CHAPTER ONE
Piper Graves floated in the peaceful waters of deep sleep, her body nestled in the familiar curves of her childhood mattress. Her breathing came slow and steady, a rhythm untroubled by the world outside her dreams—until the voices sliced through the silence of her mind.
Wake up.
The command sounded distant, like someone calling from across a vast canyon. Piper rolled onto her side, burying her face in the pillow, trying to cling to the dissolving sleep.
Wake up, Emma. You need to wake up now.
Her eyelids fluttered. The room came into focus—the pale yellow walls, the bookshelf still lined with dog-eared paperbacks from her teenage years, the collection of polished stones on the dresser. Everything exactly as it had been, preserved like a museum exhibit of a life interrupted.
Piper blinked, her gaze finding the digital clock on the nightstand. 7:03 AM. Mom would be making breakfast by now—the scent of coffee already drifted up from the kitchen below.
“Time for breakfast,” she murmured, pushing herself upright against the headboard.
That's not what we mean. The voice was sharper now, insistent. You need to wake up from being Piper Graves.
She clutched at the edge of her quilt. “What?”
This isn't real. You're dreaming this. You're Emma Kirby, and you're trapped in a dream where you think you're someone named Piper Graves.
“Stop it,” Piper whispered, pressing her palms against her temples. “I know who I am.”
These voices had been unwelcome companions for as long as she could remember—even before she'd fled from home at sixteen.
They'd told her to run, that she was a danger to her family.
They'd shown her terrifying visions. They’d also persuaded her to change her very identity—first by making her adopt the name Emma Kirby, and over time making her forget she was ever Piper Graves.
But that was over now. Piper knew who she really was. And she hadn’t expected her voices to try to drag her back into that delusion.
You constructed this fantasy yourself, the voices said. The reunion with your twin, the mother who takes you back without question—it's what Emma wanted so desperately.
“I'm not Emma,” Piper said, her voice stronger now. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, feet finding the cool hardwood floor. “I'm Piper Graves. I was born here in Trentville. My sister found me after twenty years.”
Look around you. Notice how perfect it all is? Too perfect. The bedroom preserved exactly as you left it. The mother who forgave you instantly. The twin sister who had never stopped searching for you. This is the dream of a homeless woman who's been alone too long.
The doubt, small as a seed, found purchase in Piper’s mind.
Was it possible? The last thing she could recall clearly before all this was being at Wendell Gillis's farm.
Her earlier memories had fractured into jagged, confusing pieces—years on the streets, running from city to city, the name Emma Kirby.
“No,” she said, standing up now. “Jenna found me. I'm home. This is real.”
This dream is dangerous, Emma. There's a wolf hiding in it. It has already killed someone. If you wake up—truly wake up—that monster will go away.
“There's no wolf,” she replied firmly. “Not here.”
There IS. The wolf is HERE, Emma. It has already tasted blood.
And these people—they’re really just traps, and every secret you share with them tightens their grip on you.
Be careful what you tell them. They will NEVER let you leave this dream willingly.
And when you're too weak to fight anymore, that's when the wolf will come for you.
Piper gasped in confusion. She knew that the voices had been wrong before. They'd told her terrible things that never came to pass. They'd driven her from her home with their whispered threats and horrific visions.
Yet sometimes—sometimes they'd been right.
“I'm not listening to you anymore,” she said. “I'm Piper Graves. This is my home. Jenna is my sister. Margaret Graves is my mother. I'm not dreaming.”
She closed her eyes, drawing in a deep breath. Then another. And another. She imagined building walls in her mind—high, thick barriers of stone and steel. She visualized the voices trapped behind those walls, their warnings muffled until they faded to whispers, then to silence.
When she opened her eyes again, the only sounds were the chirping of birds outside and the distant clink of activity from the kitchen below.
She dressed quickly, pulling on slacks and a comfortable t-shirt.
As she ran a brush through her hair, Piper studied her reflection in the mirror.
The face that looked back was undeniably hers—the same green eyes as Jenna's, though lacking their determined spark; the same chestnut hair, though longer and streaked with premature gray.
She was thinner than her twin, her cheeks hollow from years of uncertain meals and chronic stress.
“Piper Graves,” she said firmly to her reflection, then turned away and headed downstairs.
In the kitchen, Mom stood at the stove, spatula in hand, flipping pancakes. She turned when Piper entered, a smile warming her face.
“Morning, sweetheart. Sleep well?”
Piper hesitated, remembering the voices, Be careful what you tell them.
“Yes,” she lied, forcing a smile. “Like a rock.”
She slid into a chair at the table. Her throat felt tight, making it difficult to swallow. Was any of this real? The warmth of the kitchen, the smell of coffee and syrup, the weight of utensils in her hand—it all seemed so solid, so tangible.
But dreams could be convincing too.
As Piper ate, listening to her mother's gentle morning chatter, questions still circled her mind: What if the voices were right this time? What if she was Emma Kirby, lost in a beautiful, dangerous dream? And what was the wolf they warned about—who had it already killed?
*
As Jenna Graves drove the familiar route to her childhood home, morning sunlight glinted off the hood of her sheriff's department cruiser. She checked her watch: 7:45 AM. Fifteen minutes until Dr. White would be expecting them at Trentville Memorial Hospital for Piper's regular visit.
Dr. Samantha White had one of Jenna’s first calls after she got her twin sister home.
The psychiatrist’s reputation for handling unusual cases was well-known in Trentville, and her open-mindedness about phenomena that science struggled to explain made her the perfect choice.
Because Jenna was sure that whatever had happened to her sister went beyond ordinary trauma.
It helped that Dr. White now knew about Jenna’s own abilities, and accepted them as a fact. She was one of only five people in the world who knew, although Jenna was all too aware that many others suspected it.
The Graves family home came into view—a two-story colonial with blue paint and white trim.
Jenna pulled into the driveway behind her mother's sedan.
She got out of her cruiser and climbed the porch steps, then rang the doorbell even though she still had a key.
Some boundaries seemed important to maintain, especially now that her relationship with her mother was finally on the mend.
The door swung open, revealing Mom in a simple blouse and slacks, her gray-streaked hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. Her mother's face had filled out slightly in the months since she'd stopped drinking, although shadows still lingered under her eyes.
“Morning, Mom,” Jenna said, stepping into the foyer. “Is Piper ready?”
“She's upstairs,” Mom said, “But she’s already dressed and has had breakfast.” She tilted her head toward the ceiling, and called, called, “Piper! Jenna's here!” Then she drew Jenna out of the foyer and lowered her voice, “Jenna Marie, I'm worried about her.”
The use of her middle name—her mother's signal for serious conversation—put Jenna immediately on alert. “What happened?”
“Nothing very specific. It's just...” Mom wrapped her arms around herself. “She was so distant at breakfast. Barely spoke. Kept staring at her plate like she was trying to solve a puzzle hidden in the pancakes.”
Jenna's instincts sharpened. “Did she say anything unusual?”
“No, that's what concerns me. She said everything was fine, but I could tell it wasn't.” Mom led Jenna into the kitchen, away from the staircase. “I've watched you hide things from me your whole life, Jenna. I know what it looks like when someone's keeping secrets.”
Jenna knew that was true. She’d only recently told her mother that the dead communicated with her in her dreams, giving her advice that helped her solve crimes.
“Dr. White warned us this wouldn't be linear progress,” she said, trying to reassure herself as much as her mother. “Piper's been through trauma we can't even imagine. There are going to be setbacks.”
Mom nodded, but worry still creased her forehead. “She reminds me of how you were after she disappeared. Present in body but gone in spirit. Like she's searching for something none of us can see.”
Before Jenna could respond, footsteps on the stairs announced Piper's arrival. Both women fell silent, turning toward the kitchen doorway.
“Hey,” Jenna said, offering a smile. “Ready for your appointment?”
Piper’s gaze finally settled on her twin. “Ready as I'll ever be.”
There was a wariness in her voice that hadn't been there yesterday. Jenna exchanged a quick glance with her mother, confirming that Mom had noticed it too.
“We should get going,” Jenna said, checking her watch again. “Dr. White likes punctuality.”
Mom stepped forward to hug Piper, who accepted the embrace but didn't return it with the same enthusiasm she had shown in previous days. “Good luck, sweetheart. I'll have lunch ready when you get back.”
The drive to Trentville Memorial Hospital normally took fifteen minutes from their mother's house, winding through residential streets before connecting with the main road that led to the outskirts of town. Jenna kept the radio off, hoping the silence would encourage conversation.
“Sleep okay?” she asked, glancing sideways at her sister.
Piper stared out the passenger window at the passing houses. “Fine.”
“Mom said you were quiet at breakfast.”
“Just thinking.”
In the days since finding Piper at Wendell Gillis's farm, Piper had shared fragments of her life as Emma Kirby—the homeless shelters, the brief stay in a commune called the Lost and Found Collective, her time as a captive of the human traffickers called the Harvesters.
But there were gaps in her narrative, places where memory failed or where the truth was too painful to say.
“Anything you want to talk about before we get there?” Jenna asked, trying a different approach. “Dr. White will have questions. It might help to practice answering them with me first.”
Piper finally turned away from the window, studying Jenna's profile. “Do you ever wonder if all this isn't real?”
The question caught Jenna off guard. “What do you mean?”
“This. Us. Being reunited. Me being back home. What if it's all just a dream?”
Alarm bells rang in Jenna's mind. She kept her expression neutral. “It feels pretty real to me.”
“Yeah,” Piper said softly, turning back to the window. “That's what dreams do, though, isn't it? Feel real while you're in them.”
Jenna searched for the right words, sensing the importance of this moment but uncertain how to reply.
“Piper,” she asked carefully, “is something happening that you're not telling us about?”
The silence stretched long enough that Jenna thought her sister might not answer. Then the words came almost inaudibly: “Not yet.”
Jenna recognized the tone—it was the same one she'd heard in her own voice when she backed off from trying to explain her dreams to most listeners. The voice of someone who knows something others don't, something they won't believe.
Casting a sidelong glance at her sister, Jenna saw that her gaze was fixed on the passing landscape.
She couldn’t tell if Piper was still fully present.
Was her twin drifting away again, into the realm of voices only she could hear?
Was something deeply wrong with Piper, something more than the obvious effects of her past traumas?