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PROLOGUE

CEREBRUS

They called him a genius.

It’s what all the online magazines and newspapers called him.

It’s what the talking heads on all the social media videos and texts and sound bytes called him. I only looked at those things because I couldn’t help but look at them. Because I was alone. Because that world sucked me in like it did everyone else. Because I wanted to understand more about him even as I unwillingly drew closer.

Because I was a ghost.

He wasn’t a ghost.

They said he was a genius. A visionary.

The Michelangelo of the modern world.

I could feel those lights around him, though.

Even in the darkness and confusion I’d been in for longer than I could remember, I could feel the truth of what he was.

The two sides battled, separated out, reformed, broke apart.

Two sides. Too many sides.

I fought to blink through that multiplied vision…

…and the lights around him snapped into focus.

They were drunk, dark, clouded, like watery tentacles.

I recognized this feeling.

It made me feel like I wanted to throw up the steak I’d just wolfed down, only a few hours before. I’d been trying so hard. Trying so hard to blend in, to make myself normal, like the rest of them… likehim…like all of them.

I had to be him.

He liked steak, so I must like steak, too.

He could talk and laugh like everyone else, so I could do those things, too.

He could be loved…

I blinked back tears.

My mind spun as I stared around at them, familiar but not, mine, but not.

I saw photos I knew, people I knew, but all of it was wrong, none of it was mine. I stared at the one who stared back the longest, who looked at me with love… and gods, it hurt. It hurt so damned much. I fought the hunger that rose in me, the unfairness of it, the frustration at everything denied me, given to him, always for him, always at my expense.

I was like a parasite, coveting a life that could never be mine.

Coveting a life I felt entitled to, anyway.

Faking. Pretending.

Stealing.

I stole what wasn’t given to me freely.