Nate’s lasagna was one of my favorite foods but I could have been eating cardboard and not noticed it with the myriad of emotions swirling through me. What had happened to me on the beach? In the span of a few hours I went from saving a life to hurting someone. Seeing what I was capable of freaked me out more than a little.

To top it all off I had lied to Nate again. I sat quietly at our small kitchen table pushing my food around with my fork. I hated deceiving Nate, but there were too many things in my life that I couldn’t tell him about. It was easier to let him be disappointed in me than to try to tell him the truth.

I wished there was a way to bridge the distance between us. He was all the family I had and I knew my dad would have wanted us to be close. It wasn’t Nate’s fault; he had been a good parent to me after my dad’s death. I was pretty messed up when I came here and I never opened up to him as much as I could have. And then I discovered Remy and the real world and suddenly I had all these secrets I could not share with anyone.

It’s not that I didn’t care because I loved Nate more than anything in the world. We just had so little in common. Nate was one of those people who didn’t believe in the paranormal or supernatural or anything that did not have a solid scientific explanation. He never read fantasy fiction or watched supernatural movies or TV shows. It drove him nuts when I watched Buffy reruns so I usually watched them in my room. In some ways, he was more closed off than I was and I wasn’t sure he could handle learning about my power and the real world around him.

I rinsed my plate and retreated upstairs with the cat in my arms. The top floor of our building was split into an attic and an open space that served as my bedroom, kind of like a loft apartment without the kitchen. On one side stood my bed, dresser and desk. Beneath the large window on the other side was a faded green couch that was barely visible beneath the clothes and books strewn across it, and beside the couch were two tall overflowing bookcases. My dad had been an English teacher and he had loved books, especially the classics. He used to say “No man can be called friendless who has God and the companionship of good books.” I looked it up a few years ago and found that it came from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Sometimes I’m not too sure about God, but I agree with my dad and Browning about books. I’ve read all of his books and added my own to the collection. I think he’d be pleased to know I grew up to share his passion for reading.

The walls of my room were bare except for a few pictures of my dad and some of me, Roland and Peter. Roland called the room depressingly empty and lamented the fact that I refused to replace my dad’s old stereo with a newer one. But I liked my space. It was private and I had my own bathroom, even if it was the size of a closet. The best part was that the room had lots of windows with a wide view of the bay. What more could a girl want?

“Alright cat, let’s get you cleaned up before you go anywhere near my furniture.” I grabbed Daisy’s shampoo and a towel and proceeded to wash the filthy animal from head to toe. He was too lethargic from his meal and the healing to put up much of a fight and he purred like a little engine when I toweled him dry. I set him down on an old blanket on the couch and he stretched happily and curled into a ball, completely at home.

After I set up the litter box used by our last feline guest, I left the cat to his nap and jumped in the shower, hoping the hot water would wash away more than the grime from today’s events. But nothing could cleanse me of the memories of what had happened with Scott. I had always thought of myself as a good person, but only a monster would relish hurting a person the way I had. I shivered despite the hot water flowing over me.

My thoughts went to the little boggie family as I dried myself and I wondered how they were doing. Instead of grieving the loss of a child tonight, Fren and Mol were at home with their new baby. I had saved a life today – that had to count for something. Was that enough to redeem me for the awful thing I’d done after?

Dressed in a cami and my favorite pajama bottoms, I popped in a Fleetwood Mac CD and carried my sketchbook over to the bed. I inherited my dad’s CD collection after he died along with his love for seventies rock. It was one of the few things Nate and I had in common – our taste in music – and he even borrowed it on occasion. I shook off my regret as I flipped open the sketchbook to a clean page. If it wasn’t for this whole secret life thing I had going on, my uncle and I might have been a lot closer than we were.

I thought about the boggies, summoning an image of the tiny boggie infant I’d held in my arms. My pencil flew over the paper as I tried to capture his likeness. I drew him in my hands because that was my clearest picture of him, the moment he opened his mouth and bawled for the first time. When I was finished, I smiled at the drawing of the little creature, his squashed face scrunched up unhappily and his tiny mouth open in a silent cry. I was no da Vinci but my sketches weren’t half bad. It wasn’t like I shared them with anyone anyway.

A tapping at one of the windows drew my attention away from my sketch and I ran over to open the window to admit a large black crow. He cawed and flapped around the room a few times before landing on my outstretched hand.

“Harper, it’s about time you came home,” I scolded him, stroking the soft feathers at the back of his neck. He’d been gone for two days and I was worried he’d gotten into trouble. Technically, he didn’t live with us but he liked to hang out here, especially on the roof. He had kind of adopted me after I saved him from Scott but he still liked to go off and do his own thing.