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I closed my eyes against the shimmering shadows coming from outside, willing myself to ignore what I knew was there.

Shit.

Whenever I was upset, I allowed my shields to slip.Something a psychic medium should never ever do.It was a dangerous practice.

The world around me could become a cacophony of voices and emotions, a swirling storm of energies that threatened to overwhelm me.

In those moments of vulnerability, I risked exposing not just myself, but the secrets that had been carefully buried beneath layers of silence and shame.

Not that anyone knew I was a psychic.To them, I was just an ordinary person with a less than ordinary job.But I was still someone who blended in with the crowd.

Pop had ignored the signs.He told me to leave it alone.To stop pretending I saw things that didn’t exist.

Liar.Troublemaker.Just like my crazy mother.

God, I hated the memory of his voice when things had gotten too bad for me to deal with them alone.But after his swift rejection, I learned to compartmentalize my sensitivities until they felt like distant echoes rather than living things.

It wasn’t easy.And I failed more often than not.

Control is everything.

I reminded myself of that often during my lifetime.

“Stop acting crazy, Jez.You want attention, do something else,”he would say.

His voice was always so steady and calm.No heat or anger behind his words.But they hurt as readily as any slap would have.

I wondered sometimes if he thought I really was a liar.

God, how I wished I could ward off the spirits that danced around us just by sheer will alone.And sometimes, when the weight of the world pressed too hard on my shoulders, my reserve wavered, and I felt the floodgates begin to crack.

My family tree was rooted in the shame my paternal grandmother brought down on us with her unfortunate proclivity for telling people when they were being haunted by a loved one.

Her gift had been both a blessing and a curse.While some found solace in her words, others shunned her.But no one suffered as much as my father had.

Nana was known as the town freak.

The whispers and gossip had echoed through our family like a ghostly refrain, and I’d grown up with the weight of that legacy on my back.

Of course, I pitied him.Pop tried to be a good man.He took care of me after Mom passed.He just didn’t or couldn’t understand me.

Shame was something I was greatly familiar with.Taunts and ridicules were an everyday part of my life, growing up in Dry Creek.But I managed.Living on the outskirts of town helped.

Right then, I swallowed hard and forced myself to build the walls back up, reminding myself why I had to be strong.

Pop was suffering from dementia now, and he needed me to pay for his care.I owed him that much.

I took a deep breath, grounding myself in the here and now, focusing on the mundane—a flickering light overhead, the sound of the raindrops hitting the roof and windowpanes.

I needed to remain present, to reclaim control, before the whispers became too loud.

The world of the living demanded my attention, and while I couldn’t completely escape my lineage, I could navigate it on my own terms.

No one else knew about my struggles, and I kept it that way.Hell, I worked hard to keep it that way.

It’s why I still lived in my childhood home.Haunted—literally—and yet always alone.

I’d never hurt my father by claiming to be cursed by the same thing that had turned his own mother into a stranger.