Jax's monstrous new form left Frankie's veins buzzing. The threat no longer existed as a ghost story from the 1700s; it walked their beaches, wearing the faces of people they knew. It had crawled out of the past and breathed down their necks.

  Every shadow held a threat. Every gust of wind whispered a warning. Stop digging. The Captain’s message echoed in her mind, a low, menacing drumbeat.

  Sleep offered no escape, only a minefield of nightmares, full of crushing black water and a thirst more real than her own waking life. Jumpy and irritable, she lived on edge. The power, or the curse, or whatever lived in her blood, raged like a caged animal, pacing back and forth, rattling the bars of its prison.

  She needed a break. Just one moment of mundane normalcy to prove her old life had not completely vanished.

  “I’m running to the 24-hour for some milk,” she called to her mom late that evening, the lie tasting slick and practiced on her tongue. Her mother did not need milk. Frankie needed air. She needed the illusion of a normal teenager on a normal errand, even for just ten minutes.

  Cool, damp night air greeted her. She pulled her hoodie up, jamming her hands in her pockets as she walked down the familiar, lamp-lit streets of Norchester. The night world presented itself differently now. Sharper. The hum of the streetlights became distinct, buzzing notes. The leftover grease from the Sandpiper Diner reached her from three blocks away. The low thrum of a conversation penetrated the walls of a house she passed.

  The sensations overwhelmed, exhausted her. They left her utterly alone.

  The 24-hour convenience store, “The Quick Stop,” stood as an island of harsh, fluorescent light in the quiet darkness of the neighborhood. It usually stood empty at this hour, a place for lonely, late-night transactions. For Frankie, it represented a beacon of the life she lost, a life where one could just walk into a store and buy milk without the stalking gait of a predator.

  She grabbed a carton of milk from the refrigerated case, the cold plastic a dull ache against her hypersensitive skin. She paid the bored-looking teenager at the counter, mumbling a thank you, and hurried back out into the relative darkness of the night.

  She had done it. A normal act. See? Everything remained fine.

  So wrapped up in this small, desperate victory, she failed to see the figure shuffling from the shadows of the alley beside the store until the woman stood almost on top of her.

  “Got any spare change?”

  A low, gravelly rasp of a voice emerged. A familiar voice. It belonged to a homeless woman named Brenda, a local figure both tragic and aggressive. A ghost of a different kind, she haunted the fringes of Norchester, her mind a tangled mess of paranoia and misfortune.

  “Sorry, I don’t,” Frankie said politely, clutching her carton of milk and trying to step around her.

  But Brenda moved fast. She blocked Frankie’s path, her rheumy and unfocused eyes fixing on Frankie with a sudden, desperate intensity. The thick, cloying smell of stale cigarettes and unwashed clothes surrounded her, a suffocating embrace of human neglect.

  “C’mon, pretty girl,” Brenda snarled, her voice taking on a sharp, whining edge. “A pretty little thing like you, you can spare something for an old woman. Just a dollar. I need it.”

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I really have no cash, Brenda,” Frankie said, her voice tightening. The woman’s proximity set her nerves on edge. The smell, the aggressive energy, the sheer, desperate need—all of it pushed her too far. Frankie’s internal alarm system, already dialed up to eleven, screamed.

  Brenda’s hand shot out and grabbed Frankie’s arm.

  Her grip held surprising strength, her dirty fingernails digging into Frankie’s biceps.

  “Don’t you lie to me!” Brenda hissed, her face contorting into a mask of rage. “You rich beach kids, you always got money. Always lying.”

  The unwanted physical contact lit a fuse.

  The touch. The aggression. The raw, negative energy poured off the woman.

  Something inside Frankie triggered.

  No thought. No decision. Just an eruption.

  A surge of raw, primal power, hot and uncontrollable as a lightning strike, flooded through her. The caged animal inside her roared and burst free. The low hum of energy beneath her skin exploded into a tidal wave of pure, violent force.

  She reacted.

  With a shove meant only to push the woman away, to break her grip, to create space, Frankie pushed back.

  But the strength that erupted from her belonged to something else. Not the strength of a seventeen-year-old girl. Something immense. Something monstrous.

  Brenda didn’t just stumble back. She flew.

  The shove launched her backward several feet, as if a car had hit her. Her body sailed through the air, limp and surprised, before crashing with a sickening, wet thud into a row of metal newspaper stands on the sidewalk. The stands toppled with a deafening clatter of metal and paper, and Brenda slumped to the pavement in a heap, stunned and groaning.

  The sheer force shocked her. Devastating.

  And terrifyingly, beautifully, effortlessly easy.

  Frankie stared, her arm still outstretched, her hand tingling with the aftershock of the unleashed power. Her gaze dropped to her hand, then to the woman groaning on the pavement, and then back to her hand.

  Did I do that?

  A couple walking down the street gasped, their faces masks of shock and fear. A car driving by slowed, its occupants staring.

  Frankie looked at the crumpled form of the woman on the ground. She had no desire to hurt her. She just wanted the woman to let go. But the power… the power had not listened. It possessed no finesse. No control. It only knew force.

  Panic, cold and sharp, flooded her veins, chasing away the hot surge of power. Shame followed close behind, a suffocating black wave.

  A weapon. A loaded gun with a hair trigger. She didn't know how to control it.

  She turned and fled.

  She dropped the carton of milk. Its plastic container split open on the pavement, a pool of white spreading in the dark. She ran, her ragged breathing loud in her ears, the clatter of the newspaper stands and the woman’s pained groan burned into her mind. She ran without looking back, away from the scene, away from the staring faces, away from the horrifying proof of what she became.

  As she ducked into a dark alleyway a few blocks away, her heart hammering against her ribs, she missed the lone figure watching from the shadows across the street.

  Damon Rudd.

  He saw everything.

  On his way home from a late-night surf check, he saw Frankie leave the Quick Stop. He witnessed Brenda accost her. He noted the grab and prepared to step in.

  And then he witnessed the shove.

  He saw Frankie, a girl he knew from the water, a girl he outweighed by at least fifty pounds, send a grown woman flying through the air with the casual ease of someone tossing a piece of trash.

  His mind struggled to process it. The angle, the physics—all wrong. Impossible.

  He stood there in the shadows, his face a complex mixture of shock, disbelief, and a deep, furrowed concern. Tasia’s accusations at the bonfire party about drugs. Steroids. But what he just witnessed… that transcended steroids.

  That was something else.