To release you as well.”

“The journey back—back to the beginning?” I say, sarcasm blooming. “And just where does this journey start? Where does it end?” I look at her, noticing how she still appears lit from within.

“The journey begins here.”

She points down at our feet, or maybe the mud, I can’t be too sure. I’m more confused now than I was when this started. But when our eyes meet again, I know the instruction is literal—the journey begins in the very muck where we stand.

“And it ends in the truth.”

And before I can say another word, before I can beg for a little more clarification, Damen swings his arm around my waist and pulls me away.

Hurling the words over his shoulder, not bothering to look back when he says, “No one’s going anywhere. Don’t bother us again.”

Chapter nine

“So what do you make of it?” Ava swings her wavy auburn locks over her shoulder and levels her brown eyes on me, lowering herself onto one of the old plastic fold-up chairs Jude dragged into his office in an attempt to accommodate us all in this impromptu meeting.

“What do you think it all means?”

I venture a glance toward Damen, who, having refused a chair, chooses to lean against the wall, arms crossed before him, face bearing a look that reads loud and clear: I thought we were through with this? I thought I warned her to stay away? I thought you said you were merely planning to swing by, pick up a book or two, and be on your way?

Meeting it with one of my own that says: You promised me a week and I’m holding you to it—unless, of course, you want to tell me what the old woman showed you?

He frowns, looks away, just as I figured he would, so I turn away from him in favor of Ava.

“I have no idea what it means,” I admit, doing my best to pretend I didn’t just hear Damen sigh even though that was clearly his intent.

Jude glances between us, his gaze cautious, correctly sensing there’s trouble in paradise and wanting nothing more than to steer clear of it. Still, since he also promised to help, he takes his place behind his desk, tilts his chair way back, and pretends to be lost in deep thought as he stares into space, when really, he’s just dreaming of being some other place. Summerland would be my best guess.

“So, she thinks you’re Adelina, or that you were Adelina, or… whatever…” Miles frowns, tapping his pen against the pages of the leather-bound journal I gave him before he left for Florence, busying himself with intense note taking, trying to make sense of it, while I busy myself with taking him in. Noting how his freshly cut hair makes him appear a lot more like the old Miles again, the one who so willingly befriended me on my first day of school, though the baby fat he shed when he went to acting camp in Italy is clearly gone for good, transforming him from comfortably cute to, well, really, really cute.

“Yeah.” I nod, still not used to talking about this so openly, or at least not with him.

Even though he’s all caught up to speed, pretty much informed of all the more sordid details of our lives thanks to both Roman’s interference and the fact that he was there the night I killed Haven. Caught in her snare, eyes about to pop right out of his head, as she went about the business of trying to choke him to death.

By killing her, I saved him. And by doing so, I lost all hope of ever getting my hands on that antidote.

Still, I’d do it again if I had to. He’s one of my very best friends, and he did absolutely nothing to deserve that from her.

“I have no idea who she is.” I frown. “All I know is that the old lady calls herself Lotus, and is convinced I’m Adelina.” The words mumbled in a way that makes it sound as though I was talking to myself.

Yanked from my mire of confusion when Romy and Rayne pipe up and say, “We need to start at the beginning.”

I look at them, so perplexed by it all that I don’t even know where that is. But before I can respond, they spring forth from their chairs, rush down the hall, and into the store. Returning just a few moments later, they reclaim their seats and peer at the book they’ve propped open on Romy’s lap.

Rayne’s voice piercing the silence when she leans over her twin sister, her huge brown eyes widening under her dark fringe of razor-slashed bangs as she says, “Okay, you said her name was Lotus, right?”

I nod.

“So, according to this, the lotus flower grows out of the mud, struggling through the muck to make its way toward the light. And, once it reaches that light, it blossoms and grows into something extraordinary, something very, very beautiful.”

I suck in my breath, realizing we may have just made a little progress at last. Mud, muck, crazy old lady named Lotus—it all fits, but what does it mean?

“It’s a symbol for awakening,” Ava says, interrupting Rayne, who was about to speak again. “Awakening to the spiritual side of life.”

“But it also represents life in general,” Jude says, bringing his chair forward, settling his elbows onto his desk, and pushing his dreadlocks off his face as he gazes at us. “You know, overcoming the hardships and struggles life brings in order to blossom into your true self—the beautiful being you were destined to be.”

He looks at me when he says it, and there’s nothing I can do to stop the flush from rising to my cheeks. I know all too well about Jude’s hardships and struggles, having seen them firsthand the day I pretended to read his palm so I could prove my psychic prowess and secure a job in his store. I saw it unfold as clearly as though I was standing right there alongside him. Gifted with psychic abilities his parents worked hard to deny, he lost his mother at a young age, only to have his grieving father shove a gun in his mouth and soon follow. Abandoning Jude to a series of intolerable foster families until the cycle of abuse became so unbearable the street seemed like a much better option. His life saved the day Lina found him, saw the promise in him, and managed to convince him that he wasn’t a freak, but rather a unique and gifted soul. That the limited views of others should have no bearing on the person he already was, the man he’d become.