"I'm so sorry. I know it's difficult to acclimate after a trip." Aunt Del patted Link's back. "You're doing fine for your first time."

I didn't have time to think about everything I'd seen. So I focused on one thing: She knew how to find it, without the star. John was talking about the Great Barrier. He thought my mom knew something about it, something she may have written in her journal. Liv and I must have been thinking the same thing, because we touched the old trunk at the same time.

"It's heavy. Be careful." I started to pul it away from the wal . It felt like someone had fil ed it with bricks.

Liv reached for the wal , working the board free. But she didn't reach into the opening. I put my hand inside and immediately touched the battered leather. I pul ed out the journal, feeling the weight of it in my hand. It was a piece of my mother. I flipped to the back. My mother's delicate handwriting stared back at me from the front of the envelope.

Macon

I ripped it open, unfolding the single sheet.

If you're reading this, it means I wasn't able to get to you in time to tel you myself. Things are much worse than any of us could have imagined. It may already be too late. But if there is a chance, you are the only one who wil know how to prevent our worst fears from becoming reality.

Abraham is alive. He's been in hiding. And he's not alone. Sarafine is with him, as devoted a disciple as your father.

You have to stop them before we al run out of time.

- LJ

My eyes dragged across the bottom of the page. LJ. Lila Jane. I noticed something else -- the date. I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. March 21st. A month before my mother's accident. Before she was murdered.

Liv stepped away, sensing she was witnessing something private and painful. I flipped through the pages of the journal, looking for answers. There was another copy of the Ravenwood Family Tree. I'd seen it before in the archive, but this one looked different. Some of the names were crossed out.

As I turned the pages, a loose paper slipped out and floated to the floor. I picked it up, unfolding the fragile sheet. It was vel um, thin and slightly transparent, like tracing paper. There were strange shapes penned on one side. Misshapen ovals, with dips and rises, as if a child were drawing clouds. I turned to Liv, holding the vel um open so she could see the shapes. She shook her head without a word. Neither one of us knew what it meant.

I folded the delicate paper and replaced it in the journal, skipping ahead to the end. I turned to the last page. There was something else that didn't make any sense, at least not to me.

In Luce Caecae Caligines sunt,

Et in Caliginibus, Lux.

In Arcu imperium est,

Et in imperio, Nox.

Instinctively, I ripped out the page and shoved it in my pocket. My mother was dead because of the letter, and possibly what was written on these pages. They belonged with me now.

"Ethan, are you al right?" Aunt Del's voice was ful of concern.

I was so far from right I couldn't remember what it felt like. I had to get out of this room, away from my mom's past, out of my head.

"Be right back." I bolted down the stairs to the guest room and lay on the bed in my dirty clothes. I stared at the ceiling, painted sky blue, just like the one in my bedroom. Stupid bees. The joke was on them, and they didn't even know.

Or maybe on me.

I was numb, the way you get when you try to feel everything at once. I might as wel have been Aunt Del walking into this old house.

Abraham Ravenwood wasn't a piece of the past. He was alive, hiding in the shadows with Sarafine. My mother had known, and Sarafine had kil ed her because of it.

My eyes were blurry. I wiped them, expecting tears, but there was nothing there. I squeezed my eyes shut, but when I opened them al I could see were colors and lights flashing by me, as if I was running. I saw bits and pieces -- a wal , dented silver trash cans, cigarette butts. Whatever I'd experienced when I was staring into my bathroom mirror was happening again. I tried to get up, but I was too dizzy. The pieces kept flying by, final y slowing so my mind could catch up.

I was in a room, a bedroom, maybe. It was hard to tel from where I was standing. The floor was gray concrete, and the white wal s were covered in the same black designs I had seen on Lena's hands. As I looked at them, they seemed to move.

I scanned the room. She had to be here somewhere.

"I feel so different from everyone else, even other Casters." It was Lena's voice. I looked up, fol owing the sound.

They were above me, lying on the black-painted ceiling. Lena and John were head to head, talking back and forth without looking at each other. They were staring at the floor the way I stared at my ceiling at night, when I couldn't fal asleep. Lena's hair fel around her shoulders, flat against the ceiling as if she was lying on the floor.

It would seem impossible, if I hadn't already seen it. Only this time, she wasn't the only one on the ceiling. And I wasn't there to pul her back down.

"No one can explain my powers to me, not even my family. Because they don't know." She sounded miserable and far away. "And every day I wake up, and I can do things I couldn't the day before."

"It's the same for me. One day I woke up and thought about somewhere I wanted to go, and a second later I was there." John was tossing something up in the air and catching it, over and over. Except he was tossing it toward the floor instead of the ceiling.

"Are you saying that you didn't know you could Travel?"