PROLOGUE
Hell was a real place. No, really. It was. Selene knew this because she was currently standing in the Beyond, as she called it. Though she was only four and had yet to learn or hear the wordhellyet.
One minute she’d been in the cramped bedroom that she shared with three other foster kids, and the next she was standing under a hazy red sky. The nasty purple carpet, covered in fleas and dirt, had been replaced with a brownish-black ground.
To her, this new place was an improvement. For starters, there weren’t any screaming kids to pick on her. She also didn’t have to hide from her foster parents when they grew angry at the noise or when one of the kids asked for food.
Here, it was quiet and, even more important, she was all alone.
In the next few years, she would return to the Beyond as often as she could. Every time she returned, life grew worse and worse for her in the real world.
Until one day. Until he came into her life.
Six-year-old Selene stood on the front porch step, her arms tucked tight against her shivering body. Her hands were shoved deep in the pockets of her worn jeans, lest anyone wanted to reach out to take her hand. She wished she still had the coat she’d worn the day before, but when she’d been kicked out of the last foster home, she’d been told to leave it and all of the other things she’d collected behind since they technically weren’t hers.
The social worker knocked on the door of the trailer one more time, glancing down at Selene every so often.
“I’m sure they’re home,” the heavy-set woman said. She was bundled up more than Selene was and looked like a huge grape in the dark purple outfit.
If no one opened the door of the small trailer, the woman would be left to deal with Selene for the rest of the evening herself, the possibility of which she’d complained about during the entire ride from the foster care home Selene had been kicked out of.
No one wanted her. That wasn’t just a lie that a little girl told herself in situations like hers. It was a fact. In the last eight months, Selene had been shuffled to eleven different foster homes.
Every time, the families explicitly told the social worker that there was something wrong with her.
Initially, Selene appeared normal, no different than the other kids she’d lived with in the old church turned foster care building. The place had smelled of urine and wet carpet, something she would never forget nor ever get over.
Even though she was only six, Selene was extremely smart. More intelligent than most of the adults whom she had been entrusted to. That in itself was the reason for more than half of the removals.
No one liked a smart girl. She’d been told that more times than she could count. And she could count higher than there were stars in the sky.
So she’d tried to play dumb. That had only gotten her beaten and almost killed by one of her last placements. The woman was a monster. Selene had known this the moment she’d see her. But she had no say in where she was dropped off, so she’d tried to make the best of it. That placement had lasted a week. One long, grueling week.
The monster had dropped a pan of hot oil on Selene’s hands. When not a single red mark appeared on her skin, the woman had called her a witch. The woman had been too afraid to explain to the agency why she no longer wanted her and how she knew that Selene couldn’t be harmed.
That hadn’t been the first clue that Selene was different. But it had been the first time someone had taken notice. Selene had enjoyed the fear in the woman’s eyes.
The next time she was placed with a monster, she used that fear to her benefit for as long as she could. A month later, the woman and man abandoned her back at the home.
She didn’t try to learn the adults’ names, and when she did know them, she purposely avoided calling them by their names. It was easier that way.
Did she cause problems on purpose? Hell, yes, she did. She hated every single person that came into her life.
Why shouldn’t she?
Someone had hated her enough that they had left her on the doorstep to the Nashville firehouse days after she’d been born in the first place. Her first few months of life had been at a hospital of sorts. All she could remember, and yes, she remembered most of it, was being shuffled out of a crib and into a playpen until she could sit up and crawl. No one held her. No one was there to comfort her. Her feedings were done with a pillow propping up the bottle until she learned to hold it in her hands.
She had watched in amazement and learned from the large television set hanging over her playpen. It wasn’t cartoons or some other childish show; instead, she’d watched the news or the weather channel.
She’d learned to talk early, to spell shortly after that. Numbers were easy. Too easy. They’d come to her before she’d learned how to walk or run.
When the people around her found this out, she’d been tested. But she hadn’t wanted to please anyone, since no one in her life had stuck around longer than a week.
No faces or voices to bond with. No warm hugs or kisses or tickles to make her giggle. There had been a serious lack of physical or emotional connection in her life.
Because of this, she had decided not to let them see what she could do. To keep it hidden. Guarded.
Much like everything else in her life.