Tiger Lily (Dark Blossoms Book 1)

by Abigail Drake

  Praise for Abigail Drake

  "First Abigail Drake grabs you with her fresh writing, then she keeps you in the throes of her story with an incredible voice and a gifted talent for spinning tales that will amaze and delight. I am stunned. Tiger Lily will consume you, and before you know it you are fighting for air yet begging for more. You've been warned!"

  NY Times Bestselling Author Darynda Jones

  “Tiger Lily is that special kind of book that makes the reader laugh and cry as the plucky heroine comes into her own and finds she's stronger than she could ever imagine. Write faster, Ms. Drake. We need more books like this in the world.”

  Amazon Reviewer Suz Jay

  Tiger Lily

  Dark Blossoms, Book One

  Abigail Drake

  Copyright © 2019 by Abigail Drake

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Eva Talia.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For my precious boys;

  Timur, Devin, and Danyal.

  I’ll love you until the day after forever.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Black Orchid

  About the Author

  Also by Abigail Drake

  Chapter 1

  If we do not know life, how can we know death? ~ Confucius, 551-479 BC

  I died because of a bad manicure.

  I didn’t contract a nasty fungal infection from the manicurist using dirty equipment or get a cut that allowed deadly bacteria to creep under my skin and rot me from the inside out. For a germaphobe like me, fungal infections and bacteria were both major concerns, but neither of them caused my eventual demise. I died because on impulse I let Mr. Wan of the Wan Fine Lady Nail Salon paint my nails a color called Pretty and Pink.

  It sounds like a nice shade, doesn’t it? But I should have known better. With my red hair and pale skin, pink is tricky, but I trusted Mr. Wan. When he told me, “New color, big discount for you, Lily Madison,” I didn’t know he actually meant to say, “Bad color, nobody else wants it.”

  I’ve never been a risk taker. My idea of living on the edge is not having an extra bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse. I knew the pink would be a mistake, but I ignored my inner voice. I guess the smell of acetone and the hum of nail dryers lulled me into such a relaxed state that I didn’t realize how awful the color looked until exactly twenty minutes later, when I was driving home in the shiny new car my parents had given me for my sixteenth birthday.

  Pretty and Pink was false advertising. It should have been called Freaky and Fuchsia.

  Distracted by my awful nails, I didn’t see the ice cream truck stopped right smack in the middle of the road, or the herd of small children surrounding it in a snow-cone-induced feeding frenzy. I glanced up from my polish perusal just in time to avoid becoming a mass murderer.

  It’s funny how accidents happen in slow motion, isn’t it? I remember the shocked faces of the people on the street as I swerved away from the truck and flew over a small embankment. I let out a high-pitched wail, holding tight to my steering wheel, as my car became an airborne missile and landed in the deep, murky waters of Lake Eugene.

  It barely made a splash, which seemed odd. It simply sank, quickly and silently, straight to the bottom. After that, my mind became murky as well.

  I tried to open my door, but it refused to budge. My windows wouldn’t roll down either. I pressed every single button in the car, even the ones to turn on the radio and circulate the air. None of them worked. The only one still in commission? The little red triangle that turned on my hazard lights.

  I’ll be honest here. I didn’t even know I had hazard lights, although, of course I’d read about them in my driver’s ed class last summer. They blinked on and off, illuminating the darkness around me with an eerie, pulsating beacon.

  I unbuckled my seat belt and searched for something to break a window with but couldn’t find a single thing. I swung my purse at it (useless), pounded it with the heel of my shoe (even more useless), and even tried stabbing it with my nail file (not my proudest moment). I grabbed my phone, which, on retrospect, was what I should have done in the first place, but when I tried to call for help, it was too late.

  As the car filled with water, and I gasped for air, the last thing I saw was the awful color on my nails as I scratched and clawed at the window until my fingers bled and everything turned black. As I died, I thought about my parents, and my friends, and all the things I would never get to do. I thought about Mr. Wan as well. He’d lost his very best customer due to his own negligence, and I hoped he would be sorry. Thinking about how bad he’d feel gave me a little peace before I slipped away into darkness.

  Chapter 2

  A fall into a ditch makes you wiser. ~ Chinese proverb

  Dying is highly overrated. I didn’t see a light or a tunnel or God or anything. I simply felt at peace, like I floated on an inflatable raft in our pool on a perfect summer day with my eyes closed, bobbing gently in the water. I wasn’t worried about school, or my parents, or the possibility of UV rays damaging my skin and giving me premature wrinkles. In fact, I had no worries about anything, an extremely pleasant change for me. That lasted three minutes and thirty-two seconds, exactly how long it took for a stranger to dive into the water, follow the glow of my hazard lights, yank me out of my car, and resuscitate me on the sunny shores of Lake Eugene.

  I discovered very quickly that dying is far more pleasant than coming back to life. First of all, I threw up. A lot. And everything on my body ached. My throat burned. My lungs were sore. My chest hurt from the pounding it took when my rescuer pumped all the water out of my lungs and restarted my heart. I didn’t fully wake up, but I cracked open my eyes open long enough to see a wet t-shirt and mussed blond hair before I passed out again. I also had a vague memory of several children, lips dyed blue, munching on snow cones and watching me come back to life. I was glad I hadn’t killed those children. I was also glad I hadn’t killed myself. Well, not permanently, at least.

  I woke up later in a hospital, plugged into a bunch of machines and feeling awful. My parents hovered over my bed, weeping as they clung to my hands. I wanted to tell them to stop, but my mouth didn’t work because I had a tube running down my throat and another stuck in my nose. I attempted to give them my best and most reassuring smile but ended up drooling down my chin.

  My parents didn’t handle the drool well. It made them cry even harder.

  I rolled my eyes, something I often did when my parents got dramatic, and saw something on the ceiling above my head. It looked like a black, fuzzy blob. I watched in confusion as it hovered in the air a few moments before slowly sliding across the room.

  I raised my hand to point at it, but my parents didn’t seem to understand. There was no way to explain it to them either, not when the only noises I could make sounded like a species of eastern lowland gorilla we’d seen at the zoo last summer.

  The blob came to rest near my feet, a
nd when I followed it with my eyes, I saw my parents and I weren’t the only people in my hospital room. A boy sat on my bed, cozy as could be, with his arms folded across his chest. He had dark hair falling across his forehead, brown eyes, and fuzzy black blob bouncing merrily on his shoulder.

  “Who are you?” The words sounded garbled as they escaped from my lips, but he seemed to understand.

  He raised one dark eyebrow in surprise. “You can see me?” he asked, his voice deep and husky. I gave him my best “duh” look. Hard to do with tubes coming out of my orifices, but I managed.

  Around my age, and good looking in a bad-boy-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks sort of way, he made me feel a little hot and bothered, even in my currently bedridden and barely functioning state. He smoldered with the kind of sexy I’d only seen in movies, and in the “Hottie of the Month” calendar I kept hidden in my desk drawer. Dressed in black from head to toe, he looked like trouble. Big trouble. The kind of trouble nice little redheaded girls from the suburbs knew to stay far away from.

  There was something strange about him, too. He looked oddly fuzzy around the edges, like a blurry photo taken when someone moves at exactly the wrong moment. Even as I squinted at him and tried hard to focus, he never solidified, and the effort it took exhausted me.

  It must be the drugs, I thought as I drifted off to sleep. It was a nice and very comforting idea, and I expected things would be back to normal soon. No blobs. No random hot males. No hallucinations at all. But when I woke up the next morning to bright sunshine streaming through my window, there were even more blobs in my room. Sexy Shadow Guy was nowhere to be seen, but the fuzzy orbs were still hanging around.

  I stared at the blobs, willing them to disappear, but they didn’t. As I sat up slowly, every muscle in my body protesting, the blobs vibrated with excitement.

  This was not normal. They’d been waiting for me to wake up.

  “What the heck?”

  The tubes were gone, and although my voice sounded scratchy and weird, it jerked my mom out of a deep sleep. “Lily-bean?”

  She rose from a small cot on the floor and stumbled toward my bed. Her clothes were wrinkled, her auburn hair a total wreck, and she looked like she’d aged ten years in one day. It surprised me. Always polished and perfect, a great deal of time and effort went into being Iris Madison. It would require weeks at a spa for her to get back to normal.

  She pulled me into her arms and sobbed on my shoulder. Looking at her closely, I realized she was barefoot, her shoes abandoned in a heap on the floor. Also, she’d slept in her favorite pink Chanel suit with the skirt on backward.

  My father didn’t look much better. In spite of the tan he’d acquired through his daily golfing sessions, his face was pale and drawn, and I noticed worry lines next to his eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  They’d thought they’d lost me yesterday. Even I’d thought I’d lost me yesterday. It had been hard on all of us.

  My father wrapped both of us in a giant bear hug. Sweet but slightly claustrophobic, and it went on about three minutes too long.

  “Uh, hello. It’s a little hard to get oxygen with both of you hugging me like this.”

  They eased off, but my mom clung to my hand, and my dad kept patting my head. They couldn’t seem to stop touching me.

  “Awkward,” I murmured, my voice low.

  Flowers and several balloon bouquets filled my room. Most of the shiny mylar balloons said, “Get Well Soon,” except for the one from Mr. Wan. It said, “Merry Christmas.” No one else would have sent me a Christmas balloon in March. That cheapo had shopped in the discount bin.

  This had been the weirdest day ever. It had surreal quality to it, which explained the hallucinations. The fuzzy things and the hot guy were obviously all part of a crazy dream. I glanced up at the ceiling, hoping to reassure myself, it didn’t work. The blobs still hung out there. And, even worse, another one had joined the party.

  My father seethed and didn’t seem at all bothered by the blobs. “That stupid car,” he said. “We should have gone with the Audi. They have a better safety rating than BMW.”

  “No, George, it was that ice cream truck parked right in the middle of the street,” said my mother, equally furious, but shooting at a different target.

  I shook my head. Not a pleasant sensation because everything swished back and forth inside my skull. “No. I got distracted by Pretty and Pink. It was my fault.”

  And Mr. Wan’s, but I omitted that part and I showed them my nails. Most of it had chipped off, but faint specks of the obnoxious remained. Pretty and Pink. Total misnomer.

  When my mom saw my bruised and swollen fingers, another round of weeping commenced. My dad didn’t cry. He looked like he wanted to hit something, or maybe sue someone. Probably the latter, since he was a lawyer. I suddenly became a little nervous for Mr. Wan, the ice cream man, and all the fine people at BMW.

  “Who was that boy who came to visit last night?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

  My mother frowned, dabbing her cheeks with a tissue. “No one was here except for us, sweetie.”

  My head ached so much I couldn’t think straight. A black blob swirled and swooped over my bed, and another circled around the light on the ceiling. I frowned and pointed at them with a shaking hand.

  “What are those things?” I asked.

  Confusion skittered across my parents’ tired and worried faces. “What are you talking about, darling?” asked my mother.

  “The fat, dancing blobs on the ceiling. What are they?”

  My parents stared into each other’s eyes for a long moment, their bodies very still. The tension in the room increased about ten notches.

  “I should get Dr. Carter,” said my father softly. My mom took my hand again, her face as white as my hospital sheet.

  Dr. Carter, a very nice old man with bushy eyebrows and a bald head, probably thought I’d lost my mind. He didn’t say it in so many words, but I understood. Once he had every possible part of my brain scanned, and saw nothing physically wrong with me, he came to the conclusion that I might be crackers.

  I hadn’t seen Shadow Guy again, but the floating black shapes were everywhere. They followed me down the hall to the CAT scan. They sat next to me as I waited for a blood test. The original group had doubled, and then tripled in size. I had nearly twenty blobs sliding across my ceiling and dancing around my room by the time I’d finished all the testing.

  I knew I wasn’t crazy. I wanted to go home, but there was no way Dr. Carter would sign the discharge papers if I still saw a bunch of black blobs. I decided lying was the best policy.

  “I’m fine, Dr. Carter,” I said as a big, furry mass landed on his shiny bald head and bounced up and down like a rubber ball. “I’m not seeing those black spots anymore.”

  My parents heaved a sigh of relief. The blob on Dr. Carter’s head slid to his shoulders and wrapped itself around his neck like a scarf. It took superhuman effort not to stare.

  “I’m so glad to hear that, Miss Madison.” He looked over to my parents. “Your daughter suffered from oxygen deprivation during the accident. It’s possible that she had some sort of a residual optical issue caused by the trauma she endured. Since it seems to have resolved, I’d say it’s safe for her to go home.”

  I smiled at him in relief. A little optical issue and oxygen deprivation might explain everything, even the strange Shadow Guy. No need to mention him or the blobs again. I would ignore them, until they all went away and left me alone.

  The circling Dr. Carter’s neck took a flying leap into his shirt. It must have wiggled and twisted all the way down his body, because a few seconds later it shot out the hem of his pants and slid over his shoe.

  Ignore it, ignore it, I thought to myself. It flew toward the ceiling and danced happily around before zooming out the window and coming back in through the wall.

  I plastered a giant, fake smile on my face. My cheeks hurt from the effort, but Dr. Carter didn’t suspec
t anything. “You’re a lucky young lady.”

  “I know.”

  I hated to lie about the blobs. I hated to lie about anything, but I had no choice. My parents had been through enough. They didn’t need to know I still saw things floating around my room.

  Dr. Carter smiled, his blue eyes twinkling. “There’s someone outside who’d like to see you.”

  I’d been secretly hoping Shadow Guy would show up again, but when Dr. Carter opened the door, a different boy walked into the room. My parents seemed to know him.

  “Josh Parker?” asked my mom, her voice thick with emotion.

  “He wanted to stop by and check on you,” said Dr. Carter.

  With his curling blond hair and blue eyes, Josh Parker could have been a male model, maybe even for Abercrombie. He carried a bouquet of roses, my favorite flower. I had no idea who he was, but I grinned at him like an idiot.

  My mother rose to her feet, a hand over her chest. My father gave Josh a firm handshake that morphed into an odd sort of group hug that included my mother. A giant blob flew around them, dancing happily up and down my mother’s back.

  “Josh is the one who pulled you out of that lake,” said Dr. Carter. “He saved your life.”

  The golden-haired god and apparent hero got flustered and nearly dropped the flowers as he handed them to me. His nervousness made him even more adorable, and I wished I could have met him under better circumstances. The first time I’d been dead, and now I was a total mess.