The shadow whispered as if talking more to himself than to her. “My mother was born in the hills...” Those same words had been whispered to her before, long ago. She knew the story, knew how it went and how it would end, but she had never grown tired of hearing it, of learning about her shadowboy.....

“My father was Irish. He traveled across the sea when he was a boy to find a new life in the Americas. I’m named after him. William.”....

She closed her eyes and ran her hand across the thick comforter, remembering the feel of the pink quilt that used to adorn this old bed, the precise stitches, the puffs of fabric that edged the corner of it. ....

“I lived in the hills after my mother’s people left. I stayed there,” Liam went on. His voice was inconsistent, sometimes garbled and childish, at other times strong and manly.....

“The world has changed, Rainee. I fear it.”....

She opened her eyes, trying to let the haunting memory slip away. This has to be a bad dream. It can’t be real. He was never real. Was he?....

He paused again; his fingers stopped. She wanted them to press into her skin again, to soothe her, to heat her through and through. "Do you remember when you found me? You were catching lightning bugs.” His hands moved again, the feel of his palm against her heel and then the ball of her foot so much like her mother's touch that it was eerie. Maybe it hadn’t been her mother massaging her feet. Maybe it had been Liam all along. “I cried the day you left. I’ve been here ever since that day…waiting.”....

“Waiting for what?” she asked, falling under his spell.....

“To die.”....

Rainee pushed the thick comforter back and pulled her feet away from his hands. She stood up, and felt across the bedside table for the flashlight, but the batteries were dead from leaving it on all night. She edged to her duffle and fished around in it until her hand met the cold wax of the Christmas candle she’d snatched from her closet. She lit the wick with a match from the small box in her bag and raised it up to see.....

The candlelight banished the darkness. She turned in a circle, but there was no one in the room but her. Goose bumps prickled her skin as she called, “Liam?”