Chapter 1

My brother Ethan didn't die. He just used a hurricane to run away from our parents.

I learned this truth eight years too late, after I was already dead.

My own death started on my nineteenth birthday. It was also the eighth anniversary of the day Ethan was supposedly swept off the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway by Hurricane Katrina.

The day began like the seven birthdays before it. With my mother, Sarah, standing over my bed.

"Get up, Chloe. It's time for your penance."

Her voice was cold, the same way it had been for eight years. She used to be a vibrant New Orleans socialite, but now she was just a ghost haunting her own house. A ghost who hated me.

My father, David, was already at the breakfast table, staring into his black coffee. He was a high-ranking detective in the NOPD, a man who hunted monsters for a living. At home, he was just a man who saw me as the reason his golden child was gone.

"I'm not going this year," I said, my voice quiet but firm.

My mother's face twisted. "You will go. You will go to that shelter and you will think about what you did. You will atone for your sin."

"It wasn't my fault," I whispered. I was eleven. I just wanted my big brother at my swim meet. I cried on the phone, begging him to come home from his college in Alabama. I didn't know the storm would turn.

"Your fault," my father's voice cut through the room like a razor. He didn't even look at me. "You begged. He drove. He died. Simple as that."

The argument escalated. Voices were raised. My mother threw a plate of toast against the wall. My father slammed his fist on the table, the coffee cup jumping.

"You're an ungrateful, selfish child!" Sarah screamed.

"You're just like her," David muttered, finally looking at me with pure disgust. "Just like the trash he was running off to marry."

He meant Maya, Ethan's fiancée. The one they never approved of.

I ran to my room, grabbing my purse. I couldn't stay. I had to get out. My best friend Olivia was waiting for me at our dorm. We were going to celebrate my birthday, a real celebration, for the first time in years.

As I left, I saw my father follow me into the hall. He looked at the expensive perfume atomizer in my hand. He had given it to me for Christmas. It wasn't perfume, it was a pepper spray gun, disguised.

"Don't think that little toy will save you from your own stupidity," he said.

A few weeks ago, during a fight about my grades, he had grabbed it from my desk and thrown it against the wall. "A useless, expensive toy," he'd called it then. A small crack had appeared near the nozzle. I never got it fixed.

I ignored him and walked out the door. The Louisiana air was thick and heavy. I started walking toward the bus stop, my hands shaking.

That's when I saw the van. It had been parked across the street. It started to follow me, slow and deliberate.

My heart pounded. I pulled out the atomizer, my thumb fumbling for the trigger. I sent a quick text to my father.

`A van is following me. I'm scared.`

Then one to my mother.

`Please, help me.`

The van sped up, cutting me off. A man jumped out. He was big, and his eyes were empty. I knew who he was. The Cypress Creek Killer. The man my father had been hunting for years.

I aimed the atomizer and pressed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Just a faint hiss. The crack my father had made had broken the mechanism.

The man smiled. He knew.

I tried to scream as he grabbed me, but his hand clamped over my mouth. I saw my phone light up on the pavement where I'd dropped it.

A text from my father.

`Stop the drama, Chloe. Get to the shelter before I drag you there myself.`

Then one from my mother.

`We know you're lying to get out of it. Your brother is dead because of your selfishness. The least you can do is honor his memory.`

The van door slid shut, and the world went dark.