The headline ripped me wide open, and horror leaked into my soul.

Pregnant Woman Survives Home Invasion;

Loses Baby

I got through the first three sentences of the article before my eyes closed on their own, as if they’d seen all they could take. I couldn’t breathe. That horror had clawed its way up my throat and was blocking my air passage.

Sera had been four and a half months pregnant when she was stabbed in the stomach and left for dead.

Sera. Not Nadia.

The police report said she came out of hiding to defend her sister, fought with the intruder, then crawled to the telephone to call for help after their attacker fled the scene.

That’s why she hid.

She wasn’t protecting herself. She was protecting her baby.

I shoved the laptop away so suddenly it was teetering on the edge of the mattress when Van grabbed it.

Sera had been pregnant. She saw her parents murdered. She saw her sister brutalized, and when she tried to help Nadia, she’d lost her own unborn child. And nearly died along with her sister.

But even as I thought that over, trying to digest the horror and depth of her loss, the totality of the rage and isolation she must be suffering with every beat of her heart, some small detail nagged at the back of my brain, clamoring for attention.

I opened my eyes and pulled Van’s laptop closer to read the first line again. And there it was, in black and white. I hadn’t really noticed it my first time through because the crime itself was shocking enough.

She’d kept her last name secret, but it turns out I hadn’t known her first name either.

Sera was Sera Brandt. S-E-R-A. Short for Serenity.

Holy shit.

It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.

I shoved the laptop at Van again, then stood and crossed the floor in three steps. I pulled the door open so hard and fast the hinges groaned with the pressure, then I raced into the hall and down the stairs, leaving Vanessa staring after me in surprise. In the living room, I grabbed my bag from the end of the couch and pulled out Noelle’s notebook, then started flipping through it frantically, still standing.

I was four pages in when I found the first mention.

Find serenity.

Noelle had said it in her sleep, twelve years ago. Then again, five months after that.

Save serenity.

And twice more, over the next two years.

Serenity waits. and Family, serenity.

I hadn’t once capitalized her name, because I hadn’t realized it was a name.

Noelle had been trying to tell me all along, though she probably didn’t understand the message at all. Sera hadn’t appeared in the notebook to help me—she’d appeared so I could help her.

Stunned, I closed the notebook and dropped it into my bag, disgusted with my own ignorance. Horrified by my own failure. What good did it do for me to have glimpses of the future at my fingertips when I couldn’t make sense of a damn one of them?

I was supposed to save Sera and her family. I was supposed to find her and stop the bastard who broke into her house and slaughtered her entire family. Including her unborn child. Hunting down their killer was a secondary goal, only necessary if I failed to keep him from committing the prophesied atrocities in the first place.

Which was exactly what I’d done.

I’d given up. I’d put the notebook away and turned my back on every preventable accident and atrocity predicted within it, because I wasn’t smart enough to figure out the puzzles.

Because of me, Sera had lost everyone she’d ever loved.

How the hell was I supposed to tell her that?

Fourteen

Sera

When I came downstairs that afternoon, finally drawn from my room by the scent of homemade chili, Kris was at the kitchen table again, alone this time, his nose buried in that journal, his jaw clenched with some intense emotion I couldn’t define or understand. I wanted to talk to him, despite my lingering embarrassment. I wanted to know why he was so angry, and whether or not I was the cause.

I wanted to know if he’d found my family online. If he’d read about what had happened to them. To us. I wanted to know whether I’d see pity or anger in his gaze when it next met mine, so I could plan my response accordingly. I’d lied to him about what happened, so any anger on his part was probably warranted, and most people would think pity was appropriate, as well, but I couldn’t stand to see either. Not from Kris.

So I only watched him for a minute, knowing I should have been relieved by how focused he was on that stupid notebook. Keeping my distance from him would be easier with Noelle standing between us.

But I didn’t feel relieved. I felt...alone.

Kris didn’t notice me, so I snuck out with a smile and nod to Gran, who was stirring a big pot on the stove.

I hadn’t had chili in months. My dad had made it once a week, every winter of my life. He’d spent Saturdays soaking beans and Sundays simmering sauce on the stove, and if I asked nicely and used a clean spoon, he’d let me have an early taste. I’d missed weekend chili when I’d gone off to college, but every time I came home for winter break, I’d find a pot on the stove and a clean spoon waiting for me on the counter.

There would be no more of my dad’s chili. That hadn’t occurred to me until I saw Gran making hers, and as I fled the kitchen, I fought a sudden, irrational urge to dump her chili into the garbage disposal because it dared to exist when my dad’s chili never would again.

In the living room, Van was curled up in the armchair with her laptop, clicking away as if her fingers would never tire. She glanced up at me and smiled, and I found sympathy in her gaze. No—worse—empathy.