Chapter 5
The Gift From Beyond the Grave
ANNA
We walked to the cabin in silence.
“What did you mean about learning who I am?” I asked.
Derrick sat in a chair at the dusty kitchen table and I pulled out the other chair, sitting across from him.
“Your mother and I agreed a long time ago that we would do everything we could to protect you. I am still honoring that agreement, though this is far from the plan we originally laid out.”
“What’re you talking about?” I asked again, all my attention zeroing in on Derrick.
“It is no longer in your best interest to avoid Nightfall,” he said.
“Nightfall? What is that?” I asked.
Derrick sat still in his chair, his mind elsewhere. He wasn’t looking at me when he finally answered.
“Nightfall is many things, but mainly, it is a place for learning,” he said.
“Like a university?” I asked.
“In some ways, yes. But I think you will find its teachings may help you cope. Some things in this world cannot be told,” Derrick said.
“If you wish to experience those things, this is your opportunity. It is your choice now, Anna, as it always should have been. I will speak with my contact there about your invitation. It should be here tomorrow.”
My head was pounding from what he was suggesting. The idea that my mom had a life at all was shocking, let alone something this secretive.
“My mom went there?” I asked.
Derrick nodded once.
I sat there, trying to process what he was saying. Why couldn’t they have told me about this place before? And why hadn’t she wanted me to go? Could it be where she met my dad?
“Will you be there?” I asked, fear tightening my chest.
“No, and you must never speak of me by name to anyone,” he said.
Derrick’s presence was so mighty and enveloping that it was hard to think in his presence. Who was he? This man was unlike anyone I’d met before, his gaze alone speaking to me in a way no one else ever had.
“Do you recall the night your mother intended to give you a gift?” he asked.
I stared at the table where the small package had been neatly wrapped beside the cake she’d made that night—the one that never got cut.
Derrick brought his hand to the table, placed something, and withdrew it, revealing a silver bracelet. It was a solid piece except for the smooth cut made to slip over the wrist. At the center was a bright, deep green stone set tightly within a bezel.
“I made a few adjustments, but this is what she intended to give you,” he said.
I picked up the bracelet and read the engraving on the inside.
For my daughter, the only light I’ll ever need.
“Derrick,” I said quietly. “Why didn’t she want me to go to Nightfall?”
He was as still as stone. “It is complicated. Some part of you must know—your mother was different. As am I.”
His gaze bore through me like he was seeing more than I could imagine.
Once, I’d tried to explain what Derrick was like to Katie and Eiryn, but I couldn’t find the words.
It was a feeling I’d never felt around anyone else.
He was like a storm. Here one minute, gone the next, but you could feel when he was coming.
The intense presence of something eternal that didn’t need explanation—it just was.
But I knew what he was saying. My mom, Derrick, and I—we were different.
If Derrick were the storm, my mom was the sun, always trying to brighten the day, but when the darkness came, she was gone—simply unavailable.
“I know,” I whispered.
The admission left me shaking. Acknowledging this truth wasn’t something I’d ever thought I was allowed to do.
She refused to address my curiosity as a child, and I’d learned to keep quiet about it.
We weren’t supposed to be different. Even when the wind hummed like the trees were going to be ripped from the ground like toothpicks during a training session, or the skies darkened whenever my mom and I had a fight.
No, I never talked about those things.
But what did it mean?
Why did I feel different from everyone else?
Why were we different?
Derrick shifted, this time, his hand resting on my shoulder. “This will not be an easy journey, Anna. However, I am afraid you no longer have a choice in the matter. You are no longer hidden from our world.”
Derrick’s words stayed in my mind long after Eiryn took me home. The confirmation of what I’d always felt was surreal. The confirmation that I didn’t belong here. The rain beat down on the roof, the storm casting me into the deep recesses of my mind.
I wasn’t sure what to do with Derrick’s revelation. It was like I was in limbo, waiting for something to push me in the direction I was supposed to go.
The more I thought about my mom, the more I began to recall distant memories—her nightmares, her surreal hallucinations, and the panic attacks that followed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what’d happened in her past. She had the look of someone who’d seen too much.
Nightmares twisted reality into shadows in my sleep that night.
I awoke in a sweat, the blankets scattered and tangled around my limbs.
True to Derrick’s word, an invitation arrived later that day. There was no return address, only a wax seal featuring a swirling design of a pegasus, a dragon, and a raven, with a capital N at the center.
Katie and I sat on my bed, staring at the letter that lay unopened on the bedspread.
After I told her about Derrick, she hadn’t left my side.
Katie and Eiryn had been there since before I became the town’s daily headline.
They were the ones I could share anything with, even if I didn’t.
Making friends now seemed laughable. It made me value them, but fear followed like a shadow, the fear that they could meet the same end as my mom.
That one day, I’d snap and murder them just like I’d killed her.
Katie had never shared my concern for her safety, always far more concerned with mine. I swore she wasn’t breathing anymore as I listened to her near-constant stream of consciousness about what I should do.
Until the letter came anyway.
“Are you going to open it?” she asked.
My body was thrumming with anticipation and increasing nausea. Snatching the letter, I ripped it open and read:
I dropped the letter and looked at Katie.
“I don’t see anything about this place on the internet,” she said, her eyebrows raised, phone in her hand.
I wasn’t surprised. “Makes sense since it’s a secret society.”
Katie pursed her lips. “And Derrick thinks this is a good idea? Sounds sus to me. And by tonight? I’m pretty sure this is how people get kidnapped.”
“Maybe if I can get kidnapped twice more, the third time will be the charm,” I grumbled.
A frustrated groan sounded as I eyed the letter on my bedspread. It looked like it was written in fountain ink, and the paper was thick, yellow cardstock.
“It is odd,” I said, sighing. “But no one’s scamming Derrick. It must be real. Plus, he said my mom went there, and nothing about her was normal, so this isn’t that strange.”
Katie scowled, one eyebrow shooting up. “It’s also very possible this is where she got involved with the people whom she went into hiding to get away from.”
I grimaced. She had a point.
“So what? You think I should stay here, go to college, and hope no one shows up to kill me, too? Or worse, drag you and your mom into it?”
A flicker of fear crossed her face. “They brought you back, Anna. Why would they come again?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t live my life always looking over my shoulder,” I said.
Katie pursed her lips. “Eiryn isn’t going to like it.”
A soft knock at the door sounded before it opened.
Susan poked her head in. “How’s it going?”
Katie glanced at the letter, then at me. “Not great. You’re going to have to talk her out of this. I’ll give you two a minute.”
She got up and crossed the room, softly shutting the door behind her. Susan sat down at the end of my bed and picked up the letter. We’d talked about Derrick and what he said. I was surprised at how well she took it.
I had waited for her to be shocked, but it never came.
“Why do I get the feeling you know what this place is?” I asked, watching her curiously.
“Anna, do you remember when I told you about losing my sister?” she asked.
I nodded slowly, not sure what this had to do with me.
When I first came to live with Susan and Katie and was still unable to sleep because of my nightmares, Susan would sit up with me at night.
One night, Susan told me about her younger sister who’d disappeared when she was in her early twenties and was never found.
I think part of the reason why she was so kind to me was that she hoped someone out there was being kind to her sister.
“I’ve never told anyone this, but my sister went to this place. She was excited. That’s where she met your mother—Adelyna,” she said.
My heart dropped into my stomach as I recalled the old photo of the three of them.
“Adelyna came to our house. She couldn’t have been any older than you are now.
That was the day we took this photo. She invited my sister to this place—she described it as an opportunity.
My sister had always been different, and she suffered from serious depression.
This sounded like the perfect opportunity for her.
She went and, for the first few months, sent home letters about how much she loved the place.
Then, her letters stopped coming one day.
And she never came home,” Susan said. “It was years later when I saw your mother in town. I couldn’t believe it.
I begged Adelyna to tell me what happened to her, but all she ever did was tear up.
She couldn’t talk about it. After that, she bought the old cabin up the mountain, and you were born.
Her name was Annabelle; we always used to call her Anna. ”
Her words hit me like a hammer. I didn’t know which piece to focus on first. Susan’s sister went to Nightfall. She went missing at this school. Or that she’d had the same name as me.