Banished: Book 1 of The Grimm Laws Read Free

Day
    B efore the accident she’d been normal. Before the accident she’d never questioned who she was. She’d never questioned what she should do. How she should act. It had come as easily to her as breathing—at least that’s what everyone kept saying. She reached for a comb and absentmindedly raked it through her long, blond tresses while studying her reflection in the antique mirror. She was attractive, she decided, with fine-boned features and a thin nose sprinkled with freckles so faint that she had to lean forward in order to see them. Delicate lips framed white, even teeth. She ran the tip of her index finger along the curve of her jaw as she continued her critique of the reflection in the mirror. She was thin. Perhaps a little on the skinny side. She shrugged off the notion. While she might not be able to remember her name, family, or past, she somehow innately knew that being skinny wasn’t a bad thing. Her focus went to the clear, intelligent eyes staring back at her—two large blue coins. They were obviously her best feature, but they looked so strange … so lost. She stared into the fathomless blue pools until fear fluttered in her breast. She suppressed it and leaned forward into her reflection, gripping the comb hard enough that it left imprints in her palm. “Who are you?” she demanded. “Why can’t you remember?” She exerted all of her power, trying to will her brain to recollect something … anything. All her effort yielded was the beginning of a dull headache that was working its way across her brow.
    As far as she could tell, this is how it happened. She was standing in front of the bathroom mirror, having just gotten out of the shower. A pimple had popped up on her forehead, and she was standing on her tiptoes, reaching up to the top shelf of the cabinet, trying to grab the acne medicine. The rug underneath her feet slipped, and she fell backwards, hitting her head on the porcelain tub. It was a freak accident that put her in a coma for two weeks and three days. When she finally awoke, she had no recollection of … well … anything. Her life was a big blank. The doctors were stupefied, not understanding how a single bump on the head could cause such calamitous results. They’d put her through a barrage of MRI’s, Cat-Scans and every other test they could dream up. Even though everything came back clean, there was a lurking suspicion that the coma was induced by some latent, perhaps hereditary condition that was triggered by the concussion.
    “Will my memory come back?” she’d asked, looking back and forth between the white-cloaked doctors and the strangers that were her family.
    Dr. Marcourt, the leading physician, had scratched his head. “It’s hard to say because every case is so different. Since we don’t know the definitive cause of your coma and memory loss, we don’t know when—if ever—your memory will resurface. The best advice I can give you is to take things one day at a time. Trust your family. Trust yourself. Build a life for yourself starting today. You may never be the same as you were before, and that’s okay. As imperfect as it is, life is a gift.”
    She glared at her reflection. Some gift!
    The reflection in the mirror smiled at her.
    She stopped and looked. Was her mind playing tricks on her? She’d not been smiling, and yet the face in the mirror had smiled. She frowned, and the reflection did the same. She smiled. The reflection smiled back. Relief flooded through her, making her feel giddy. Even though it was impossible … ridiculous. For a split second, she’d had the impression that the girl in the mirror was not merely a reflection, but another person—separate and disconnected. But it was only her mind, playing tricks on her. “I must’ve whacked my head harder than I thought,” she said out loud. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and made a few faces, feeling instant relief as the reflection simultaneously mimicked her movements. A