Chapter 1

The year I turned eight, my father clawed his way back to the top and became the richest man in the city.

And he still made my mother sleep in the doghouse out on the balcony.

Because he had found out, by accident, that my mother was a traveler from another world, sent here to carry out a mission.

He decided she was the host who had been draining his luck dry, so he tormented her in every way he could think of.

What he didn't know was that the system she was bound to was a Death-Substitution System.

All this time, she had been quietly taking the disasters meant for him.

Today was my father's thirtieth birthday, and my mother's death-substitution task was finally complete.

She had bought a new dress. She was going to tell him that

our family could finally live like normal people again.

But before the birthday party even started, my father stood there with his arm around Aunt Marjorie Simmons, pointed at my mother, and screamed at her.

"You bloodsucker, whenever you're around, Nina Abbott gets sick!"

"A curse like you, why don't you just drop dead?"

Aunt Marjorie huddled against him, trembling,

but I saw the smug little smile at the corner of her mouth.

My mother looked down at her own broken, battered body and said nothing in her own defense.

She took my hand and asked me, gently.

"Nina, Mommy will take you home. Will you come with me?"

I was just about to nod.

Then a hard force yanked me from behind, dragging me back behind my father.

My arm burned where it had been wrenched.

I looked up. It was my father's bodyguard.

"Samantha Henson! Who gave you permission to take Nina away?"

My father's furious voice came after me.

Marjorie leaned against his shoulder, holding her nose, and sneered.

"Giles Gilbert, Samantha reeks so bad. You don't think the dog peed on her, do you..."

My mother writhed in the doghouse, ten fingers clawing bloody streaks down the wall.

That was from the nights he came home from business dinners drinking until his stomach bled, his face gone gaunt, his lips without a trace of color, white plaster dust still caught under his nails.

Last night I had watched with my own eyes as she twisted in agony inside that doghouse, taking on the pain that should have been his.

I started forward, but my father heard the movement and threw out an arm to stop me.

"Thinking about that man again?"

He looked down at my mother on the ground in disgust, then turned to give the housekeeper an order.

"Shirley Lambert, throw a basin of cold water on the mistress in her doghouse. Tell her if she really wants to make noise, we'll toss her out for good."

A whole basin of ice water crashed down over my mother.

In the moonlight, her soaked body went still.

Only faint twitches were left, like a fish dying on land.

"Giles..."

My mother's hoarse, trembling voice pulled me back out of last night's nightmare.

"All these years, how you've treated me, you know it in your heart..."

There was a catch in her voice now, and tears shining at the corners of her eyes.

"I'll agree to any condition you want, anything but Nina. Just let me take her with me..."

My father raised an eyebrow and let out a disbelieving, mocking laugh.

"Samantha Henson, what makes you think you're in any position to bargain with me?"

His eyes went cold and hard as he gripped her chin.

"Don't think I don't know what's in your head! Talking about Nina, Nina, but really you just want to run off faster to that man of yours!"

"How did I never see before what a shameless thing you are?"

My father flung her hand away.

My mother hit the floor, her forehead splitting open into a bloody hole.

She lay there frozen, letting the blood run down into her hollow, empty eyes.

I knew then that her heart had died for good.

My nose stung, and I fought with everything I had.

Back when my father was in a car accident, they brought him to the hospital without a single unbroken inch of him left; even the doctors said there was no saving him.

It was my mother who locked herself in a room and endured three days and three nights of her bones breaking apart,

and only then dragged him back from the gates of death!

And that agony, my mother had to go through it again every few months.

I often thought that if my mother's ruined body took one more blow like that,

not even the system would be able to bring her back.

"It wasn't like that!"

I bit down hard on the bodyguard's wrist.

The instant the pain made him loosen his grip, I threw myself toward my mother like something gone wild.

As I passed Marjorie, my hand brushed her clothes by accident.

Just as I spread my arms in front of my mother and opened my mouth to speak,

Marjorie let out a scream and dropped to the floor.

"Ah! My baby!"

My father's face changed. He rushed over and swept her up into his arms.

"Marjorie! Are you all right?"

Marjorie's face crumpled, tears pouring down.

"Giles, it hurts so much. Nina pushed me. Our baby's going to be okay, isn't it?"

My mother turned her face away, and her scalding tears fell onto the back of my hand.

"Samantha Henson!"

My father's fury broke loose in an instant, his eyes going red.

"This is the fine daughter you raised! So young and already this vicious!"

He whipped his head around and roared at the housekeeper.

"Shirley! Lock her in her room and get an etiquette tutor in to teach her."

"The day she learns to respect her elders is the day you let her out of that room, and not a moment sooner!"

I burst into terrified sobs, screaming back at him.

"I won't! I want to leave with Mommy!"

"I don't want to stay here and get bullied by my stupid daddy and that awful aunt!"

Then my mother clutched her forehead and started to laugh like a madwoman.

She laughed until her shoulders shook, until tears spilled from her bloodred eyes.

"I knew it... I knew it!"