The Sloane Voss Novella Series

She can hear the color of a lie.

Sloane Voss arrived at Wavecrest University with two duffel bags and an ability she has never fully explained to anyone: chromesthesia, a form of synesthesia that lets her hear voices as colors. Amber means performance. Dark flat means danger. Blue-grey means she can trust you—maybe.

Three weeks into her first semester, a local fisherman named Cal Morrow is found dead. The official verdict: accidental drowning. But Sloane notices five things that don’t fit—a boat facing the wrong direction, a chemical smell near the dock pilings that has no business being there, a thermal anomaly in the cove data, a tab that appeared on a dead man’s bar receipt from an unknown account, and a research dataset that someone very quietly corrected before it could be published.

With journalism student Diego Reyes and a slowly growing circle of reluctant allies, Sloane begins mapping what the water left behind. The deeper she goes, the clearer it becomes: this wasn’t an accident. And the person who made it look like one is still on campus—and watching her.

Dead Water is the first book in the Sloane Voss Series—a YA literary thriller built on precision, voice, and the specific danger of noticing things other people miss.