Shadow Mutation (Book Seven) [UNDER MAJOR EDITING]

Prologue

Casey Jones hates funerals.

He hates dressing up in a suit and combing his hair, he hates the suffocating misery hanging over everything, he hates seeing loved ones crying their eyes out, and he hates the burning, itching sensation of his own tears just begging to show themselves.

He's only ever been to three funerals in his two decades of life. One was for his Auntie Darla, who smoked like a chimney and held no remorse about it. When she died, Casey was just a kid. He was more interested in the bugs scuttling around his light-up sneakers.

The second one was worse; his mom. He was eight. He knew she was sick but she always said she'd get better, that she would keep fighting. He remembers how she'd come back from treatments and spend a long time in the bathroom, hunched over a toilet. He remembers how hollow and sunken her skin became. He shaved his head when she did, eager to "be her twin," and it made her smile.

But then when she got better became if, and then if switched back to when, and then she was gone. Casey clung to his dad's pant leg and cried, old enough to understand what had happened but too young to grasp why. He wished on shooting stars. He tossed coins into every fountain he saw. Why didn't it work?

The third funeral was for his grandfather. He loved that man dearly. He was the one who showed Casey how to play hockey for the first time at four years old, the first man to show him out on the ice while his dad cheered from the sidelines. The man who put skates on his feet was gone. During the service, Casey left the building and cried where no one could see him. He punched a wall and cursed death.

This one might take the cake, though. It's worse than anything he's experienced.

Raindrops pound against the circle of black umbrellas clustered around a lone casket. It always seems to rain during funerals, as if the skies can't bear to shine on so much sorrow. Casey can feel the eyes on him, pitying gazes lingering on him and Andy, the poor orphans. He hates their sympathy.

Casey stares at the closed casket. His father's body lays inside, broken and bruised from the freak accident that ripped him away from them. Andy sobs into his shoulder as he rubs calming circles on her back. What could he say? Nothing as stupid and simple as words could mend her broken heart.

He keeps replaying it all in his end, the argument, the words they flung at each other. If Casey had just let himself be upset instead of acting like an ass, pretending he didn't care, would his dad have been able to focus on the road? If he wasn't so stuck up...

"You're not a kid anymore and it's time that you acted like it! It's time that you—"

And then there was impact and pain and ringing that just won't stop shrieking in his ears, in his brain. His vision swam in and out of focus and he wishes he hadn't looked. He wishes he hadn't turned his head and saw what was left of his dad.

He wants to remember the version of his dad who skated with him at the rink; unruly jet black hair and a square jaw and freckles and a smile. A big, charming smile with a few missing teeth from his pro-hockey days.

But the only memory left is of splintered bone and blood and airbags and smoke and gasoline and a mahogany bed and a cold corpse too mangled for viewing and—

"Casey?"

He startles, feels the rain hitting his skin for a moment before black canvas shelters him. Andy grips his arm with one hand, holds the umbrella with the other, her blue eyes bloodshot from endless crying. There's a stitched wound on her forehead, almost fresh.

He sniffs hard and lifts his jaw, clenching it. "Yeah?" he grinds out.

"You..." She sniffles, clearing her throat. "You were zoning out. Is...your head okay?"

He shrugs. Oh, the minor concussion? Sure, Andy, now is a great time to ask about his head. How can she even look at him after everything that happened? How can she stand to be near him?

"It's fine," he mumbles.

She exhales, hugs his arm tighter, rests her head on his shoulder, and squeezes her eyes shut as she cries softly. Casey takes the umbrella from her and wraps her in a stiff one-armed hug. It's just them against the world now.

The casket creaks as it sinks into the ground, an anchor in a sea of earth. Arnold Jones's too-young-to-die face smiles from a wreath of flowers, staring out at its audience, unaware, unfeeling, unresponsive. Just like the corpse in the casket.

Yeah, it's settled.

Casey Jones hates funerals.