“What did she mean by it?” Noah asks, and I shake my head.
“I’m not sure. I thought that maybe it was something Mom found on that last trip. I thought maybe …” I trail off but can’t stop myself from looking at Karina. She might have had answers. Once. But they’re locked away in some dark recess of her mind now. I know better than anyone how easy it is for a memory to stay buried.
“I have to find it,” I say. “Whatever it is.”
“Which means you have to come with us,” Megan says. “You’ve got to go back to Valancia.”
“No.” I shake my head. My hands tremble and my blood pounds. “No. I can’t. It’s not safe there. No.”
“On your mom’s last trip, she saw Karina and she saw your grandfather,” Noah says. I hate him for his calm, cool logic. “If there are answers, they’re in Valancia.”
“No. I have to keep moving.” Because as long as they’re chasing me, then Jamie’s safe. Jamie’s resting. Jamie is somewhere under Dominic’s watchful eye, getting stronger every day.
They all want to argue. They want to fight. I want to climb into the SUV and start driving.
“Let’s get some sleep now. Perhaps an answer will present itself in the morning,” Alexei says, and we’re all too tired to argue. As the others drift away, he pulls me into his arms. “You’re not going anywhere without me,” he whispers too low for the others to hear.
“Your name’s been cleared,” I say, but I don’t pull away. “You can go home.”
He squeezes me tighter. “I am home.”
Alexei’s mother is twenty feet away from us, but he never even glances her direction. He just pulls my head to his shoulder and holds me. I could cry now. I could break down—allow myself a little weakness. No one here would judge me. But I would judge myself. So I don’t shed a single tear.
Alexei holds me until the fire dies and the barn seems to go to sleep around us. Even the storm seems to be drifting away, but then I hear a sound like thunder coming closer. The low rumbling is followed by the flash of headlights through the open doors, and I’m already pulling away from Alexei. I’m turning. I’m getting ready to yell for my friends to run when a car door slams and a single word slices through the storm.
“Grace?”
I know the voice, but I can’t believe what I’m seeing when a woman steps from the shadows. Her suit is dark. Her heels are high. And the brown eyes behind her glasses are rapidly filling with tears.
“Ms. Chancellor?”
Then I realize that she’s not alone. At the first sign of movement, I pull back. In a flash, Megan is running past me, rushing into the other woman’s arms.
“Mom!” Megan cries, and her mother swallows her up. Megan and her mom look alike. They both have the same sleek black hair and huge brown eyes. But Megan’s mom wears her hair in a sleek bob. When she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear just like I’ve seen Megan do a thousand times, something about it makes me want to cry.
My mom will never hug me again, never worry about me or whisper in my ear or tell me everything is going to be okay. Things will never be okay again, and I have no one but myself to blame.
So I blame everyone.
“What are you doing here?” I say.
“Grace …” Ms. Chancellor starts toward me slowly. She knows me well enough to know I’m looking for a fight. I don’t care where it comes from. That’s probably why one always finds me.
“It’s my fault.” Megan moves out of her mother’s grasp. “I called them. I … We need help.”
Megan isn’t wrong, because Megan isn’t stupid. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
“No. I …” But I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to say. That I’m sorry. That I’m wrong. That I am the thing that goes bump in the night and they’d all be better off far, far away.
My voice cracks. My eyes fill with tears.
And then Ms. Chancellor can’t be held back anymore. “Oh, Grace.” She rushes toward me and pulls me into her arms. It’s almost like a mother. It’s almost like I’m loved. Even if I don’t deserve it.
“Let me look at you,” she says, pushing me gently away and eyeing me from head to toe. “Are you okay? When you ran away in Paris …”
“I’m okay.”
“Where did you go, sweetheart? What did you—”
“Hello.” Alexei’s mother’s hair is still wet from the rain. Her eyes are big and blue, just like her son’s. But when Ms. Chancellor turns and takes her in, it’s like she’s looking at a ghost.
“Karina?” She’s not entirely wrong. Alexei’s mother is thin and pale, and the nightgown she wears beneath one of Noah’s jackets is an eerie, dirty shade that probably used to be white. “Karina, where …”
Karina looks at Ms. Chancellor, and for a moment, there is a light in her eyes. Recognition is starting to dawn, but then it fades away again, like a sun that can’t quite find the strength to rise.
Ms. Chancellor turns on me. “What have you done?” she asks, and I snap.
“Do they know you’re here? Is that why you came?”
“Grace—”