Chapter 1

Fluorescent lights flickered over the Orderly's stunned face as his eyes locked onto the jagged shard in my hand. Then shifted to the nurse, rigid and trembling at my feet.

“Madeline?” His hand inched to the loaded syringes at his waist.

“Don’t,” I snapped, voice shaking as I pressed the tip into the soft curve of her neck. Just enough to make my point.

The Orderly’s eyes widened and he raised his hand away from the needle.

Then he saw it. The blood trail leading into the hall.

Pale light illuminated the night attendant’s blood-soaked body, slumped halfway out my shattered door.

Inky shadow's snaked from the corpse, twisting into clawed hands and jagged shadowed teeth. It coiled around the broken body.

Shadows only I could see.

There was no more time.

I stepped back, dragging the nurse with me. “Please don’t, ” she squealed. Her hands trembled against my wrist as she begged, but I didn't have a choice.

“I have to find my parents.”

His voice shifted from confident to desperate. “Madeline, please—we can’t let you out. You’re blind.”

His plea was all but lost beneath my labored breaths and the scratchy record playing “Silent Night” on a loop from the staff room.

No one should have been here.

Why are they here?

My bare foot slid in the warm wetness pooling on the checkered floor. I didn’t need to see it to know what it was. Rain lashed the barred windows, each droplet like a ticking clock against the rusted frames of the mildew-scented rec room.

I turned my head left to right frantically, my heart slamming inside my chest. God, please. The longer I’m here the more danger everyone's in.

There has to be a way out?

It was useless. Every corner led nowhere—just more shadows, more echoes, more of the same.

“There are too many shadows.” I sucked in a sharp breath. The air stank of mold, bleach, and fear leaving me nauseated.

Since the night I lost my vision, the world had become nothing but pale grays swallowed by darker ones. Shapes that slithered just out of reach, and blackness that crept from every corner. Except for the monsters. Those I could see clear as day.

“It’s too dark.”

The shard trembled in my palm and my shoulders pressed hard against the cold door at my back. I fought the rising tide in my throat, eyes darting across a world I could barely make out.

Luckily for me the last two months some of my vision had begun to creep back in, but still, everything was no more than a blur of shadow. A colorless prison of darkness that faded out at the edges.

Two blurry faces stared at me from inside the locked rooms at the end of the hall.

Kade and Jesse.

They should have been asleep. Everyone should have been. The nurses always drugged us at night. But there they were.

He was.

Kade’s dark eyes bored into mine.

Or maybe they weren’t really there at all?

Maybe none of them were?

The Orderly's soft voice rose over the crackling record and the rapid rush of thoughts that raced through my mind.

“If you put that down, I promise I’ll turn on all the lights in your room.”

His tone held a desperation that left me feeling guilty. No one should have been here. Not on Christmas Eve.

I could tell he meant well, but not everyone here was so kind. And the few people who were, couldn’t prevent a shadow on a wall, or a reflection on glass.

They couldn’t stop the monsters.

No one could.

“Please,” my voice cracked. “You have to let me go, just open the door and let me go.”

“Madeline, please.” He stepped slowly forward, his hand outstretched, the syringe still safely fastened at his belt. “I want to help you. Will you let me do that?” Shaggy bangs fell across his forehead and a soft smile spread across his lips.

It was Brian.

I looked down at the light gray hair that rested on my arm. Noreen.

Of course it was them. The realization hit me like an icy wave.

Christmas Eve—who else would be stuck working? Brian, Noreen, and the scumbucket.

“Damn it.”

Hot tears streamed my cheeks, and my hand trembled harder. Noreen hissed, and wetness soaked my sleeve. Hotter than her tears that covered my forearm before.

I'd cut her.

“Please don’t kill me,” she whimpered.

A sharp pop silenced the staffroom lights, and the crackling record stuttered to silence.

“They will kill you,” I whispered. “If you don’t let me go, they will kill you all.”

“The only danger to us right now is you.” Brian took another step. “Let Noreen go. We can talk about this.”

Heat flared in my cheeks and my eyes stung. What was I doing? They have always been kind to me.

I won’t do this.

The only person who deserves to die because of me—is me…

Without warning, I shoved Noreen toward Brian and moved toward the staffroom with the shard pressed into my chest.

“I’ll do it!”

Brian and Noreen’s eyes locked on the glass piercing my skin above the neckline of my hospital gown. “I will jam this into my heart before you can make it across the room. I swear I will.”

I pressed again. This time, black stained the pale gray of my nightdress, and a muffled voice rose from the other side of the door down the hall. Jesse’s palm was flat against the vertical glass window, his gaunt expression turned horrified. Kade stepped back, his head tilted ever so slightly, his dark bangs revealing his raised brow. Noticeably amused.

I looked away.

And they think I’m fucked up.

Trembling, I took a step back from them. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

Brian glanced down the hall at the night attendant’s lifeless body and back at me.

“He deserved what he got,” I hissed through my teeth. “But you two.” I looked down the hall at Jesse’s worried expression through the glass. “The rest of you don’t, and if I don’t get out of here now, you’re all going to die.”

Brian’s voice was calm and gentle. “This is not your fault, Madeline. No one blames you. If you’ll—”

My scream tore from my chest and up my throat like a razor. “Fucking listen to me!” The shrill sound echoed into the room. The shard’s tip angled upward, further into my chest.

Brian shifted forward, his expression flitted from fear to horror. His trembling hand raised as he took a step around Noreen.

“No,” I breathed. My muscles flexed as I thrust the glass deeper. “I’m done talking.”

The fluorescents flickered out and the room was doused in blackness. A large hand curled around my own. A deep voice growled against my ear. “Yeah. You sure as hell are.” His breath was hot on my neck as he wrenched the glass from my chest and let it clatter to the floor.

The light blinked back on, then settled into a low, dull hum, illuminating the pair of onyx eyes that stared back at me from behind a rune carved mask.

This wasn’t one of the monsters.

“Kade?”

“How did—” My words died on my lips as blackness exploded around us.

The air sucked from my lungs. My stomach somersaulted.

Silence swallowed me.