmed my face as I blinked my eyes open. The dining table was gone. The ghostly farmhouse kitchen replaced with my own Formica breakfast bar. I lay in bed, my fingers still pressed to my lips, an unrealized effort to return my grandmother’s goodbye. I’d learned through the years how to speak to the visitors when they came. I could even touch them if the conditions were right. But I’d yet to master the ability to create lasting physical movement.

I pulled myself upright in bed. A sense of déjà vu washed over me as I lowered my feet to the floor. I paused, staring at the blue polish on my toes, ignoring the first trill of my cell ringtone, giving the remaining fuzziness time to release its grip. I coughed through the knot in my throat, the only tangible reminder of my grandmother’s visit, and snatched my phone off the nightstand, ignoring the caller ID.

A soft-spoken nurse from New Horizon’s Retirement Community asked for me by name. I’m sorry to have to call, Miss Sullivan. It’s your grandmother, Grace. She passed away this morning, just a couple hours ago.

I’d known on some level, of course. The dream was proof of that but hearing the words from another’s lips made it real.

Grace asked that you be notified first. It’s my understanding you have a bit of a journey ahead to get here.

I nodded as if the nurse could see me.

We’ll call Foster’s Mortuary. Have her taken there until you can arrive to confirm her arrangements. Okay?

Yes, I squeaked out. The suck of grief pulled at my gut, twisting until I thought I might be sick. Clarity hit with sudden force. My mother. Have you notified Beth Sullivan?

Not yet. Would you like us to take care of that for you?

Please, I managed. The first word I’d spoken with any kind of conviction since the call came in. I thanked the nurse again and hung up, staring at the phone in my hand. Most of the horrors that peppered these visions were manageable–strangers I could distance myself from. But no amount of ignoring or suffusing the situation would change the fact that the one person I’d always been able to count on, the woman who helped me make it to adulthood, was dead.

A draft ruffled the curtain at the open sliding glass door leading onto my tiny balcony. I sucked in a breath of the cool morning air. Nothing like the pure country breeze that filtered through my bedroom window at my grandparents’ farm. L.A. held a different mystique, the distinct rubber and gas of traffic mixed with the spice-infused aroma of the nearby Korean restaurant. I closed my eyes, inhaling the familiar scent of my current surroundings, anything to keep me grounded.

I stared out the balcony window. The Hollywood sign peeked just above the array of low-slung buildings. I tossed my phone onto the bedspread and stood up, forcing truth aside long enough to grab my laptop off the desk and search for the cheapest flight home to Cascade Hills, Ohio.

2

LIV

The room at the Holiday Inn was pitch black. The faint glow of streetlights filtered in around the edges of closed curtains as I peered through the darkness. Switching on the reading lamp above the bed, I grabbed the journal I’d learned to keep handy.

Come home, I scrawled, for the second time. My grandmother’s words. The same ones that hung in the air after her first visit two nights ago were haunting me now.

Well, Grandma, I’m here. Now what? I whispered into the darkness. My fingers skimmed over the blank page in my lap, arcs of graphite morphing into the face of a little girl as I sketched. Her familiarity was haunting. She couldn’t be more than five-years-old. Wide eyes and thin-pressed lips.

I finished my drawing, flipping back a few pages to the image of the young woman. A connection was there, I was sure. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find it. Did I know her? Had we been friends? I sighed. What did it matter anyway? Grandma was dead, and like every other vision I had, so was she.

I replaced the pencil and notebook on the nightstand, hunkering down under the thick hotel bedspread. The distant scream of a siren, blaring its way toward some emergency colored my futile attempt at sleep.

I tossed under the weight of the duvet. My mind shuffling between images of my grandmother and a ghostly little girl, the terror-stricken eyes of an innocent young woman, and the inherent expectations of this journey back to Cascade Hills. No train of thought allowed my brain the peace it needed to find sleep. I sighed in the silence of the room. If I was going to find out what my grandmother needed from me, there was only one place to start–Sullivan farm.

In one swift movement, I flung the covers off and rose from the bed. I skipped the shower and dressed in the dark–the fluorescence of the bathroom lights too much for my overworked and jet-lagged brain. I opted for jeans and an old Cascade Hills High School sweatshirt that should have been retired a decade ago. Refusing to neglect my gums, I squeezed a dollop of Crest onto my toothbrush and watched my reflection in the mirror, wondering, not for the first time, why a scared little girl still stared back at me today.

The clock on the dashboard of my rental read just after three A.M. when I pulled onto Sullivan Road. Empty corn and soybean fields flanked both sides of the car. A smile tickled the corners of my lips, a familiar peacefulness rising in my chest.

I loved coming to my grandparents’ farm. Through the school year I spent every weekend here, and in the summer I might as well have changed my address. Mom and Dad went about their normal small-town lives–my father, a successful attorney turned town politician, my mother, the respected philanthropic socialite.

We lived near Sullivan farm, in the town of Cascade Hills, but I always felt caught somewhere in between when the three of us were together. Out here at the farm, though, I was free. Free to be who I wanted, do what I wanted, and most importantly, dream without fear of judgement. That absence of judgement was only present at the farm. Staying here was liberating on so many levels.

I slowed to pull into the long driveway. 7667 glinted back at me, the headlights of the rental catching the reflective numbers on the mailbox post. The final seven leaned at an odd angle, a reminder of the emptiness that awaited me at the end of the drive. I breathed a long sigh, an effort to tamp down the unjustified squeeze of excitement in my chest.

I knew the house was empty…cold…lifeless. Had been since my mother convinced my grandmother to live at New Horizon’s. The house was too big. Too much for my grandmother to take care of alone. And now, even the room at the retirement home was empty. Regardless of reality, the exhilaration of being home sucked the air from my lungs.

The old Victorian farmhouse came into view, looming like an eerie shadow. I maneuvered the car in the overgrown gravel of the barn lot, parking perpendicular to the sidewalk, ensuring the headlights would illuminate the front door. Part of me half-expected my grandmother to open the screen door and step out onto the wrap-around porch. She would wipe her hands on her apron before spreading her arms wide, enveloping me in a bear hug. I shook the threat of the tearful memory away and focused on the darkened residence.