Sixteen-year-old Marci Guerrero is one of the best teen hackers in Seattle. However, she’d give up all her talents to know she isn’t crazy.
Marci feels possessed by what she perceives as shadowy spectres that take control of her body and make her do crazy things. While spying on the clandestine group known as IgNiTe, she’s confronted by the leader, James McCray. His presence stirs the spectres inside her brain into a maddening frenzy. Her symptoms and ability to control them don’t go unnoticed by James, who soon recruits her and shows her the awful truth.
Half of the world’s population is infected by sentient parasites. They bind themselves to the human brain and replace the pathways for all thoughts and actions. The creatures then morph their hosts into grotesque monsters with extraordinary strengths. Winged, clawed, fanged half-humans become living nightmares. Now Marci wishes she was crazy, because the truth is worse.
She’s infected.
He gives me a sad smile. “Aren’t you always the one telling me to grow up once and for all? Always saying I’m … how did you put it?” He makes air quotes. “‘Perfectly irrational’? Hmm?”
Xave waits for me to say something. But what is there to say?
He continues. “For once I’m trying to see past my narrow, judgmental views. I’m … expanding my horizons. Breaking stereotypes. And you don’t approve?”
I cross my arms over my stained t-shirt. “Is that what you’re calling your sexcapades now?” There’s a twist of bitter lemon on top of my comment.
“Again … even if that’s what this is all about, why do you care?”
I wish he’d stop beating on that drum. It makes me feel hollow inside.
“You’ve never cared before,” he says, having found a more bitter substance than mine to make his point.
Our eyes lock and the silence between us swells and swells with an absence of words that need to be figured out. But I’m dry as a bone. I have nothing to give, nothing to offer. I’m the one who’s perfectly irrational. It takes one to know one, after all.
“The world is going to hell, Marci. I may as well enjoy it while it lasts. I can’t … wait forever.” His last two words are loaded with meaning.
Is he trying to say that he’s … waiting for me? I shrink away from the thought. That can’t be what he’s trying to say! Why doesn’t he just tell me what he means? My mouth hangs open, a mute “O” of incredulity. Is this the way he chooses to let me know? A way that is, by no means, clear.
“We should talk. There’s something I should tell you and maybe something you’d like to say to me?” Xave tells me in a sweet, inviting tone. He leans closer, hazel eyes drilling mine with heated intensity.
His hand—up till now resting on the table—moves inches slowly toward mine. His fingernails are blue from the cue chalk. I see the Celtic tattoo between his middle and fore fingers. It’s so small I always forget about it. My body tenses and I instinctively pull back a bit. And even though my fingers retract only a few inconsequential millimeters, the distance feels insurmountable, because Xave’s eyes darken with the knowledge that I’ve recoiled from him. Again.
Ingrid Seymour is the author of IGNITE THE SHADOWS. When she’s not writing books, she spends her time working as a software engineer, cooking exotic recipes, hanging out with her family and working out. She writes young adult and new adult fiction in a variety of genres, including Sci-Fi, urban fantasy, romance, paranormal and horror.
Her favorite outings involve a trip to the library or bookstore where she immediately gravitates toward the YA section. She’s an avid reader and fangirl of many amazing books. She is a dreamer and a fighter who believes perseverance and hard work can make dreams come true.
She lives in Birmingham, AL with her husband, two kids and a cat named Mimi.
