Page 74 of The Dark Before Light

Her shoulders slumping even more, she dropped her gaze. Loneliness radiated from her like a perfume. She stared at the ground like she wanted to sink through it and have a chat with my gran.

It made my heart hurt.

I coughed a little to get her attention. “What brings a wee bird out of her nest to fly among the dead this fine evening?”

“Vacation.”

Obvious, Birdie.

“Let me guess where the bird flew from.” I squinted at her, pretending to decipher something from her clothes, then guessed California. It was the first place that popped into my head, probably because it featured heavily on my five-year plan.

She made a face that told me I was right, and I grinned. But instead of my smile coaxing one out of her—as I’d hoped it would—she wilted even more. Suddenly, I had to know. I had to understand why this little bird was drunk, sad, angry, and alone in a graveyard.

The fact she’d chosen Gran’s grave out of hundreds suddenly struck me as portentous. Like maybe there was a reason she was here, that I was here, that we’d met each other. I’d never been religious or superstitious, but goose bumps rose on my arms.

“Go on then, tell me,” I said.

She frowned at me. “Tell you what?”

“Why your eyes are so angry and sad.”

And she did.

By the end, I knew one thing for sure: this little bird was going to be more than okay. She was going to make the world kneel.

Just like I would.

I was an hour late to my own party, though my parents forgave me when I explained what happened. Only I couldn’t explain it—not really—because what happened was far more than helping a lost girl find her hotel.

I’d been given a gift. Maybe from Gran, as fucking wild as the notion was. The gift was witnessing the beginning of an evolution. The makings of a force to be reckoned with.

As I drifted to sleep that night, my last thought was tinged with regret.

I should have let her tell me her name.

“No way.” Dylan leans back, gaping. “That’s crazy. Are you sure it’s her?”

“As sure as the heart attack I had when I saw that passport photo.”

I take a sip of the fresh coffee Samantha brought out after I stopped raving and waving a piece of paper around. The woman looked half a breath from a panic attack, and my reassuring smile only made her blanch. I make a mental note to up her tip.

Sven’s dark eyes probe mine. “It was seventeen—almost eighteen years ago.”

“It’s her.”

The hummingbird necklace. The way she freaked out when I gave her the carving. And her eyes… it was dusk to dark when we met all those years ago. I never got a good look at their color. But the shape of them. The fire in them.

Talia Stirling is Birdie.

I know it to my very bones.

I turn my gaze to the clouds outside, my head a mess of jumbled thoughts. I remember a lot about that night, but I wish I could remember every single detail. Every word she spoke. Every response I gave. But Sven’s right. It was almost two decades ago.

My life changed dramatically right after. In the following months, the memory of the young, drunk girl in a graveyard was painted over by new experiences and challenges. As the years passed, I only recall actively thinking about her one other time.

It was after Alistair and I moved to Los Angeles. We’d been grocery shopping, aimlessly wandering aisles and missing our mam’s cooking. I’d seen a girl in a baggy sweatshirt. Dark hair and bangs. And for a second—the briefest blink—I’d thought it was her. My graveyard girl all grown up. I’d almost followed her. Then Alistair asked if we could afford steaks, I lost sight of her, and life went on.

“All this time, she knew it was me,” I muse aloud. “That’s why she saw me hours after Gail called her.”

---