I glance over my shoulder at Alex and raise my eyebrows. “Okay, the plants are kind of creeping me out.”

He shrugs, not agreeing or disagreeing. “The oxygen’s good for her or something… but yeah, still kind of creepy.” He nods his head to my right. “Everyone’s in the kitchen.”

I turn and spot Laylen sitting at the kitchen table. Strands of his blond, blue-tipped hair hang in his bright blue eyes, tattoos curve across his arms, including the markings for the Mark of Immortality, and his long legs are stretched out to the side of him as he sits sideways in the chair. Aislin is next to him, her hair damp and she’s wearing a white floral dress, opening and closing her hand causing her skin to smoke as if she’s practicing a spell. The other person at the table is also in a floral dress; a green one. Her blond hair reminds me of sunshine and sunflowers and her eyes are sky blue. Tan gloves cover her hands and her lips are glossy. I’ve seen this girl before, not just in a photo back at Laylen’s house, but in a vision… or memory... She was holding Aislin’s spell book.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Alex asks, his breath tickling the back of my neck—I hadn’t realized he was so close.

I turn and our lips are only a sliver of space away. “I’ve seen that girl before,” I whisper.

His brow curves upward. “Stasha?”

I nod. “In a vision… or memory… I’m not really sure, but she was holding Aislin’s spell book.”

Alex doesn’t seem as surprised as I am. He simply says, “I’ll take care of it.” Then he winds around me and heads for the kitchen table.

I turn around and discover Stasha has focused her attention me, her gaze shooting daggers. “Everything okay?” she asks Alex as he strolls up to her.

“We need to talk,” he says, then gestures for her to follow him as he walks toward a door on the far back wall. I don’t know where the door leads to, but what I do know is I feel so jealous when the two of them go into the room behind it that I feel like I’m about to ignite into flames.

I need to concentrate on something else besides this jealous feeling festering inside me so I look at Laylen. He’s fiddling with his lip ring, sucking on it sexily as he draws it between his teeth and watching him do it turns out to be a great distraction.

He catches my eye and a look of relief washes over him. Without saying a word, he rises from the chair and crosses the room in three long strides, catching me by the elbow and guiding me into the living room with him, leaving Aislin alone in the kitchen to practice her magic.

We stand face to face between the sofas and I’m so relieved to see him, it takes me a moment to find my voice.

“How are you doing?” I finally ask.

“I don’t know... Okay, I guess.”

“You had me worried… I still am.”

“I know you are,” he says, meeting my gaze, almost looking glad that I’m worried about him, but maybe it’s because he hardly has anyone in his life. “I’m sorry. I just freaked out when your mom told me this was done on purpose to me.” He gestures at himself and then the mark on his arm, indicating he’s referring to being a vampire. “I didn’t do anything, though… I didn’t bite anyone… I wanted to… so f**king badly.” He chews on his bottom lip, staring at the spot on my neck where he bit me once. “I kept having dreams of drinking your blood and I swear I could taste it… it was maddening.”

“I thought it was getting easier to control?”

“It was… but then something changed inside me… and it felt like I went back to the place that I started if that makes any sense.”

I have to wonder if maybe this has something to do with me resetting time. “It’s going to be okay,” I say, repeating my father’s words, even though I’m not positive I believe them. “And if this ever gets to be too much, you can talk to me. You and I are in this together.” I look directly him in the eye. “Promise me you won’t run away again. That no matter what happens or what you’re feeling, you’ll come to me first.”

He nods and then pulls me in for a hug, breathing in my sent as he puts his lips up to my neck and presses a kiss there. “I’m so sorry... For thinking about you the way that I do.”

My veins are filled with liquid fire beneath my skin. It’s so wrong, but every time I think about his fangs sinking into me, I feel like moaning. “It’s okay,” I say. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

But I’m not sure if it is.

About ten minutes later, Alex and Stasha emerge from the back room, Alex looking annoyed and Stasha looking pissed. Alex strides over to the kitchen table and drops a thick, leather book right in front of Aislin.

“Found your spell book,” Alex says, shaking his head in annoyance as he narrows his eyes at Stasha. “Apparently someone’s been sneaking around.”

“I wasn’t sneaking around,” Stasha retorts, crossing her arms. “You were right there when you saw me take it.”

“No I wasn’t,” he argues as Aislin hugs the book to her chest.

“Yes, you were,” Stasha insists, stepping toward him. “You were in the beach house and she,” she aims a finger at me, “Was possessed by the devil himself.”

“You mean Stephan?” I ask. “But I thought—”

“It’s time to go,” Alex interrupts in a clipped tone. “We’ve got a lot of shit to take care of.”

I want to ask him questions, starting with the fact that Stasha is can remember a point in time that technically never occurred. And also why she stole the spell book for Stephan, which would mean she is… was helping him. But he looks so angry that I decide just to go with the flow until we get out of Stasha’s house.

When Aislin and Alex join us in the living room, we get ready to leave via transportation even though Aislin is a worried taking four people. But she said she’d try, I think just to get us the hell out of there.

She has a black candle lit as she sits on the floor with a crystal in her hand. I go to take my necklace off, to avoid repelling Aislin’s magic back on her, when I realize it is missing.

“Wait, where’s my necklace?” I touch the base of my neck, panicking.

“I took it off when Aislin transported us here,” Alex tells me, still aggravated. “I left it on the nightstand in the room you were in when you woke up.”

I hurry to the bedroom to get it, but the necklace isn’t on the nightstand like Alex said. I search the bedroom floor, in the bed, under the bed, inside the closet. I even check the bathroom, but no luck.

I really don’t want to be the girl who cries over a lost piece of jewelry, but I might be if I don’t find it—it has sentimental value.

“Looking for this?”

The sound of her catlike voice sends the hairs on the back of my neck on end. I slowly turn toward the doorway where Stasha is standing, her glove-covered hand up in front of her, a shiny, silver object dangling from her finger.

My locket.

“Why do you have that?” I put up my guard, knowing that something isn’t right.

With a sardonic grin, she shakes her head as she lowers her hand. “I know girls like you.” She struts into the room, swinging the necklace around her finger. “Sad. Lonely. Pathetic. God, I can’t believe Alex would even have the slightest bit of interest in you.”

I let girls like Stasha walk all over me back in high school. Of course I couldn’t feel anything at the time so it didn’t matter then, but now it’s pissing me off. I shove Stasha back with more force than I mean to and she trips back and lands on her ass. As she sits there in shock, I snatch the necklace away from her and then run out of the room before she can take one of those gloves off her hand and kill me. I don’t make it very far down the hall, though, before her fingers wraps around my ankle. She yanks on my leg, sending me flat on my face. I kick my foot at her, but miss repeatedly, so instead start dragging myself across the floor in this weird arm crawl way.

I glance over my shoulder and realize it’s not Stasha that has a hold of me but her plants. The vines that cover everything have taken on their own life and are snaking around trying to get a hold of me. They were alive and writhing all over the place like snakes.

Stasha walks through them toward me and I open my mouth to yell for help, but another vine clamps down on my mouth, silencing me and then others ravel around my body, making it impossible to move.

She kneels down in front of me as I struggle to get free. “You should know better than to mess with someone like me,” she says, tugging off one of her gloves. Then she reaches for me, ready to touch me, ready to kill.

I fight with all my strength, but it’s useless so I decide to go another route. I shut my eyes and picture the sandy shore outside the beach house, just enough of a distance away that the Praesidium won’t interfere with my power. I can hear the ocean waves colliding with the shore, see the moon shining in the starry sky, feel the salty breeze kissing my cheeks.

“What are you doing?” Stasha asks, but her voice is muffled, fading.

Take me there, I think, feeling the sand touch my toes.

But then a hand grabs my arm and I feel nothing but fire.

Chapter 10

My face slams into the sand. I quickly scramble to my feet and sprint into the ocean to dunk my arm into the water, expecting relief from the fiery pain, but only receiving more pain. I let out a jaw-clenched scream as I run for the beach house just up the shore. The pain is unbearable, but what hurts even worse is what it represents. Stasha touched me with her bare hands. Am I going to drop dead at any moment?

By the time I reach the back door of the house, I’m about to vomit from the sensation of death in my arm. I fling open the back door and fumble around in the dark until I find the light switch. The lights flip on and I stumble over to the sink, turn on the faucet, and submerge my arm underneath the cold, salt-free water.

It feels a little bit better and I stand let the water flow over it, catching my breath as I wait for the pain to subside. It begins to dwindle, but olive-green marks start to appear on my veins, forming vinery.

I touch the lines with my fingertip and cringe. “Is this permanent?”

I wait a little longer with my arm in the water, hoping they’ll fade, but they don’t. Finally I give up and put my locket on right as I hear a soft poof from inside the living room. Not sure what it’s from, I tiptoe to the doorway and peer around the corner. A purple haze fills the room and Alex, Laylen, and Aislin are in the center it. As soon as they all see me, they’re worried expressions relax.

Aislin drops the crystal and candle on the table, but keeps hold of her spell book. “Thank God,” she says as she flops tiredly. “I thought she killed you.”

“What happened?” Alex crosses the room with his arms open, as if he’s going to hug me, but by the time he reaches me, he’s changed his mind and lowered them to his side.

I extend my arm out to him, showing him the lines mapping my veins. “Her plants attacked me and then she touched me….you know, you could have warned me about the plants.”

He curses under his breath then examines my arm, running his thumb up and down the lines. “Dammit, she’s f**king crazy.”

“Yes, she is,” I agree. “It’s not permanent, is it? Please, please, tell me it’s going to go away.”

Alex looks up at me, remorseful. “I’m sorry, Gemma. I never should have taken you there.”

I sigh, removing my arm from his grasp. “Great. Now I’m always going to have a reminder of when your ex-girlfriend tried to kill me.”

I don’t know who laughs first, but suddenly we are all laughing as if I’ve just said the best joke in the world. Sleep deprivation is a funny thing, I guess, and makes everyone kind of loopy.

After the laughter settles down, we gather around the coffee table, putting the mapping ball on it, the light in the center illuminating a ghostly glow. I start to get up to look for my mother but Aislin tells me that right before they transported here she got a call from my mom, saying that she ran to the gas station to pick up some food, because no one had really been stocking the cupboards. So I sit back down and we quickly explain to Laylen what’s been going on and then we start discussing how Stasha got the book.

“So Stasha took the book, but it took place in a time that was erased, yet it still happened,” Alex states as he kicks his foot up on his knee and rests his arm on the back of the sofa, just behind me.

“It sounds so confusing when you put it like that,” I say. “But yeah, I think that’s what happened.”

“But how?” Aislin wonders as she flips through her spell book. She’s been doing it since we sat down, I think looking for some sort of signs Stasha did something to it.

“I have no idea.” I pause. “Nicholas would have, but unfortunately he’s… gone.”

We all grow quiet for a moment, thinking about what happened. I wonder if he’ll get a funeral, if the fey mourn like humans, or if they do something else.

“We need to make a plan.” Aislin changes the subject as she closes her spell book.

“Thanks for clarifying the obvious, Aislin,” Alex says sarcastically.

Aislin rolls her eyes. “Don’t be an ass.”

“What we need to do is go to the City of Crystal.” I pick up the mapping ball and rotate it in my hands. “So I can get inside this thing and fix the vision and hopefully all this other stuff that’s gotten out of place will be fixed too.”