I’d never admitted that to anyone before, not even myself, but I looked at my mom, knowing she would understand.

“His magic always scared me too,” she said. “But what scares me even more is how close Victor is to getting everything he’s always wanted. Even if the other Families band together with the Sinclairs, he won’t rest now until he slaughters everyone who opposes him.”

“I know,” I whispered, my stomach twisting at the thought. “He’ll kill Devon, Claudia, Mo, Felix, Oscar, and all the rest of my friends. Deah and Seleste too. And he won’t stop there. He’ll go after the monsters too. As many of them as he can until he has every single scrap of magic he can possibly get.”

“Unless someone stands up to him,” my mom said. “Unless someone stops him.”

She stared at me, her blue eyes as dark and serious as I’d ever seen them.

“Me?” I asked. “You really think that I can beat Victor? How?”

“By doing what I trained you for all along, Lila.” She arched her eyebrows. “By doing what you do best.”

I snorted. “I don’t think Victor is just going to stand by and let me steal his magic the way I would break into someone’s house and snatch a diamond necklace.”

My mom kept staring at me, a small smile playing on her lips. She didn’t say anything else, but she gave me this wise, knowing look, like I’d just said the perfect thing to solve the riddle of how to defeat Victor.

My eyes narrowed. “Wait a second . . . you really think I can steal Victor’s magic? How do you expect me to do that?”

She nodded. “The same way he stole everyone else’s.”

I frowned, not understanding what she meant. My mom stepped forward and folded me into her arms. The scent of lilacs, her favorite perfume, filled my nose, and her arms felt warm and strong around me, as though she really were hugging me, even though I knew that was impossible.

But she drew back all too soon. She smiled at me again, then reached up and brushed my hair back off my face.

“I’m so proud of you, Lila,” she whispered. “Always remember that.”

Then she dropped her hand from my face and stepped back. I reached for her, but somehow I couldn’t move.

“Mom!” I yelled. “Mom! Come back!”

She smiled at me a final time, and then it was as if the stars started falling from the sky like flakes of snow. Each one pulsed with light as it hit the balcony. Together, their combined glow grew brighter and brighter until it formed a solid wall of white in my mind again, a wall that separated me from my mom—

“Lila?” a soft voice called out. “Lila? Wake up, honey.”

A hand touched my shoulder and I gasped, my eyes snapping open.

Claudia Sinclair was standing over me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Claudia put her hand on my shoulder, coaxing me to lie back down. “Easy,” she whispered. “Easy now, Lila. There might still be some copper crusher venom running through your veins. Just relax.”

I nodded and did as she said, propping myself up against the pillows. I looked around and realized that we were in a bedroom. It was just as finely furnished as my own room at the Sinclair mansion, with one main difference—bunches of purple wisteria perched in crystal vases throughout the room, along with beautiful white orchids. Several paintings of wisteria flowers hung on the walls and the symbol was also carved into every piece of furniture that I could see.

I frowned, not understanding what was going on. “Where are we?”

“The Ito Family mansion,” Claudia said. “Hiroshi has agreed to join forces with us. So have the Salazars.”

“And the Volkovs?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

She shook her head. “They’re staying out of things. At least until they see who wins—us or Victor.”

I nodded again. “What happened? How did you find me? How did I get here?”

“It was Seleste, actually. She kept insisting that she saw you outside an old apartment building close to the lochness bridge. Told everyone who would listen that that’s where you would be. That you were sitting there waiting for us to come find you. So Devon, Deah, and Felix went and looked for you. And they found you, right where she said you would be.”

I shook my head. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“I know. Devon said you were muttering as if you were talking to someone, but that you didn’t speak to or recognize any of them.” Claudia looked at me. “Was it Serena?”

I blinked. “How did you know that?”

She gestured at my hand. “Not only does copper crusher venom cause hallucinations, but it also has the unique magical property of letting us see the thing we want most to see. In your case, I guessed that would be Serena.”

I looked down at my hand, but the two deep, red puncture wounds from the crusher’s fangs were gone. So was the pain in my face and head. In fact, all my cuts, bumps, and bruises had been healed, including the broken bones in my hand, and I felt perfectly fine. Felix and Angelo must have used their healing magic on me, along with a whole lot of stitch-sting. But I was well and whole again, except for the old, familiar ache in my heart, one that seeing my mom had only intensified.

“We were standing on the balcony outside my room at the Sinclair mansion, looking down at the Midway,” I whispered. “She looked so beautiful, just like I remember. And the way she smiled at me, talked to me, it was like she was really there.”

“Maybe she was,” Claudia murmured.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Sight magic is a very powerful thing, especially in the Sterling Family. Seleste can see the future, Deah can see people well enough to copy their every movement with her mimic magic, and you can actually see into people’s hearts with your soulsight. Who’s to say that you can’t see something else? Sometimes, the living and the dead aren’t that far apart, especially in a place like Cloudburst Falls.”

I didn’t know if I believed all that or not, but my mom had seemed so real to me in the dream or vision or whatever it had really been. If nothing else, seeing her again, even if it was only a figment of my imagination, had given me a little peace. I was comforted by the idea that she was in a better place, in some other version of Cloudburst Falls where she was alive and well and watching over me.