Chapter 2 IDENTITY CONFIRMED

KIA

My body felt heavy, like it belonged to someone else. Voices drifted somewhere above me, muffled at first, then sharpening into words.

"You tasered a kid." The voice was low, angry. "She's literally wearing a costume."

"It's not Halloween." The second voice didn't sound sorry at all. "Who dresses up like a serial killer and just happens to be standing over a mutilated body at midnight? Forgive me for taking precautions."

"She's seventeen."

"She's eighteen, actually, I checked her ID. And I did what I was trained to do."

I groaned, my head throbbing, and both voices went quiet.

"She's up," someone said.

I forced my eyes open. The room around me was small and painfully bright, grey walls pressing in close, a metal table cold under my palms. A recorder sat in the middle of it, its red light blinking steadily.

A woman sat across from me, dressed in a dark blazer, a badge clipped to the front of it. Another officer stood beside me, arms crossed, refusing to quite look at me. The one who'd tasered me, I guessed.

"Where's my dad?" My voice came out cracked and hoarse.

"We'll get to that," the woman said softly. "But first, I need you to answer a few questions. Can you state your full name for the recording?"

"Kia Williams." I swallowed. "Where is he? Where's my dad?"

"Kia, I need you to look at this photo and tell me if you can identify this man."

She slid a photo across the table. I didn't want to look at it. I looked at it anyway.

"That's my dad." My eyes burned. "John Williams."

"And when did you last see your father?"

"An hour ago. Maybe less." I pressed my palms flat against the table to stop them from shaking. "He came to my room before I left."

"And your mother? Is there someone we can call for her?"

"She's late. She died when I was seven." I hated saying it out loud, hated the way people's faces always changed when they heard it.

The second officer leaned forward before the woman could ask her next question. "What exactly were you doing in the middle of the woods, dressed like that, at midnight?"

"It's a costume." I glared up at him. "Ever heard of Hannah Grace?"

"Watkins." The woman's voice cut in, harsh enough to make him straighten. "Let me handle this."

He backed off, jaw tight, and she turned back to me with an apologetic look that didn't quite reach her eyes.

"We're sending the knife you had on you for testing," she said.

"You're a cop. Can't you tell it was fake?"

"Kia." She said my name slowly, like she was bracing me for something. "The knife is real."

The room went cold around me.

"That's not possible." I shook my head. "When Summer gave it to me it was fake. We bought it together for the costume, we—"

And then it hit me. Summer must have swapped it. Some stupid prank, probably meant to make me scream when I pulled it out later, and I'd never even noticed the weight of it in my hand.

The woman opened her mouth to ask something else, but the door swung open before she could get the words out. Another officer stuck his head in.

"Kia Williams is free to go."

The woman stood so fast her chair scraped against the floor. She crossed the room to him, and even though they were both trying to keep their voices down, I heard every word.

"She was standing over a body. Just because she's a kid in a costume doesn't cancel that out."

"It's not that." He glanced at me over her shoulder, then lowered his voice further. "We got an anonymous file. Evidence pointing to an animal attack. Whoever sent it wants the case closed and the release approved."

"And we're just supposed to take some anonymous person's word for it?"

"As long as our superiors accept it too. And they already have."

She turned back to me, and whatever she wanted to say, she swallowed it down instead.

"You're free to leave," she told me. "If you remember anything or notice anything strange, call us. Don't hesitate."

I nodded because I didn't trust my voice anymore. I gathered my things from the counter on the way out, my hands still trembling, and it didn't help that the officers on duty were really bad at whispering. One of the officers, further down the hall, murmured to his partner.

"Poor kid. Who knows what her father got involved in. Because that was definitely not an animal attack."

I didn't turn around. I don't think I could have. I pretended not to have heard anything and walked out.

---

The ride home passed in a blur. I don't remember getting into the car, don't remember the streets we drove down. I just remember stepping out into our driveway and watching an officer peel the crime scene tape away from our door like it was nothing, like it hadn't wrapped around the worst night of my life.

I went inside. The house felt too big and too quiet, and I stood in the hallway for a long moment, feeling nothing and everything all at once. My phone rang. Noah's name lit up the screen. I stared at it until it stopped ringing on its own.

I found myself walking to my dad's study, the one room in the house that was fully his. Books stacked in crooked towers along the shelves. A mug of cold coffee still sat on his desk from earlier that day, a thin film formed over the surface.

I ran my fingers along the rim of it.

The last thing I'd said to him rose up all at once, uninvited. He'd knocked on my door before I left for the party, wanting to talk, and I'd rolled my eyes and told him I didn't have time, that we could talk tomorrow. I'd shut the door in his face.

There was no tomorrow now.

A sob tore out of me before I could stop it. I swept a stack of papers off his desk, watched them scatter across the floor, and I didn't even care. I grabbed a picture frame off the shelf and hurled it at the wall, the glass splitting into a spiderweb of cracks. My knees gave out and I sank down against the side of the desk, my back sliding along the wood until I hit the floor, and I cried until my chest burned, until I couldn't breathe right, until I couldn't tell anymore if the tears were for him or for me or for every version of us that would never get to exist now.

My hand landed on something small and hard, half hidden in the shadow under the desk.

I blinked through the tears and picked it up. Rainbow colored, laminated, worn soft at the edges like it had been carried around for years. It looked like a library card at first. My dad's name sat printed across it in neat block letters. John Williams Renegan. Year 2. Eden Falls Academy.

"Who the hell's Renegan?”

I frowned at it through blurry eyes. My dad never went to any academy. He'd told me a hundred times he'd barely finished high school before he started working. So when had this happened? When had there been an entire version of my father I'd never known existed?

A tear slipped down and landed right on the card's surface. It lit up instantly, and I dropped it, scrambling backward.

The beam widened into a floating screen, translucent and glowing, symbols flickering across it too quickly for me to read before settling into words.

"Identity confirmed," an electronic voice filled the room, as if speaking out of thin air. "Kia Williams. Bloodline confirmed: House Renegan. Year One student. Eden Falls Academy."

"What?" I breathed, scrambling to my feet.

The screen shifted. The words dissolved into hundreds of tiny blue particles that spiraled through the air, gathering in front of me until the study itself seemed to split apart.

A doorway.

No…

A portal.

Beyond it stretched a cobblestone road lined with old-fashioned street lamps. Warm golden light spilled across empty streets, disappearing into a city I'd never seen before.

"Welcome to Willowbrook. Your arrival has been confirmed. Current location: Hunter's Gate. Eden Falls Academy lies east of your current location."

Silence settled over the room.

I blinked. The portal stared back at me as if waiting for me to make a move.

"This has to be a dream."

I pinched myself. It hurt. The portal didn't disappear.

A lump rose in my throat. Was this what dad had been hiding from me?

I wiped at my face with the sleeve of my dress and sucked in a shaky breath. If there were answers anywhere… they had to be on the other side.

Before I could lose my nerve, I stepped forward. The instant my foot crossed the threshold, the floor vanished beneath me.

I was falling.