Alexander unlocks a cabin door.

“You want to talk in your bedroom?” I ask, my voice somewhere between excitement and fear.

He turns to me, slightly startled. “It is a suite, the largest on the ship, with a sitting room and a private promenade. I would never presume to take you into my bedroom. But if you are uncomfortable, we can surely go somewhere else. I just thought a private moment might be nice.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…I guess I’m just nervous.”

He opens the door. “Nervous good or nervous bad?”

I step into a beautiful sitting room with elaborate dark wood paneling, a fireplace, and a plush seating area. “That depends on what you say next.”

He smiles at me with his clear blue eyes, and my stomach drops. He gestures toward the couch. “Can I get you anything to drink?”

“Sherry would be lovely,” I say as I take a seat. I’m not entirely sure why I said that. Do I even like sherry?

Alexander walks over to a set of crystal decanters and pours a reddish brown liquid into a crystal glass. He hands it to me and takes a seat next to me on the couch.

“What did you want to talk about?” I sip my drink; it’s sweet and strong and tastes slightly of cherries.

“What do you want, Samantha?”

“Want?”

“In the whole world, I mean. If you could have anything, what would it be?”

I meet his eyes. It’s a strange question, but somehow it feels relevant right now, like I was just thinking about this very topic. “Well, I would like for things to be less complicated…simple and happy. Yes, I want to be happy. But I think that’s what everyone wants.”

“Do you think you could be happy with me?”

I sip my sherry. “What you said in the lounge. The story you told them. Why did you say it?”

“To get you out of your situation, of course.”

“Oh.” My chest deflates, like when you make eye contact with someone and then realize they’re actually looking at the person behind you. “You embarrassed me in front of my aunt and Mrs. Brown. They all thought…”

He grins. “No. You embarrassed yourself in front of those women. I saved you.”

I stand up, more humiliated than I’ve ever been. “Thank you for the sherry. I have to go.”

He stands up, too, blocking my exit to the door. “You said I was too young to get married.”

“I know what I said.”

“And you are younger than I.”

“Also known by me.” I put my sherry on the mantel and push past him.

He grabs my hand. “But maybe we are not too young.”

“What?” I turn to look at him.

“Maybe there is a reason that I left my aunt’s, that I didn’t like any of the girls she introduced me to. That I am on the Titanic and so are you.”

My heart pounds, and I wonder if he can feel it through my hand. “Are you saying you want to marry me?”

“Would you say yes if I am?”

I warm from his words, from the pull of them. “Yes,” I breathe.

He places my hand on his chest and wraps his arms around my waist. He looks down at me. “Then I am asking.”

My body presses into his. “And I am accepting.”

He leans his head down and gently places his lips on mine. They’re warm and strong.

He releases his hands from my waist. “I have something for you.”

Alexander turns on a record player, and soft orchestral music fills the room. But instead of being soothing, the song grates on my nerves, like it’s associated with a bad memory.

He opens a velvet box with a beautiful diamond ring inside. “Will you have me as your husband, Samantha Mather?”

My heart flutters. “Yes, Alexander Jessup, I will.”

He takes the ring out of the box and slides it onto my finger. It sparkles in the candlelight. The anxiety from the music melts away, like an echo in the back of my mind.

He smiles so big I get lost in it. He places my arms around his neck, and slowly we turn. “I told you that you would dance with me before we reached New York. I believe you lost the bet.”

I laugh. “What’ll you do with your victory?”

“Claim my prize.”

“Oh yeah?”

His smile is mischievous.

“What?”

He pulls me over to the record player and hands me a silver dance card with lacy engraving and a ship on the front. I was just talking about a dance card, wasn’t I? I look from the record player to the dance card. It all feels familiar, and not good familiar.

He frowns. “You don’t like it? I’m sorry. I thought you would find it romantic. It’s silly.” He reaches for the dance card.

“Wait.” I stop his hand. “It is romantic.” I smile at the insecure look on his face. “I want this dance card, and under no circumstances will I give it back to you.” I pause. “In fact, if you don’t sign it, I’ll be severely disappointed.”

He grabs a silver quill-tipped pen off the desk, beaming. I open the dance card to the first blank page.

He takes a small pocketknife from the table, flips it open, and pricks the end of his finger. A bead of red appears. He dips the pen in it and writes his name largely over the entire “Engagements” section.

“Alexander! Blood? Really?” I watch him. Blood? Knife, dance card, record player, pen.

He frowns. “I want to be with you forever. Do you not want the same thing?”

I touch my forehead. “I just…There is something I can’t remember. Something right at the edge of my thoughts. Does that ever happen to you?”

He takes a step forward and runs his hand along the side of my neck. He kisses where his fingers just were. “Do you want to be with me?”

“I do.”

He pulls my sleeve off my shoulder and kisses my bare skin. “Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

He kisses me right under my chin. “Then sign your name,” he whispers in my ear.

My collarbone tingles and my hand goes to it. My fingers find something small and metallic. I look down at it. A broom necklace?

Alexander holds my other hand in his and pricks the tip of my finger with the knife.

“Couldn’t I just write my name in ink?” I ask.

He puts the knife down on the table. “Blood means more. Blood cannot be broken.”

I look at my finger with the droplet of blood on it, and he hands me the pen. An image of blood on my hands flashes before my eyes. Music. Record player. Dance card. A broom necklace. A pen. Blood. Blood-red…red…

“Redd,” I say, and the second her name leaves my lips, I feel different. Strange, like my mind is a cloudy sky starting to clear.

Something odd flickers in his eyes, and Alexander pushes the pen closer to me. “Sign, Samantha.”

Another cloud moves. “Alice,” I say.

“Who?”

“Alice. She gave me this necklace.” I look at him, with his perfectly combed hair and his shining hypnotic eyes. I hope he can explain what I’m saying to him. I don’t quite understand it myself.

For a brief second he appears worried. “I’m afraid I do not know her.”

I look down at my necklace. “Alice is close to me. A friend maybe. A friend from New York?” I roll the necklace between my fingers. “Not New York. That’s not right. I know her from somewhere else.”

“Samantha, please, this night should be about us, not about friends and the past,” Alexander insists.

I hear the agitation in his voice, and I want to agree with him. But I can’t let it go. Something about the necklace is pulling at me. “Salem?” The moment the word leaves my lips, thunder rattles my cloudy memory. “Salem,” I say more definitely. “I live in Salem.”

“Your family is from New York,” he says, taking a step closer. His gaze is focused and intense.

I’m ruining this moment, aren’t I? “Yes,” I say. “Of course.” I pause. “What’s wrong with me, Alexander? I feel like my mind is being pulled in two directions. Half is here with you and half is somewhere else.”

He takes my hand in his. “There is only a small divide between excitement and fear. You just need to focus on what makes you happy. You are happy here with me.”

“I am happy. Very happy.”

He gently lifts my hand and dips the pen in the blood on my fingertip.

I lay the dance card against the edge of the record player. He hovers next to me.

The song fades, and the record slowly spins to a stop. I examine it for a moment. “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” I read out loud.

Alexander guides my hand to the paper.

“The song that played when the Titanic sank?” I say. And suddenly there’s a flash of a beautiful room with a record player on a cabinet. Two people dancing. A note.

“Do not say that, Samantha,” Alexander says, his eyes tensing. “We are on the Titanic. Do not say that.”

More images appear in my mind—a stack of note cards with the words “Body not found,” a little girl in braids, a painting of my aunt, a small box with a broom necklace, my dad hugging me. My dad. I take a step away from Alexander.

“My name is Samantha Mather,” I say. “I live in Salem.” As clear as day I remember sitting in a circle on the floor of my spare bedroom doing a memory spell. Through my sisters’ eyes and my own, the seed of memory is firmly sown. And with that moment the rest of my memories come rushing back. “Alice is my friend. And the Titanic did sink.”

Alexander’s jaw tenses. “I told you to stop saying that.”

I stare at Alexander. His once shining eyes look a normal blue.

He stares back at me, the tension between us thick.

I blink at him. Am I seeing this correctly? How could this be right?

“Matt?”

He flinches ever so slightly. “Alexander. I am Alexander here.”

“Your accent…you’re…American?”

He smirks. “You should take it as a compliment really, that I went through all that trouble to sound British. I put on my best show for you.”

My mouth opens and I hesitate. “But…I didn’t recognize you. I mean, I saw you so many times.”

“The dress,” he says, his words clipped.

“Wait, I don’t understand. You put the spell on the dress?”

He nods like this should be obvious to me.

“Hold on, you’re not saying…you’re the one responsible for all this?”

He stands a little straighter.

Oh holy hell. What have I done? I said I would marry him? I kissed him. I scan the room. The door is behind me. “How did no one know you could do magic? How did the Descendants not know?”

He scoffs. “That’s the thing about the Descendants. They don’t want to believe that anyone besides themselves can do magic. Hence the accent.”

Well, that’s true. “So you pretended to be an exchange student to come to Salem.”

“I knew you were related to Myra. I had been looking for her for a long time.”

Elijah was right; he couldn’t find her himself. “You sent Ada, didn’t you?”

“And you liked her.”

I do. I do like Ada. “She’s a person.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Well, you keep her here like a prisoner.”

Annoyance flashes in his eyes. “I give her and all the rest of them the most beautiful ship in the world. Everyone here is happy. That’s what everyone wants—you said it yourself.”

My shoulders tense. “Fake happy. Entitlement and luxury are not the same thing. Just because you’re alive and they’re dead gives you no right to take away their choice. You’re like the people who loaded the wealthy passengers first, as if they were more deserving of those lifeboats.”

“Frame it however you want. Happiness is happiness. Tell me this isn’t better than your world of Nikis and Blairs, where your father won’t let you do magic, where your stepmother tried to hang you.”

My mouth opens. I will punch him in his neatly combed head. “You don’t get to judge the value of my life—or anyone else’s, for that matter!”

“Oh yeah? I was with you the first time you came to the ship. You barely even tried to remember your life in Salem. And how long did it take before you gave up on trying at all? One night, maybe two?”

My cheeks burn. “Because you put me under a spell.”

“Admit what we both know, Samantha.”

“How do you explain this, then? How do you explain me remembering myself in the midst of your proposal?” I almost choke on the word.

“I suspect the Descendants had something to do with that, although I don’t know what. You wouldn’t have done it by yourself,” he says.

I study him. Could he be right that I wanted to be happy so badly that I didn’t resist? “But Blair and Niki? Mr. Wardwell?”

He shrugs. “If I could put a spell on you, do you really think it was much trouble manipulating them?”

He had access to everyone. He lives with Blair. He’s on the dance committee. He’s been pulling the strings right in front of us. Susannah was right when she likened him to a serial killer who sends letters to the police. “You put Jaxon under a spell.”

“You weren’t focusing,” he says.

“But you were working with spirits….How did you…” It dawns on me. I’m as bad as the girls, thinking I’m the only one with special abilities. “You see spirits, don’t you? You’re the Collector that Redd was sensing?”

His prideful look returns.

The image of Redd bleeding on the floor fills my mind. “And now Redd’s dead….How could you!”

He breaks eye contact for a split second. “You know that is as much your fault as it is mine. You wouldn’t let it go. You got Redd involved, not me—”

“Bullshit!” The word explodes from me. “Own what you did, Matt! You killed an old woman. You’re trapping spirits against their will—”

“I said my name is Alexander here. I won’t tell you again.” He takes a fast step toward me.

I stand my ground. “My dad. My dad and Mrs. Meriwether. What did you do?”

At the mention of them the tension leaves his eyes, like he knows he’s in control. “It doesn’t matter now. Or it won’t very soon. Your aunt was the last passenger we needed.”

My mind spins. “You have all of them?”

“Every single one,” he says with pride. “And everyone inside will remain inside.”

Elijah’s warning rings in my head. He plans on keeping me here? With all these spirits for the rest of time? No. I’m not doing that. I can’t do that. “We? You said Myra was the last passenger ‘we’ needed.”

“I thought you would have pieced that together by now.” He laughs. “Maybe you’re not as smart as I give you credit for. I’m not the first Collector, just one of them. I’m actually Alexander the Fifth. Building this spell and collecting these people took five generations of Jessups the better part of a century. Most people couldn’t do something like this.”

Redd’s story about the Collector when she was a girl. My eyes widen. “It was your family’s last name I would have found in the old Salem newspapers, wasn’t it?”

He looks at me like he is trying to decide something. “You remember that story I told you about buying tickets off of someone to get on the Titanic?” He doesn’t wait for me to confirm that I do. “That was Alexander the First. Only, he couldn’t afford to barter his way to first or second class. He had carried his family’s entire fortune with him to start a business in America. As you may have guessed, he never made it onto a lifeboat. And his family was financially ruined. His daughter died when his wife couldn’t afford a doctor. His wife died shortly after of a fever. His son was adopted by the Wilder family and moved to America. He lost everything, including his name. But his son was old enough to remember, and he was determined to right the wrongs. He did his part, as did his son, and his grandson. And now it’s my turn. I am going to give Alexander the pleasant journey he deserved.”

For a second I just stare at him. Alice was right. They’re trying to rewrite history. “So one family gets privilege and power”—I gesture at the lavish suite—“at the expense of everyone else? Don’t pretend for a second that this isn’t selfish. You say your ancestor deserves this? What about all those third-class passengers locked in the bottom of the ship? What do they deserve? What about free will? You’re not—”

“Oh, come on. I see spirits, Samantha, like you do. You know how awful it is for them to be stuck throughout the ages, never passing on. This place is like a retreat.”

“Do you even hear yourself right now? A ship that sank and killed fifteen hundred people is not a retreat. It’s been more than a hundred years—this place is nothing more than a distorted time loop, a tomb. You want to do something? Help them all pass on, don’t trap them here!”

Anger flashes in his eyes. “I’m not going to warn you again about talking about the Titanic like that.”

“That’s how you talk to someone you just proposed to? How confused are you?”

“You should jump the hell off your high horse, Samantha, and be thanking me right now.” By the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice, I know he believes what he’s saying. “You pulled that stunt in the lounge, questioning Bruce Ismay about the speed of the ship. It was Alexander who threw you over that night. Do you know how long it took me to convince him that I didn’t need to kill you right away? To let me do things this way instead?”

A chill runs through my body. Right away? This way instead? Please, Alice, Elijah, someone get me out of here.

“Where are the other Jessups? Why have I only seen you and Alexander the First?”

Matt smirks like he’s been waiting for me to ask this question. “They each maintained the spell until their deaths, and they passed on. The only way to stay here if you weren’t originally a passenger…is to die here.”

I look down at the silver dance card he wanted me to sign in blood.

Matt follows my line of sight. “That would have been the gentle way to go.”

Three more seconds under his spell and I would have signed my life away. I glance over my shoulder at the door.

“Don’t bother. Even if you get out of this room, you would never make it off the ship.”

“That’s what you think.”

“That’s what I know. Do you really think I could let you leave after you figured out what this place is? Who I am? You should have left it alone.”

“So seal me out.” Although the moment the words leave my mouth, I regret them. I can’t leave these spirits trapped here for the rest of time and do nothing. I’d be as bad as him, assuming my life counts for more.

“It doesn’t work that way.”

I take a step backward. The room suddenly feels claustrophobic. “So your solution is to kill me?”

“I just want to help you transition,” he says, like I’ve got it all wrong.

“Like hell you do. If it’s so great here, you die and transition here.”

“I maintain the spell, Samantha, and will for my entire life. I can’t die until there’s someone else to take my place. It was passed on to me when my father died in a car crash last year.”

I grip the engraved dance card in my hand, my pulse impossibly fast.

“I’m trying to do this the nice way.” The threat is clear in Matt’s voice.

“Well, I’m not.” I yank at the dance card, tearing the page.

He reaches for me, but I grab the knife he pricked my finger with. “Don’t you even think about touching me again. I’m not under your spell anymore.”

“You can’t do magic here, Samantha, not without your physical body. And besides, you’re part of the Titanic’s story now. You helped make this happen. You belong here and you belong with me.” He’s so confident that for a second I almost doubt myself.

Almost. I slowly back up toward the door with the knife held out in front of me. “No, I’m not part of the story. I never was. I don’t belong with you, and I definitely don’t belong to you. This ship isn’t real!” I feel the doorknob against my back.

“I told you not to say things like that,” he says angrily, his cool demeanor broken. “Unless you want to go headfirst into the ocean! I’m the best choice you have. You go out there, and it won’t be only me. Alexander the First will hunt you down.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

“But will you take a chance with your father and your neighbor?”

My heart skips a beat. What was that trance he put them under? “You wouldn’t—”

“Like I didn’t with Redd?”

I clench the doorknob so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t crumble in my hand.

“Stay, and I will give you everything. Walk out that door and you will lose your entire world.”

“My world isn’t yours to take.” I twist the knob and swing the door fully open. A breeze blows in. The air is noticeably colder than it was a half hour ago.

Matt lifts his hand, feeling the cold air that’s blowing into the room, doubt shimmering in his eyes. “What did you do? Samantha, stop!”

He lunges at me, and I jab with the knife. It sticks an inch into his upper thigh. His eyes widen.

I don’t hesitate. I run.