*Chapter 1: Smoke and Silence*
Death followed Mandy Black like a shadow.
It wasn't loud. It didn't announce itself with screams or sirens. It crept—quiet, cruel, inevitable.
She was only six the first time it took something she loved.
The night the fire came, it didn't come with heat. It came with silence. She remembered her mother's perfume—lavender and ash—and her father's rough hands lifting her into bed. There was no warning. One moment she was asleep, the next, she was standing outside, barefoot on the frost-covered lawn, watching her house burn like paper.
They found her in the morning. Alone. Cold. Unharmed.
The neighbors called it a miracle.
The fire chief called it faulty wiring.
But the old woman across the street—the one with foggy eyes and a cane carved with strange symbols—looked at Mandy and whispered, "Cursed."
Nobody believed her. But Mandy never forgot.
Years passed. The deaths continued.
A babysitter died in her sleep two weeks after Mandy told her she was the "nicest grown-up ever."
Her uncle fell off a roof the day after giving her a birthday hug.
Even the stray tabby she fed behind the garage was found stiff and cold one rainy morning—its body curled like it was hiding from something.
By thirteen, Mandy knew better than to care.
She stopped talking. Stopped touching. She became a ghost in her own life—present, but distant. Her room was always dim. Her clothes always dark. She let the world forget her, because remembering hurt too much.
Then came senior year.
A new start, they said. A new school. New faces. Another town with people who didn't know her story.
She didn't care.
She sat in the back of every classroom, wore her hoodie low and her headphones high. She avoided eye contact like it might kill. Maybe it could.
Her only goal was to graduate unseen, untouched, unknown.
Until he walked in.
Jason Hale.
He arrived three weeks into the semester, like a thunderstorm on a clear day—sudden, loud, and impossible to ignore.
The first thing Mandy noticed was his eyes—dark, sharp, alive. Like they saw everything and judged nothing. His hair was a mess of curls, and he wore a denim jacket over a band shirt nobody in town had ever heard of.
The second thing she noticed was that he didn't look scared.
Not of her.
Not even curious.
Just… interested.
When the teacher pointed to the empty seat beside her, Mandy felt her stomach twist. That seat had been empty all year. No one dared sit there.
Jason sat without hesitation.
He glanced at her, then smiled like they were old friends.
"Hey," he said.
She blinked at him, unsure how to respond. Most people avoided her. Teachers forgot she was there. Even the school counselor kept her distance.
Jason? He leaned in.
"You always this quiet?"
She turned away, forcing her voice low. "Go away."
But he didn't.
He stayed. Through the whole class. Through lunch. Through the next day.
Mandy tried everything—silence, rudeness, cold stares. But Jason kept showing up, like gravity pulled him toward her.
And that scared her more than anything.
Because she'd learned one thing in her seventeen cursed years:
*Anyone who got too close to Mandy Black never stayed alive for long.*