–Livana–
I watched my mother as she arranged the guest room with deliberate care, smoothing the sheets, aligning the pillows as if precision could soften the truth we were about to reveal. This week. After so long, Laura and Damien would finally be brought here. This house—quiet, hidden, breathing with secrets—would become the place where the dead returned to life.
Laura would break. I knew that much. Her emotions had always lived close to the surface, like glass warmed too quickly. I had prepared her, gently and cruelly at the same time. Hints woven into my Will and Testament, clues tucked into gifts she never questioned. I could never tell her directly. Knowledge, in our world, was a loaded weapon. If she knew too much, she would become a target.
But she needed to know this much: that her mother and her sister were not ghosts.
"So Damon will bring them here?" I asked, leaning against the doorway as I watched my mother step back to inspect her work.
