“He just sat there, Aaron, watching me get attacked. And he had the strangest expression on his face.”

She sat on the bed with Aaron on the floor at her feet, flipping through a tattoo magazine while Ember braided his hair, shot through with pink this time. “Yeah, but you said there was nobody there. That it was like a dream or a hallucination or something.”

Ember shook her head. “You can’t feel a hallucination’s hands around your neck. You can’t feel them lift you off your feet. This was something else.”

Aaron’s eyes met hers in the mirror. “But you said that guy from school…the emo rocker one; he made you hallucinate. Have you seen him again?”

She’d seen him again. In the cemetery. She hadn’t told Aaron that. She hadn’t told anybody that. Nobody could know that she remembered her dreams. Nobody could know what was happening to her and Mace in those dreams. “No. Just that one time. But he said he’d be back. But, even if it was him—Silas—that doesn’t explain why Quinn just sat there.”

“Well, you said Quinn isn’t a fighter, right? Maybe he was afraid. Maybe he froze. I would like to think, in a crisis, I’d be the hero, but who knows? People do crazy things when they’re stressed.”

Ember shook her head. “I don’t think so. He didn’t look scared; he looked…excited.” A shiver passed through her, and Aaron’s hand curled around her bare calf, squeezing it once before letting it go.

“You were upset. Maybe it just seemed like that from where you were standing. You weren’t thinking clearly. I mean, you know Quinn better than I do, but he seems like a pretty stand-up guy. I can’t see him just watching some guy kill you.” He tilted his head back to look at her. “Right?”

Ember secured his fluffy braid with an elastic band pulling and tugging until he had a shock-pink Mohawk braided down his head. “There, all finished.”

“Good, it’s getting late, and I need to go home and check the message boards. See if anybody has any more information on your new friend.”

“What? No! I don’t want you to go yet.” Panic sent her stomach swooping to her toes. She’d forgotten about the message board. Silas had told her to make sure he stopped investigating him. She confirmed.

“Em, it’s late. I have to ride my bike home, and we all know the things lurking in the dark in this town.”

“Stay the night,” she said, both of them looking shocked at her blurted request.

The left side of his mouth hitched up. “Ember, this constant propositioning me is just getting embarrassing. First, you’re whipping your shirt off, and now you’re asking me to spend the night? Have some dignity.”

She rolled her eyes so hard she was afraid she’d sprained something. “I’m serious. Just spend the night.”

“What about your roommate?” he said. “This bed isn’t big enough for the three of us.”

“Quinn’s bunking in his room. I’m not speaking to him, and he knows it.” She could see him wavering. “Please? I don’t want to sleep alone.”

He relented, his shoulders sagging. “Let me text my uncle.” After a few minutes of back and forth texting, he set his phone down. “Okay, done.”

“Good. Now, come cuddle me because it’s weirdly cold outside, and Quinn is still on probation.”

Aaron snorted. “Okay, so this is my first boy-girl sleepover. Is this whole platonic cuddling thing a shifter thing, a reaper thing, or a you thing?”

She snuggled deeper into her black hoodie—Mace’s black hoodie—as Aaron made himself comfortable. She laid her head on his chest, wiggling until she found a comfortable spot. Aaron was shorter than Quinn, and had a lighter, leaner build that took some getting used to. Who would have thought she’d become such a cuddle whore?

She pulled the hoodie to her nose, inhaling deeply. It still smelled like him. “I don’t know. I had a traumatic childhood. Maybe I’m making up for a lack of affection. I would have asked Neoma to sleep in here with me, but she sings in her sleep. Besides, she won’t sleep anywhere but in Donovan’s room since they took him. She and Romero sleep in his bed.”

“What is the pack doing to find him? Do you have any leads?” Aaron asked.

She let out a shaky breath, shaking her head. “Right after…Wren tried to pick up his scent, but there was nothing.”

“So, now what? You can’t just be waiting for them to return him.”

“Of course not. We have a friend to the pack. His name is Oggie. He sort of specializes in finding people. He’s out looking for any leads along with Donovan’s dad. They’re asking questions to people who might know something but wouldn’t talk to us.”

“Donovan’s dad?”

Ember nodded. “He’s the alpha of the Glades pack.”

“Any news?”

“No, but it’s only been four days. Isa says these things take time.”

“What do they want with him anyway?”

“Information, maybe? They made it pretty clear they want me; maybe they think he’ll give them information.”

Aaron’s hand played absently with her fingers resting on his chest. “Do you think he will?”

Ember took a deep breath and let it out. “Part of me hopes he does. Maybe they won’t hurt him if he talks.”

Aaron shifted beneath her, angling his head to look at her. “If he talks, you could be in danger.”

“I’m already in danger. Miller and Josephine’s insane predictions saw to that. I’d rather it be me than somebody protecting me.”

“But what if it’s not that insane?” Aaron asked.

Not him too. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if you are what they think you are? What if you are the descendants of the Morrigan? What if you can take down the Grove?”

Ember’s words came rushing out before she could stop them. “What if I can’t? How many people have to die before the risk outweighs the reward? I don’t even have my powers right now. I might not ever have them again. I think Josephine and Miller have made a huge mistake, and I think thousands of people are going to pay for it.”

Aaron swallowed. “Do you know why I live with my Uncle Jack?”

Ember stilled. She’d never asked. She couldn’t remember ever actually asking Aaron anything about himself. God, she was so self-absorbed. “I guess I just assumed your parents died in the same fire that killed everybody else.”

“No. My parents and I lived in New York until I was seven. My dad had a small shop in the middle of China Town. He didn’t advertise or anything. The people who knew what he did, they knew how to find us. My dad didn’t care about money or power; he just wanted to use his magic to help people. He didn’t just tattoo supernatural people; he had a pretty steady crowd of human regulars as well, thanks to my mother. She was human.”

“Did she know about the supernatural?”

He shook his head. “My dad tried to avoid her, for the obvious reasons, but also because she was only seventeen when they met. He was twenty and already out of school. But my mom was stubborn and determined, and she wore him down. One night, he confessed what he was…showed her what he could do, and he thought for sure she would run. But not my mom, she just accepted it. That was the thing about my mom; she was so organized and logical, but she never hesitated to believe in anything fantastical. She was so accepting of everything.”

Ember bit the inside of her lip. He smiled when he talked about his mom, despite the tears in his eyes. “She ran the shop,” he laughed a bit. “It was a good thing, too, because my dad was an artist, and he was always following his bliss. If it had been left up to him, he’d have been shut down for not having the right permits or forgetting to pay taxes or something. At least that is what my mother was always shouting at him. He was forgetful. But he was talented, like my uncle.”

“Like you,” Ember reminded him.

“Maybe, I guess. But either way, my mom ran everything. She was like a superhero. She and my dad had me before my mom was even nineteen, but that didn’t stop her from going to school. She didn’t just accept what my family could do; she became an expert at it. She set up my dad’s business and ran it while she raised me and went to school for her Ph.D. She majored in art and anthropology with an emphasis on symbology.”

Ember let her eyes fall shut, lulled by Aaron’s words. “My mom became an expert on the human’s version of demonology, and somehow, despite having zero knowledge of the supernatural world, began making connections with people in the magical world who helped her find the real information. Eventually, even the magical community sought my mother out for advice.”

“What happened to your parents, Aaron?” Ember asked, sure she didn’t want to know.

“The Grove happened.”

“How?” she asked. “What did they do?”

“They made an example out of them.” Ember squeezed his hand. He was quiet for a minute, breathing deep. “It’s weird the things I remember about that day. It was a Wednesday. Wednesdays were when we walked to the herbalist’s shop to get my father’s supplies. It was raining so hard that day that it was coming in sideways. We were about to leave when my mom realized I didn’t have my coat and asked me to run upstairs to grab it. I was coming back downstairs when the door opened, and a woman and her daughter practically fell in the door. They smelled like the storm outside, like wet leaves and that ozone smell lightning gives off. It was like they’d brought the storm somehow.

“My mother tried to tell the woman we were closed for another hour, that the shop didn’t open until noon, but the woman begged. She asked my mom to hear her out. She said she was desperate. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when she pushed the hood of her jacket off her face, she looked so…normal, you know?” At Ember’s questioning look, he shrugged beneath her head. “I guess, maybe I feel like the people who are going to blow up your life should look as destructive as the forces they bring? But she was just a woman, brown hair, brown eyes, too skinny like she hadn’t eaten in a while. The little girl didn’t even look like she should belong to the woman. The child had pale hair and pale eyes and seemed almost like a ghost next to her mother. The child didn’t speak, even though she was about my age.

“The woman said she needed a cloaking spell right then. Something to make them invisible to their enemies. Permanently invisible.” Ember gripped his hand tighter. “Obviously, it wasn’t unusual for people to want protection tattoos or to even request cloaking tattoos, but as you know, cloaking spells require blood magic, dark magic. Not to mention, my father would never agree to tattoo a child. But the woman was adamant. She showed my mother a drawing, a sigil; she said a witch had told her that this would hide them, but only if inked directly onto their skin. My mother recognized the sigil. Not the design, but the components, the symbols. What she was trying to do…the people she wanted to hide from…hiding from them was not only impossible; it was illegal.”

“The Grove.”

“Yes. It made my mother sick to say no, but what could she do? Hiding somebody from the Grove? Using blood magic? It would be a death sentence for all of us. She told her so. The woman begged, she was frantic, she said they wanted her daughter, that they wouldn’t stop until they found her. She said she was important. The woman was human, like my mother. She said she didn’t know a thing about the supernatural world before they came for her daughter.”

“She was human?” Ember whispered, though she wasn’t sure why.

“Yes. Even so, my mother told her there was nothing they could do for them. That’s when my father came home. My mom was the practical one, the realist, but my dad…he was emotional. My mom knew the minute he laid eyes on that little girl it was a lost cause. He told her to go to the herbalist. He gave her a list of supplies, things my mother had never seen. She asked a lot of questions. She begged my father to be reasonable. But, in the end, she took my hand and dragged me down the street.

“We didn’t go to the regular herbalist. We walked two blocks further to the shop in the alley. It smelled horrible in there. The stink of the place made me dizzy. The proprietor of the shop barely looked human. He was so old he was practically bent in half. His teeth were rotten, and he had scars on his face and neck. My mom made me stay out front while she went in the back. I wasn’t supposed to look. But then there was a strange noise. A sort of stilted squeal. I thought he’d done something to her, so I looked. They’d killed a pig. My mother had killed it. She still held the knife; the blood was all over her hands. That was the smell. Old blood, like moldy pennies and rotten meat. I could still see the stains on the floor. The old man laughed at me when I started to cry.”

“Oh, my God.”

“When we got back, my father had prepared everything but the ink. The little girl lay in the chair; her dress tugged back just enough to expose her shoulder. The mother insisted her daughter go first, just in case. My mom didn’t send me away until my father started her tattoo. She told me to play at my friend Evan’s house and not to come back until she came for me. The woman had been so terrified, but when my father started to ink the design on her daughter, she seemed so...relieved. Until they smashed in the back door.”

Ember gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “You were there?”

He nodded, swallowing thickly. “They dragged them away. All four of them. My dad tried to protect them, but the woman screamed and screamed. Sometimes, I still hear it. The little girl fought to be closer to her mother, but she still never spoke. My mom was the only one who didn’t fight. It was like she’d known this was coming, like she…mentally prepared for it. When the inquisitor approached her, she only asked him to leave me be. She said I had done nothing wrong.”

“He’d smiled and told her the Grove had no interest in murdering children. He told me to run, but I didn’t want to leave my mother. I knew it would be the last time I saw either of them. She begged me to let her go, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I just clung to her arm, and then everything went black. When I woke up, I was alone. Everything was gone. The house was empty.”

“What do you mean empty?”

Tears flowed down his cheeks, and he didn’t try to wipe them away. “I mean it was like my parents had never existed. All of our furniture, our clothes, my toys, my video games, everything, gone.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran down the street to my friend’s house; they called my uncle, and he took me here.”

“What happened to your parents?”

Aaron closed his eyes, like he was trying to protect himself from his memories. “Dead. Publically executed as traitors to the Grove.”

“Publically executed? Where?”

“The Grove’s prison world.”

“The Grove has a prison world? An entire world?”

“A world, an alternate dimension, a different realm. Whatever you want to call that pocket of the world where they exist and yet don’t.”

Ember shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don't apologize. Fight. If there’s even a chance that you can stop the Grove, you have to try. You just have to.”

“How do I stop them if I have no magic?” Ember asked, talking to herself as much as him. She wanted to be that person. The person capable of bringing down an organization that big, but it just couldn’t be true.

She wasn’t who they thought she was.