looking for a forgotten YA(?) fantasy book with messed up ending.

[Carolyn Allison]

Ok so I've been looking for this book for forever. It was a YA-ish fantasy about a young teenage girl whose discovering she has magic. She has a father, a step mother, a twin brother, Maaayyyybe a new baby brother or sister?, and she's pretty in love with one of her dad's friends or hirelings, whose a grown man so obviously its unrequited. The rest of this is heavy spoilers since I mostly just remember the ending.

(view spoiler)[ So the family is travelling for some reason, possibly to be able to get help for her in learning magic, (or not?!) she meets some people from another world/elves/ ?? and they're hurt in some way, possibly dead, she has to use her magic to help them. She might have resurrected the daughter. The travellers are a father, his daughter (Avril? April? Averil?) and another companion. Later the daughter dies and the main character attempts to bring her back but this time there's nothing so she fills the body with pain, the daughter is screaming in agony, so they kill the body filled with pain. (It gets worse...) The other guy she helped she grew a homunculus in his neck (???) which they kill, she did something messed up to the other guy too, maybe made his arm a tentacle or something but I forget. She did this on purpose. The events of the book keep getting crazy messed up, her twin brother dies in a fire, her step mother becomes a vampire and her dad has to kill her, and the book ends with the guy she loved being mind controlled by some evil force somehow. (hide spoiler)]

My sister thinks she there is an anthology book the author of this book contributed to and that the author's name might have "sh" or an initial in it but this may be a red herring as for the longest time my sister also thought this was by Laurell K. Hamilton and I see she hasn't written any super messed up teenage fiction.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Carolyn Allison]

Carolyn wrote: "Ok so I've been looking for this book for forever. It was a YA-ish fantasy about a young teenage girl whose discovering she has magic. She has a father, a step mother, a twin brother, Maaayyyybe a ..."

Nvm it is by Laurell K. Hamilton it's called "Death of a Darklord" and it's as messed up as I remember.

[Kagama-the Literaturevixen]

You would think a teenage girl has enough to cope with without all that already0o