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“Now you know your name. Look it up.” She smiles at me. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to show them out. Better for you if they leave, right?”
“Right.” Dazed I walk away under the great cloudy sky and it all looks different, until I realize that knowing who I am has changed how the world seems.
The world hasn’t changed. The one who has changed is me.
I’m really an Apollinari. Really a witch. It still feels like a dream. Not the best of dreams—my mother is dead, and my father an unknown—but at least, I now know the truth.
I have to find Ashton. Have to tell him about this. I also need to ask if he’s okay, what the news about his brother was. What we should do.
After all, knowing my name doesn’t change anything in this game. It was only for me, I need to know, and now this mess is starting to feel more real, more logical. Now it makes sense why I have magic. Why I look like Ophelia. It really bothered me that it all seemed preposterous before. Wacky. A monstrous coincidence.
Now I feel less like a nut-job, though it would be nice… It would besonice to share this with someone who cares.
But I hurt Ash and I want to apologize for my terrible timing. And…
And I’m still thinking about his answer. Just like the other boys’ answers. All of them say they killed, confirming what Vanessa and Melissa said, what the articles claim. But all of them also don’t seem to recall the act. They weretoldthey killed.
What’s wrong with this picture?
I start walking again. Where can he be? I have to dig deeper. No idea yet how but I have to get to the bottom of this. I need the truth, the whole truth about them because…
Because they matter so much to me. And they are carrying this burden, but what if it’s not theirs to carry?
“But what if there’s a mistake?—Buttercup, everyone wants to believe that about people they like. But people don’t change, and a violent person will remain a violent person. It’s a fact of life.”
I walk faster to outpace my thoughts. I enter the boys’ dormitories, knock on Ashton’s door but I get no reply and no magic signature. He’s not inside. I try the other boys’ rooms but nothing.
Not this again.
I go down the stairs, stand at the building entrance. There has to be a better way to find him. I close my eyes and take a calming breath. Look, I’m a witch. No hands. I can use magic to do stuff.
Which I have been doing for a while now, but this time it’s official. I’m officially witching.
Water, I think,Ashton, vampire, literary quotes and a wide smile and those pretty gray eyes and his scent of wet rocks and sexy boy, and I find his trail. I barely open my eyes as I follow it down a path away from the buildings, toward the lake.
I come down to the shore, already smiling with anticipation, and… halt.
Ashton is there, his back to me. The other three boys surround him, their expressions empty. It’s like a painting. ‘Four beautiful boys on the lakeshore with overcast sky.’ But their stillness is unnerving, their expressions are scaring me.
As if sensing me, Ashton turns to look at me, his eyes crimson. His fangs are extended.
But that’s not the worst. Ophelia appears from behind him, smiling. She places a possessive hand on his shoulder, and a familiar ring set with a black gemstone gleams on her thumb.
The Marais D’Aube family crest ring.
No. Oh no.I take a step back, gasping, the realization twisting like a rusty blade in my gut. I don’t want to believe it.
She got him, too.
She has Ashton’s ring, on her wrist she has Jason’s leather bracelet, and from her ears hang Sindri’s silver hoop and Emrys’ long earring with the blue stone.
She got all four of them in her net.
“Go away, Maddie,” Her smile turns sharp. “You’re too late. They’re mine now.”
I shake my head. Only one thing burns in my mind. “No,” I whisper, “this is all wrong. And you may think you had the last laugh, but trust me,cousin, I will get them back. You can count on it.”
