Prologue
Lila had always been afraid of the dark. Not the kind that hid
beneath beds or in closets, but the kind that stretched across the
world like a shroud, swallowing whole moments of her life-those
flashes when she woke up in unfamiliar places, unaware of how
much time had passed, her skin crawling with the sensation that
something had been inside her, moving without her consent.
She was sixteen when it all started.
The night of the accident, the crash that should have killed her,
everything changed. The world as she knew it shattered, broken
into jagged pieces like the glass that had torn into her skin. Lila
had been thrown from the car, her body twisted like a rag-doll
tossed into the void. There were sirens, too many faces, and voices
-frantic, panicked-but she couldn't make sense of them. She
couldn't feel her legs. She couldn't feel anything.
But then-she woke up.