This was Judd, trying to protect me. This was Judd, telling me to let it go. I thought about the little red-haired girl, about Beau Donovan, about seven and nine, the symbol carved into my mother’s coffin, the pattern of murders stretching back over years and generations.

I didn’t want anyone’s protection. I want Nightshade. I want answers.

Judd responded like I’d said the words out loud. “You have to want something else more.”

“Home isn’t a place, Cassie. Home is the people who love you most.” Standing on the back porch, looking out at the safe house backyard, I let the memory wash over me. I lost myself to it. I needed to remember. I needed my mom to be my mom—not a body, not bones, not a victim—my mom.

We’re dancing, right there on the side of the road. Her red hair escapes the scarf. It frames her face as she moves—wild and free and absolutely unabashed. I spin in circles, my hands held out to the side. The world is a blur of colors and darkness and snow. She tilts her head back, and I do the same, sticking out my tongue.

We can shed the past. We can dance it off. We can laugh and sing and spin—forever and ever.

No matter what.

No matter what.

No matter what.

I didn’t want to forget—the smile on her face, the way she’d moved, the way she’d danced like no one was watching, no matter where we were.

I sucked in a breath and wished—fiercely, vehemently—that I didn’t understand how a stranger could have looked at her and thought, She’s the one.

They were watching you, I thought. They chose you.

I’d never asked myself what my mother’s killer had chosen her for. I thought of the woman I’d seen with Nightshade—the little girl’s mother. Do you know what he is? I asked the woman, holding the image of her in my mind. Are you a part of this group? Are you a killer?

Seven Masters. The Pythia. And Nine. I thought of the hundreds of people who’d passed through my mother’s shows. Seven Masters. Had one of them been there? Had they seen her?

Did you expect my mom to go willingly? I asked them silently. Did you try to break her? Did she fight you?

I looked down at my wrists, remembering the feel of zip ties digging into them. I remembered being stalked, hunted, trapped. I remembered Locke’s knife. I remembered fighting—lying, manipulating, struggling, running, hiding, fighting.

I was my mother’s daughter.

They didn’t know what they were getting into with you, I thought, my mother still dancing in my memory, fearless and free. My mom and Locke had grown up with an abusive father. When my mom got pregnant with me, she got out. She left her father’s house in the dead of night and never looked back.

“Dance it off.”

My mother was a survivor.

The back door opened. After a moment’s pause, Dean came to stand behind me. I leaned back into him, my hands held palms up in front of me, my eyes on my wrists. Webber had bound them behind my back. Did they bind your arms, Mom? Did they give you a chance to win your freedom? Did they tell you that yours was a higher purpose?

Did they kill you for fighting?

By the time they killed you, did you want to die?

“I’ve been trying to imagine,” Dean said, “what this is like for you. And instead…” His voice caught in his throat. “I keep imagining seeing her, choosing her, taking her—” Dean cut off abruptly.

You hate yourself for imagining it. You hate how easy it is to put yourself in the mind-set of my mother’s killer—or killers.

You hate that it makes any kind of sense at all.

“I imagine taking her,” I told him. “I imagine being taken.” I swallowed. “Whatever this group is, they operate by certain rules. There’s a ritual, an uncompromising tradition….”

Seven Masters. The Pythia. And Nine.

Wordlessly, Dean reached around my body. He took my right hand in his. His thumb grazed my wrist, exactly where Webber’s zip ties had dug into my flesh.

Like mother, like daughter—

All thoughts cut off as Dean lifted my wrist to his lips, pressing a soft, silent kiss to the once-abused skin. He closed his eyes. I closed mine. I could feel him, breathing behind me. I matched my breaths to his.

In. Out. In. Out.

“You don’t have to be strong right now,” Dean told me.

I turned, opened my eyes, caught his lips in mine. Yes. I do.

Like mother, like daughter—I was a fighter.

My neck arched. I pulled back from Dean, my face less than an inch from his.

“You should really put a tie on the door or something.” Lia sauntered onto the back porch, utterly unremorseful about interrupting us. “Serial-killing cults and citywide manhunts aside, a little discretion on the PDA front goes a long way.”

I took that to mean Lia hadn’t received any updates on the case. Briggs and Sterling hadn’t called. Nightshade’s still out there. The FBI is still looking.

“Lia.” Dean’s tone clearly requested that she vacate the premises.

Lia ignored him and focused on me. “I told Michael to put on his big-boy pants,” she informed me. “I think the near-death experience might have put a damper on his downward spiral, and besides…” Lia met my gaze. “I told him it was your turn.”

There was a beat of silence as I absorbed the full meaning of Lia’s words. She was here for me. Michael was here. Sloane—shattered, grieving Sloane—was here.

Briggs saved my life, Judd had said. He saved me, the day he brought me Dean.