even know if it was real or if he was playing you.
But then he whispered my name, and I turned around instinctively. After that, all my thoughts floated away. I could no longer think. Why? Because he kissed me. And not like the little peck back on the bus where our lips barely touched. No. This one last a lot longer and was full of fire.
At one point, I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he pulled me closer to him so that are bodies were touching. There was so much heat that I wouldn’t have been surprised if the snow was melting on the ground beneath us.
Okay, so I know what you’re thinking.
How could she kiss him after everything?
But please, try not to judge me too harshly. I know things haven’t been the best between Alex and me, but I am only human after all.
Or at least part human, anyway. And I have things I want to do, like kiss the guy that can 657/695
make my skin sparkle. And you know what, unlike you, my time to do so is going to run out, like, any second, so this is probably my one and only chance to get kissed.
I’m not sure how long the kissing went on, but eventually we did break away from each other. Which was a kind of good, if only to keep me from passing out from lack of oxygen. But I did feel a ping of longing for my lips to be touching his again.
Alex gazed up at the night sky, rocking the swing back and forth. His serious expression that he usually carried had nearly faded.
If you ask me, it made him even more gorgeous.
The pendant of the necklace pressed warmly against my skin. I absentmindedly rubbed my thumb against the violet stone as I stared up at the sky, thinking about the kiss and trying not to think about the fact that fairly soon here I’d remember nothing about it. I spotted the constellation Andromeda, 658/695
the bottom point of Cassiopeia pointing at it like a target. I thought about the other people in the world staring up at the stars. I hoped they were happy and grateful to be alive.
I felt a small crack running along the edge of the pendant. I looked down and realized that it wasn’t just a pendant but a locket.
I snapped it open. Framed inside was a thumb size photo of a group of people. I squinted down at the photo, examining each of their faces and then…”Oh my God.”
“What’s the matter?” Alex asked.
“Is that my mother?” I asked, pointing at a woman with long brown hair and bright blue iris—the woman I’d seen in so many visions/dreams/memories.
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s her. Is she the one you saw in the vision?” I didn’t answer, sliding the tip of my finger to the man that stood beside her. “So who’s this next to her?”
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“That’s my father.” He gave me a funny look. “Why?”
Well, crap. I jumped to my feet, panic firing through me as wildly as the sparks did when Alex had kissed me. Why, you might be asking, was I freaking out? Because this man—aka Alex’s father—had a faint white scar grazing his left cheek.
I took a shaky breath. “Because he’s the one I saw force my mom into the lake.” Chapter 32
“No. There’s no way,” Alex said, shaking his head. “It’s gotta be a mistake.” We’d gone into the living room because the temperature had dipped so low that our butts were almost to the point of freezing off.
Literally. He’d said about a thousand times that there was no way his dad could have forced my mom to get into the lake.
But I wasn’t buying it. I knew what I’d seen, and I knew it wasn’t a mistake—I’d seen the vision more than once. Not to mention the man kept showing up in my nightmares.
His face was practically engraved into my memory.
“It’s not a mistake,” I told him. “I know what I saw. I know it was him.” 661/695
He glared at me. “You don’t know that for sure.”
“Yeah, I do,” I assured him with confidence. “I’ve seen the vision twice.”
“But you were only able to see his face in one of them,” Alex pointed out. “So there’s a possibility that you might be mistaking him for someone else. I know my father would never do anything like that. Ever.” Tell that to Laylen. “How can you be so sure?”
He stared at me, dumbfounded. “Because he’s my father.”
I chewed on my lip, mulling over my options here. Should I tell him about my dreams? If I did, I ran the risk of giving away too much information, and I still wasn’t sure if I trusted Alex. Even after we’d kissed. “You were there, you know? In the vision. There was a little boy with the same bright green eyes as you.” I wasn’t sure if I was right or not, it was just a guess. It made sense, 662/695
though, when I thought about it. His bright green eyes and how he’d called Stephan his father.
“No. There’s no way,” he said firmly. “I’d be able to remember it happening if I was.” I raised my eyebrows at him. “Perhaps your mind has been tampered with too.”
“No. There’s no way,” he repeated, but the firmness from his voice had slightly faded. He ran his fingers restlessly through his hair. “Look Gemma, maybe you saw it wrong. Maybe it was someone else who forced your mom to go into the lake. I mean Dyvinius said that you didn’t see the vision correctly the first time. Who’s to say you didn’t see correctly the second time either.” I bit back my irritation the best I could.
“I saw it correctly both times. The only problem with the first one was that I couldn’t see the peoples’ faces.” He still looked unconvinced, and it made me so angry that I kept 663/695
going. “Besides, the vision isn’t the only time I’ve seen him.”
He blinked, looking lost. “What do you mean?”
“Well…” There was no backing out now.
I’d already opened Pandora’s Box. “Before I learned anything about who I was, I was having these nightmares where I was being chased through the forest by the Death Walkers.”
“Yeah, I remember you mentioning that.” He sat down on the couch and rested his arms on his knees. “But what does that have to do with my father?”
“Because at the end of every dream, the Death Walkers capture me and a man appears and orders them to finish me off.” I sighed and sank down into the couch beside him. “The man in my nightmares had the same scar as your father.” His eyes widened as I continued, “And back at Laylen’s, when I was lying on the floor freezing to death, 664/695
something happened to me—something similar to what happened to me back at the fieldtrip. I went into this vision, and there was a man and Demetrius chatting it up about how they’d gotten rid of some poor woman that was a Keeper.” He gaped at me. “Hold on. So what you’re telling me is that you went into a vision without a crystal ball not once, but twice.
Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I did. At least, I did with the first one.”
“Yeah, but I just assumed that was some resurfacing memory or something. But if you’re seeing something that has Demetrius in it…” He let out a loud breath. “There’s no way that could be a memory. You’ve never seen him before.” Silence choked the air as he considered all of this. “How is it even possible for you to do that?” he muttered to himself. “How can you see a vision without a crystal ball? It’s just not possible.” 665/695
“When I asked you about it before, you said you weren’t sure if it was possible or not for someone to see a vision without a crystal ball,” I reminded him. “You even said that you may have heard of someone who could.” He stared down at the floor, seriously contemplating what I’d said.
“Alex,” I said a little too loudly and he jumped. “That’s not important right now.
What’s important is that this other man chatting it up with Demetrius had a scar on his cheek.”
He swallowed hard, looking…well, really, really vulnerable. I had to admit, I didn’t like how it looked on him. It made me feel anxious and had me questioning whether he was going to fall apart. He couldn’t fall apart.