The Envisage

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Cover Art:
Michelle Crocker

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the work of the author's imagination.

Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental.

M.W. Warren

The Envisage

M. M. Warren

Dedication

For Shawnette Abraham, who was always the first to believe in and encourage my writing, and who is the kind of mother capable of faithfully putting the anxieties of life to rest with a resilient and empowering brand of hope.

Chapter One

Watchers from The Underground

Sometimes I told myself I wasn't being watched... that it was just a feeling. But tonight, it was undeniable. From my perch at the attic window, I shivered, wishing that things were different. Wind swirled leaves against a sky of steely storm clouds that smelled of brown sugar and rain, and maple tree shadows shifted in the flickering lamplight below.

What would anyone possibly want from me? I didn't have anything—not even a family, no matter how much I wished for one. And the thing about this feeling about being watched was that every time I got it, anything or anyone I had let myself start to care about would disappear.

Someone would tell me I had to go live with a new foster family in a different place, but they would never say why. There would be a long ride in a train or car or plane... a new set of parents who pretended to care, and then waiting with knots in my stomach for it to all start over again. I wish I knew who was watching me. I wish I knew why.

I didn't say goodbyes anymore, or let anyone get close enough for leaving to matter. But I had let Nia Lolohea get to me after she had kicked a kid at school who had tried to take my lunch. There she was with a smirk on her face and hershoe smeared with peanut butter, offering me her own sandwich after mine had ended up on the floor anyway. I didn't know why in the world she ever cared in the first place, but now I was going to have a problem.

I stomped on the dusty attic floorboards and leaned further out the window, wondering who... and what was out there. Come and get me, whoever you are! I wanted to scream, but I was too scared to do it, and I hated myself for being afraid.

Like a strange orb vanishing from the air, the yellow streetlight flickered out completely, plunging the entire street into restless shadows that shifted unnaturally in the wind. Something felt different than it had on other nights that I had been watched. I leaned farther out the window, searching.

The lamp flashed on again, and in a lightning-quick instant, I saw it: a figure creeping very carefully over the fractured driveway toward the house. I held my breath. Was it one of my watchers?

A floor below me, the living room window made a low groan. No stranger watching me had ever come in the house.

Panicking, I scrambled away from the window, backing into the cardboard boxes. An empty one tumbled down and clapped onto the floor. The pullout stairs below groaned and creaked. I hid, watching through a slat in the boxes as the trap door burst upward.