THE IMMORTAL WHO LOVED ME (Book One: The Curse of Ravenshollow)

The first thing I learned about Ravenshollow was that the rain never really stopped. Sometimes it softened into a silver mist that clung to the pine trees and blurred the mountains beyond the town. Sometimes it fell so heavily that the roads disappeared beneath a curtain of water. But even on the rare mornings when the clouds parted, the sky remained the color of an old bruise, as though the sun had forgotten this place existed. The second thing I learned was that people here stared at strangers. The third was that they were afraid of the forest. I discovered that last part on my first morning, when I asked the woman at the bakery why the road behind our house had been blocked by a rusted iron gate. She stopped arranging the pastries. “Don't go past it after dark,” she said. I laughed, assuming she was joking. She didn't laugh back. Now, standing in front of Ravenshollow High with rain sliding beneath the collar of my jacket, I wished I had asked her more questions. My mother's death had left me with a house I barely remembered, a town I'd never visited, and a box of letters she had forbidden me to open until I turned nineteen. My nineteenth birthday was tomorrow. The box was waiting beneath my bed. And last night, for the first time in eleven years, I had dreamed about a boy with silver eyes. He stood among the trees, motionless beneath a sky without stars. His skin was pale, his dark hair stirred by a wind I couldn't feel, and his expression carried a sadness so ancient that it seemed to belong to another world. “You came back,” he whispered. I had woken with those words burning in my ears. The strangest part wasn't the dream itself. It was the feeling that someone had been standing beside my bed when I opened my eyes. Someone who had been watching me sleep. “Are you planning to stand in the rain all morning?” I turned. A boy stood beneath the school's entrance, watching me with an expression I couldn't read. He was tall, dressed entirely in black, with dark hair that looked almost blue where the weak daylight touched it. His face was striking in a way that felt almost unnatural, every feature too precise, too perfectly arranged. But it was his eyes that made me forget what I was going to say. They were the palest gray I had ever seen. Not blue. Not silver. Something in between, like moonlight reflected on ice. “Sorry,” I said, hurrying toward the entrance. “I'm new.” “I know.” I stopped. He looked away, as though he regretted speaking. “How?” For a moment, neither of us moved. Then his gaze dropped to the silver pendant around my neck. All the color seemed to drain from his face. “Where did you get that?” I touched the pendant instinctively. It was an oval piece of silver with a tiny black stone at its center. My mother had worn it every day until the week she died, when she pressed it into my palm and told me never to take it off. “It was hers.” His jaw tightened. “Take it off.” I stared at him. “Excuse me?” “Take it off. Now.” There was something in his voice that wasn't anger. It was fear. Before I could answer, the school bell rang. Students poured through the doors around us, laughing and shoving one another, but he remained perfectly still. I looked down to unfasten my necklace. When I looked up again, he was gone. Not walking away. Not disappearing into the crowd. Gone. I searched the entrance, the steps, and the corridor beyond the glass doors. Nothing. “Who were you talking to?” I turned to find a girl with copper-colored hair standing beside me. “No one.” She glanced at the empty space where the boy had been. “Good,” she said quietly. “Keep it that way.” Before I could ask what she meant, she walked inside. And for the first time since arriving in Ravenshollow, I wondered whether moving here had been the worst decision of my life.