Prologue

The black string first appears at the base of the neck.

Yvonne Vondagier has watched it enough times to know the pattern. First, a single thread appears—thin as spider silk, black as pitch—coiling slowly and steadily around skin no one else can see. It starts at the neck, then spreads across the shoulders and down the arms as days pass. The moment she sees them: fragments of how their life will end. Eventually, more threads will emerge until the person is completely wrapped in a shroud of black, visible only to her and eventually meet their end just as she saw in her vision.

She has learned when she was young not to speak of it. Learned to look away when the darkness unfurls. To smile and nod and pretend the world is as solid and predictable as everyone else believes it to be.

Dark clouds cover the sky as rain streaks the coffee shop window, blurring the afternoon crowds on the street below. Yvonne sitting alone in the corner sips her lukewarm latte, tracing the rim of her cup with a finger, when a familiar laugh cuts through the low murmur of conversation.

Cara Montenegro. They were classmates in tenth grade—memories of the past came back on how they swapped notes along with other classmates and ate together during lunch break. Yvonne smiled as their eyes met across the room.

Then she sees it.

Thick black threads twist around Cara’s arms, her waist, her throat—denser than any Yvonne has ever witnessed, swallowing the light from the overhead lamps. Before she can look away, the world tilts.

She was no longer in the coffee shop. She was surrounded by darkness. Fragments like watching a film, flashed before her eyes a hand clad in dark leather, fingers wrapped around a knife that glistens wet and red. On the attacker’s index finger gleams a silver ring, twisted into the shape of a serpent, its eyes tiny chips of obsidian.

Cara is on the floor, her own eyes wide with shock and fear. The knife descends. Crimson spreads across the pavement like spilled wine.

Yvonne gasps as she closes her eyes and the vision fractures and fades. Her heart hammers against her ribs. It’s not an accident. Not an illness either, it was murder.

She starts to rise, intent on warning Cara somehow. Across the room, Cara is looking at her and smiling. As Yvonne stands up a movement in the window catches her eye. A figure stands just outside, the hood pulled so low it completely obscures their face—no eyes, no features visible beneath the dark fabric, only deep shadow where a face should be. They stand perfectly still, watching through the rain-streaked glass as water streams down the pane in crooked lines, distorting the shape of their shoulders but doing nothing to lift the veil of darkness hiding who they are.

Yvonne’s breath catches in her throat.

There, on their hand, catching the faint glow of the street lamp, is the serpent ring.

The figure’s head tilts slightly. Even with the shadow of the hood, Yvonne knows—they are not looking at Cara.

They are looking at her.

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