“Sometimes one emotion can mask another.” Michael paused. “What I got off the good doctor was a combination of anger, guilt, and dread. Whatever else might have been buried underneath, that particular cocktail of emotions is something Kane Darby has felt before. Those three emotions are intertwined for him, and when they arrive, they arrive all at once.”

“Anger that someone else has all of the power and you have none.” Lia strolled ahead of the rest of us, turning to walk backward, light on her toes. “Guilt, because you’ve been conditioned to believe that there is no greater sin than disloyal thoughts.” She turned back around. “And dread,” she finished softly, her face hidden from view, “because you know, deep down, that you will be punished.”

You’re not talking about Kane Darby.

“In other words,” Michael translated, acting as if Lia hadn’t just shown us a glimpse of her deepest scars, “the good doctor has daddy issues.”

Like Lia, Kane Darby had been raised in a cult. Based on the fact that he’d spoken negatively about his father, I assumed that, like Lia, he’d gotten out.

But you didn’t leave town. You didn’t cut all ties. You didn’t start anew.

“Kane Darby and my mother were involved,” I admitted. Lia had been honest. The least I owed the group was the same. “I don’t remember much, but from what I’ve been able to piece together…” I closed my eyes, picturing the look on my mother’s face, my throat tightening around the words. “She might have loved him.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Sloane picked up the conversational slack. “Counting the bellman at the front desk and various casual encounters, we’ve spoken with a dozen Gaither citizens in the past three hours. And of everyone we’ve spoken to or observed, there’s only one person we’ve identified as having a close relationship of some sort with both Nightshade and Cassie’s mother.”

Kane Darby. I willed myself to remember something else about him, any interaction I’d had with him as a child, no matter how small.

“Darby the younger would have been all of ten years old when Nightshade’s parents were murdered,” Dean commented.

“And I was nine,” Lia countered lightly, “when I killed a man dead. Children are capable of horrible things, Dean. You know that.”

Sometimes, I thought, seeing the world through Lia’s eyes, you have to become the monster to survive.

I thought of Laurel, held captive alongside my mother; of Kane Darby, growing up under his father’s thumb; of Nightshade, whose parents had been murdered in their own home. And then I thought about the holes in my own memory, how much of what I’d thought I knew about my own childhood had turned out to be a lie.

“We need more info on Kane Darby,” I said, my stomach flipping as a plan solidified in my mind. “And I think I know how to get it.”

 

 

YOU

You should have known that it would come to this, that Cassie would remember. The wheel turns. The die is cast.

It is only a matter of time before the Masters ask you to pass judgment.

You showed no weakness when Five told you of your daughter’s arrival in Gaither, no hint that his words had hit their target. But in the hours since, you’ve felt the shift coming, felt yourself on the verge of becoming someone else.

Something else.

When the acolyte—no longer an apprentice, not yet a Master—comes to present his work for your approval, to add a diamond to the collection around your neck, you’re ready.

This one is young. This one wants your admiration. This one you can use.

You listen. You nudge. You lay a hand lightly on the flesh of his chest, tracing a symbol—seven circles around a cross. You whisper in the acolyte’s ear.

You are powerful, you murmur. You will be the best among them, if you choose your targets well.

You offer immortality if he is worthy. If he will do as you say.

Lorelai would shudder at your words—at your plan. But Lorelai isn’t here anymore. Cassie doesn’t need Lorelai.

She needs the Pythia.

She needs the monster.

She needs you.

 

 

When Agent Sterling caught up to us, she sent everyone back to the hotel but Dean and me. I told her what I wanted to do. She made me lay out the pros and cons. She made me walk through it again and again. She listened to my arguments and, finally, she agreed. The three of us would go back to the quaint blue house where I’d spent a year of my childhood. Barring any unforeseen complications, I would see if the current occupant would let me poke around inside. With luck, we might knock loose a few memories.

Eventually, Agent Sterling might have to blow her cover and approach Kane Darby as an FBI agent. Eventually, we could directly interrogate him about Nightshade and my mother. But for now, we needed to know who we were dealing with, and that information was locked in my mind.

“I’d tell you that you don’t have to do this,” Dean murmured as the house came into view, “but I know that you do.”

Less than a year ago, I’d gone with Dean to his childhood home. I’d knelt in the dirt with him, searching for his mother’s initials on a weatherworn picket fence. At the time, it hadn’t even occurred to me that someday, he might be returning the favor.

“Maybe we should have brought Townsend with us.”

Dean’s comment got an eyebrow arch out of me. “So he could make inappropriate comments and lighten the moment? Or so he could tell you exactly what I’m feeling?”

Dean considered his answer very carefully. “The one that’s not going to get me a speech about how you can take care of yourself.”

I snorted and walked toward the front porch. As I made my way up the steps, the second one creaked.

“Gotcha!” I jump from the step onto the porch and wrap my arms around Mommy before the creaking can give me away.

“On the contrary…” Mommy picks me up and dangles me upside down. “I’ve got you!”

“Cassie.” Dean’s voice broke through the memory. At first, I thought he was worried about me, but as I processed my surroundings, I realized that he was more concerned with the person who’d just opened the front door.

“Shane,” I said, taking in Ree’s grandson’s appearance. Somehow, I hadn’t expected the house to be occupied. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I used to live here.”