Even though the air on the bus was musty and somewhat sour, Rosemary Eyton-Watts felt lucky. Lucky to be alive. All she carried with her was a backpack containing a change of clothes, an unopened cup-of-noodles, deodorant, a handful of photos, five pairs of socks and her wallet. And, of course, her notebook. That's all she had been able to grab from her home before leaving.

Two nights ago she had been in Los Angeles, dressing herself up for a concert. She had been incredibly excited to go, had been waiting for this for weeks.

Before it had even started, word got around that a threat had been made on the life of a rising pop star; Aster Blane. The threat came from within the arena. The concert was immediately canceled, and everyone sent home.

The article came out first thing the next morning, explaining everything that Aster Blane had tried to keep secret.

It originally started as harmless notes and gifts sent to her home anonymously. Hand written letters and a stuffed animal or a piece of jewelry. Then a bouquet of flowers, specifically tulips. Then tulips in a variety of colours with a box of chocolates she already loved.

It was odd that someone knew all of this, but her agent said it was normal for fans to find these things out.

For a while it remained that simple, and because it was all very new to her she kept all of the letters she received in a box. Many were from teenage girls expressing their love for her music and explaining how it had helped them. For some it was breakups, others it was just making them happy.

They were a good reminder to her, why she chose to go into the music industry. Music had saved my life when my parents were divorcing, Aster had once said in an interview. I wanted to do the same for others, if I could. After a couple weeks it wasn't just jewelry and flowers, but news papers with any mention of her circled with a bright purple pen. Purple was her favourite colour, and she didn't quite understand how this fan knew that.

From that point, though she was becoming popular, she kept her personal life very private. Her team of agents and organizers were asked to restrict giving information about her to the public as she wanted to keep things to herself for as long as she could.

Her agent posted on her website days after that, that a possible show she was doing would be postponed so she could see her family.

That was why she called the police when she opened her mailbox before leaving her family home.

According to that unknown source, someone had left a printed page with the most recent update circled in that purple pen. This, along with a handwritten note, were put in an envelope addressed to Aster Blane.

The note had contained the details about her that this person knew. Details they definitely shouldn't know.

Her maternal grandmother being sick with cancer.

Suggestions from the coffee shop she would go to near her apartment.

The location of her estranged father's mistress-turned-girlfriend.

Where her mother could find the discontinued hair product she was looking for.

Aster had called the police, who said they couldn't do anything as they didn't know the sender and whoever it was had yet to prove violence. They suggested she try to live out her life as she normally would, just being more cautious.

Aster then had all of her fan-mail directed to a post office box her agent could access to check for anything suspicious, moved with her mother to a different part of California state, and everything was fine.

For two months, everything was okay.

She received no flowers or letters, no gifts.

For two glorious months, Aster Blane went back to writing, singing, and going for coffee with her friends every day at a new cafe she hadn't heard of. And then it started.

An expensive necklace and the locations of her celebrity-lawyer father's two private homes unknown to the public.

A beautiful ring she could only dream of affording, and knowledge on the man she hadn't known her mother was seeing.

She brought each of them to the police in her new neighbourhood, explaining to them why she was concerned. Again, they told her what she already knew; they didn't know who was sending them, and unless they proved to be violent there was nothing they could do.

It was three days after that, that the police were called to her home. Aster had been asleep, but her mother opened the mailbox to find a dainty necklace in an envelope, the chain stained with dried blood.

That was when the search for the stalker began.

Days later it was determined the necklace came from a young woman named Chloe Statler. Another rising singer in the music industry who had been found murdered in her apartment less than a week earlier.

Her security detail was increased, and officers made frequent passes by her home and where she worked. They had promised Aster they would find the perpetrator, but they had so very few leads to go on.

No finger prints, a synthetic black hair, and an unrecognizable image from a stationary store security camera. That was all they had been able to find.

Even more horrifically, a new letter was left in her mailbox box some time between the police patrols.

The envelope, with her name printed in purple ink across the front, contained four things. Another two news clipping about a woman name Any Wiles found murdered at her studio, a clipping of dark hair, a bloodstained pair of earrings, and a photo of the girls dead body showing where each thing had come from.

On the second news clipping was a short mention of Aster Blane frequenting the police station with increasing security numbers. It was circled in the same purple ink, and below it read the following;

I'VE BEEN SO GOOD TO YOU
WHY GO TO THE POLICE?

That was when the panic truly set in.

Though her agent had been urging her to continue on with the short concerts to show she didn't believe the person was a threat, she was hesitant.

The next day, two photographers had gotten pictures of her and Derek Ackerman, an aspiring actor her agent wanted to cast in a potential upcoming music video. He just wanted to have everything organized so it would be a simple yes or no.

The photos were posted to an online blog, and news was the next day that the unidentified body of a seventeen year old boy was found. He'd been beaten to death in the bathroom of a nightclub just down the street from their dinner meeting.

That evening, another note reading;

I DID ALL OF THIS FOR YOU
WHY WAS I NOT ENOUGH?

was left at the front entrance of the tailor shop she frequented.

She had told her head of security about it, and he agreed to tell the police her suspicions while she readied herself for the last night show she was going to put on. It would be for a crowd of nearly five hundred people, which was one of the highest numbers she had managed.

Aster had been in her dressing room when she heard the warning issued through the nearest security guards walki-talki; we have reports that a man was seen with a gun under his coat, suspect is a male in his late teens over 5'11, dark hair, wearing dark blue jeans and a black coat.

Though the security guard had assured her everything would be fine, Aster had demanded to go home. From her home, she continued to hear updates through the security guards communicating until they abruptly stopped.

Mid sentence, they cut out and her lights shut off.

Everything was silent.

Then there was the shattering of a window downstairs, and she set to work as quickly as she could.

Stuffed what she could reach into her backpack. Got out of her pyjamas and into pants and a warm jacket. Put on a pair of black boots she'd gotten as part of a costume. As she moved, the stairs outside of her room creaked with someone else's weight.

Without thinking about it, Aster then locked her bedroom door, then locked her connected bathroom door, and crawled as quietly as she could put the window.

This wasn't anything new to her.

Many of her songs had been written at midnight in the treehouse of her old backyard. She'd had to sneak out of her room to get there without dealing with her parents. This was a different layout and a different home, but she managed it just as easily.

That was where the article ended. No one had heard from her since neighbours reported her climbing down the side of the house and running.

•••••

From her spot on the out-of-state bus she'd gotten a ticket on, Rosemary found herself looking around at the others sitting near her. It had only been three hours since she had booked her ticket and left Los Angeles, and there was more than a days travel ahead of her.

When she was still healthy, her grandmother often talked of summer days she spent with her family in a small town up in Washington. Apparently, Rosemary's great-grandfather had several fishing buddies up there who he spent the hottest days of the year with.

La Push was always a fond memory for her grandmother, and always said she wished she could've brought her own family there to see it. But teenage relationships failed, time had gone by, and then she was dying.

Time always got in the way, Gran had said to her many times. But it truly is a beautiful place. If things had worked out the way I wished they did, I would have raised my family there. My family, made with a different man than your grandfather. There was always a shaky inhale of breath. I loved your grandfather, but I don't believe he was the love of my life.

Who was? Rosemary remembered asking as a child.

That's a story for a different time, Gran would say, and that was that.

It wasn't until years later, when Rosemary was fifteen and Gran was moved into hospice care that she found out who the man was.

In many of her great grandfathers photo albums, several pictures were named and dated back to the 1930's when Gran was just turning 16. Nearly all the pictures were of her and the same boy.

In one photo they held up a fish they'd caught, and in another we're making towers out of driftwood on the beach. One of Gran laying in the sand, laughing at whatever the photographer had said. The young man with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, both beaming happily.

All the photos were named Diane Mallard and Peter Clearwater.

From what she had gathered, Gran and Peter met up in La Push when they were 19, and never saw each other again.

That was where Rosemary was going. To a small town on the west coast where the wind and rain often chilled people right down to their bones. Where clouds were more common than sunshine and the trees loomed over everything.

Rosemary Eyton-Watts was going to La Push in the hopes that Peter Clearwater was still alive because she desperately needed help. Rosemary needed help because she was Aster Blane, and she had nowhere else to go.