She was finally roused from her sleep when the morning sun found a gap in her curtains. Her head was pounding.

She grabbed her laptop and shuffled down to the kitchen. It was quiet and empty. She turned on the small TV to fill the room with something while she prepared her tea. As the water boiled on the stove, she was reminded of her thankfulness for the housekeeper her parents conceded to hire. Violet had argued that between her parents constant work travel and her college studies left no one to keep the house in order. They had rolled their eyes and tried to claim that the main reason she was allowed to live at home, rent-free, was that she would keep the house in order, but after the third time they came home to find the cabinets barren of everything except Oreos and some bags of tea, they finally came around.

She flinched when she saw the bags of peppermint tea next to the mugs, and opted for the hibiscus instead.

She started searching for local concerts and skimming the links for any one showing promise. No I don't want pop music, let’s see... what do we have... Suga Lips? No. Bling- Bling Baybays? No again. Sounds of the Earth? Who would listen to that? Come on, there has to be something..... Wait, what’s that? Dark Alley?

As she waited for the site to load, she took a sip of her tea. She hadn't had any more dreams last night, which was good and bad at the same time. When the page loaded, she clicked on 'Meet the Band'. He's not the lead singer, who could stand to remove four of the five studs in his right eyebrow. He's not the drummer; despite how cute his unassuming face, blue eyes, and wild and wavy blonde hair were. She was left with the bassist and the guitarist. She picked the guitarist. His full body shot slowly loaded, showing him wearing Converse, light blue stone- washed jeans, and black fitted shirt. He had short, brown hair and an attempt at facial hair. Her body felt warm, almost resonating. Her cheeks burned as the same scent from last night filled her senses.

The wave passed. All she could think was Has to be. Has to be shadows.

She read his profile. Ian Jay Edwards, lead guitar/ vocalist, worked at blah blah blah…

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

She bought a ticket to their show that evening. She needed to meet Ian, the sooner the better. She had to determine why shadows were concerned with him.

She called them shadows because that's what they remind her of. They follow people, like a shadow. They have the whole black wispy look, but they can take on shapes of their own. All of the ones Violet had seen have been animal forms. Shadows seem to influence human emotions. For example, an little angry hermit crab shadow tagging along may make an optimist add a few more than necessary expletives when they stub their toe, but a bunch may make them bite off the head of the person who moved the chair in their way. Some shadows are nicer than others. They attach themselves wherever they have an opportunity. If you were tired of getting dumped you may have a shadow attach itself and give you some unnecessary confidence and go up to the next hot person you see and ask him out for a drink. Odds are you will speak so arrogantly that they will be repulsed and pass.

The visions Violet had were generally vague except for some sort of location or event, and somehow the magnitude of the shadow was related to how vivid the visions were. The fact that this vision tried to insert herself in the situation, that she could feel it in her bones indicated to her that she needed to do something quickly.

She was fairly concerned about how vivid the vision was - it told her there was something strong about these shadows. When they were particularly attached and powerful, she could see them on video and pictures. A lot of what she'd discovered about her ability to see shadows was her reviewing past reporting on tragedies and trying to extrapolate some sort of cause and effect. In the end, she concluded that if the shadow wasn't powerful enough for her to see, the tragedy likely wasn't caused by it. Her visions were proximity based - even national tragedies weren't enough to fuel her visions if they weren't close enough to her. She spent quite a few years and therapy sessions trying to absolve herself from the guilt that she couldn't stop these bad things from happening, but it was difficult when she couldn't tell the therpists the real answer to the question, 'Why do you keep fixating on these incidents?' Actually, she had tried to explain it to the first one, but then out came the prescription pad. She even tried to tell a priest when she was convinced they were demons, but he was convinced Violet was only speaking in metaphor.

She found a related YouTube page and started watching their live recordings. The recordings went back three years. While thankfully the quality had improved dramatically, the venues tended to be dark, making it difficult to determine what were shadows and what were...shadows. Hopefully she'd have better luck in person.