“I'm not a Keeper.” Liv looked embarrassed. “Not yet. One day, maybe. I'm training.”
“Training to be more than the Gatlin County librarian, which is why you're here, in the middle of nowhere with your fancy scholarship. If there is one. Or was that a lie, too?”
“I'm a terrible liar. I do have a scholarship, but it's paid by a society of scholars that far predates Duke University.”
“Or the Harrow School.”
She nodded. “Or Harrow.”
“What about the Ovaltine? Was that even true?”
Liv smiled ruefully. “I'm from Kings Langley, and I do love Ovaltine, but if I'm to be perfectly honest, I've come to prefer Quik since arriving in Gatlin.”
Link sat down on the bed, speechless. “I don't understand a word she's sayin’.”
Liv turned the pages of the book until a timeline of Keepers appeared. My mom's name stared back at me. “Professor Ashcroft is right. I studied Lila Evers Wate. Your mother was a brilliant Keeper, a tremendous writer. It's part of my coursework to read the notes left by the Keepers who have come before me.”
Notes? My mom had notes Liv had seen, and I hadn't? I resisted the urge to punch a hole through the wall. “Why? So you don't make the mistakes they made? So you don't end up dead in an accident nobody saw and no one can explain? So you don't leave your family behind, wondering about your secret life and why you never told them about it?”
The two pink spots appeared on Liv's cheeks again. I was getting used to them. “So I can continue their work and keep their voices alive. So one day, when I become a Keeper, I'll know how to safeguard the Caster archive — the Lunae Libri, the scrolls, the records of the Casters themselves. That isn't possible without the voices of the Keepers who came before me.”
“Why not?”
“Because they're my teachers. I learn from their experiences, the knowledge they gathered while they were Keepers. Everything is connected, and without their records, I can't make sense of the things I discover myself.”
I shook my head. “I don't understand.”
“You don't understand? What the hell are we even talkin’ about?” Link spoke up from the bed.
Marian put her hand on my shoulder. “The voice you heard, the laughter from the hall, I imagine it was your mother. Lila led you here, most likely because she wanted us to have this conversation. So you would understand your purpose, and Lena's or Macon's. Because you're Bound to one of their Houses and one of their destinies. I just don't know whose yet.”
I thought about the face in the column, the laughter, and the feeling of déjà vu in Macon's room. Was it my mom? I'd been waiting months for a sign from her, since the afternoon in the study when Lena and I found the message in the books.
Was she finally trying to contact me now?
What if she wasn't?
I realized something else. “If I am one of these Waywards — and I'm not saying I'm buying any of this — then I can find Lena, right? I'm supposed to take care of her because I'm her compass, or whatever.”
“We don't know that for sure. You're Bound to someone, but we don't know who.”
I pushed back the chair and walked over to the bookcase. Macon's book sat on the edge of the shelf. “I bet I know someone who does.” I reached for it.
“Ethan, stop!” Marian shouted. My fingers had barely scraped the cover when I felt the floor give way into the nothingness of another world.
At the last second, a hand grabbed mine. “Take me with you, Ethan.”
“Liv, no —”
A girl with long brown hair clung desperately to a tall boy, her face buried in his chest. The branches of a huge oak reached down around them, creating the impression they were alone instead of a few yards away from clusters of Duke University's ivy-covered buildings.
He cradled her tear-stained face gently in his hands. “Do you think this is easy for me? I love you, Jane, and I know I'll never feel this way about anyone again. But we don't have a choice. You knew there would come a time when we would have to say good-bye.”
Jane lifted her chin, resolute. “There are always choices, Macon.”
“Not in this situation. Not a choice that wouldn't put you in danger.”
“But your mother said there might be a way. What about the prophecy?”
Macon slammed his palm against the tree, frustrated. “Damn it, Jane. That's an old wives’ tale. There's no way it doesn't end with you dead.”
“So we can't be together physically — I don't care about that. We can still be together. That's all that matters.”
Macon pulled away, his face twisted in pain. “Once I change, I'll be dangerous, a Blood Incubus. They thirst for blood, and my father says I will be one of them like he is, and his father before him. Like all the men in my family, as far back as my great-great-great-grandfather Abraham.”