He gazes at the crystal ball in awe. “This is what we Foreseers refer to as a mapping ball. They’re very rare.” He turns over the crystal in his hand. “In fact, they’re pretty much nonexistent.” He bites his lip as he sets the ball down on his lap. “They hold a map of someone’s life and show all the decisions they’ve made… although, some mapping balls are used to keep a secret hidden in the midst of thousands of their memories. It really is the most amazing thing.” His withering gaze makes me shy back in the seat. “So whose is it?”

I glance at Alex, wondering if I should divulge that information to Nicholas. Alex presses me with a stern look, warning me to keep quiet.

“There’s no use trying to keep it from me,” Nicholas says. “Because I’m sure you’re going to want to know how to use it, and that means you and I are going to have to go inside it.”

“Inside it?” I ask, dumbfounded and Nicholas simply nods. Great. The last thing I want to do is go wandering around in my father’s memories with the perverted faerie. But I don’t really have a choice. “It’s my father’s,” I tell him.

“I thought you told me you didn’t know who your father is?” Nicholas questions.

“I just recently discovered who he was,” I explain with an evasive shrug. “A lot of shit’s happened since the last time we talked, well at least in this version of our lives.”

“Yes, it has,” Nicholas agrees, glancing down at the mark on his arm, and then returning his attention to me. “How did you find out who your father was? And how did you get a hold of his mapping ball?”

“My mom gave it to me,” I lie with a shrug.

He rests his arms behind his head and puts his bare feet up on the table. “You managed to save her from The Underworld, then? Wow, again I’m impressed with your breathtaking ability.” He winks at me. “And beauty.”

“Yeah, and without your help I might add.” I glare at him.

“I wouldn’t say that.” A grin creeps across his face. “Since I gave you the Ira.”

“After you kidnapped me and chained me to the wall,” I retort. “Don’t give yourself credit where credit isn’t earned. All you do is trick people and make things all messy and overly complicated.”

He bites at his bottom lip with desire in his eyes. “You’re getting awfully wound up right now. I like it.”

“Fuck you.”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

I about jump up from the seat to strangle him, but Aislin stops me, sticking her arm out in front of me like a barricade.

“Don’t let him get to you,” she says. “He likes it more than he hates it.”

She’s right. Nicholas does seem to get his kicks from pissing me off, so I sit back down and try to relax. “What’s the purpose of the mapping ball?” I ask as calmly as I can.

Nicholas rolls his eyes. “I already told you it’s to keep track of the things someone has done in their lifetime. If that is your dad’s, then when we go inside it, we should be able to follow a map of his life.”

Alex’s forehead creases. “Why would your dad give this to you?” he asks me. “What does he want you to see?”

“I thought you said your mom gave it to you.” Nicholas slants forward with a look of intrigue on his face. “Did you just get caught in a lie?” he asks me.

I give Alex a really look, wondering what’s wrong with him. It’s not like him to be so careless. “My dad said it would tell me how to save the world from Stephan, or at least fix the world’s future… And if it holds a map of his life, then maybe I can see what vision he erased and recreated to make it so Stephan could end the world.”

Nicholas claps his hands. “Bravo. You figured that one out all on your own.”

“You’re such and asshole,” I snap. “You could have just told me that to begin with.”

“I know a lot of things I choose not to share with you,” he replies. “It’s what makes life fun.”

“But you have to tell the truth—you made the Blood Promise,” I say, questioning if something went wrong.

“They’re called loopholes, Gemma,” Nicholas says with a satisfied look. “You have to ask me the question in order for me to tell you what I know. I don’t just have to give you all my secrets.”

“Okay, so do you know how to fix all of this then?” I ask. “Do you know what I need to do to save the world—to put everything back to the way it was like my father told me to do?”

Nicholas smiles, sitting lazily back in the chair. “I do. Would you like me to tell you?”

Fucking faeries. “Yes, Nicholas.’ I force tolerance as Alex gives me an I told you so look, like I should now understand why he gets so aggravated with him, which I do. “I’m asking you to please share everything you know about mapping balls and Stephan’s evil plan to end the world.”

Aislin’s phone starts ringing from inside her pocket. She takes it out and when she looks at the screen, she mutters, “Whose number is that?” She gets to her feet and heads out of the room as she answers it.

I redirect my attention back to Nicholas. “Start talking.”

He does some weird bow thing as if he’s obeying my command. “What would you like to know, princess?”

I press back my aggravation. “How to fix the vision back to what it was.”

Nicholas scoops the mapping ball up in his hand, gets up, and wanders around the coffee table toward me. Alex begins to get to his feet but I shake my head at him.

“The thing about visions,” Nicholas plops down on the sofa next to me and rotates the crystal ball in his hand, “is that everything is connected to each other.”

“I’m not sure what you mean or how that’ll help me fix the vision.” I scoot away from him.

Nicholas stares down at the mapping ball, glimmering in the light. “In the Foreseer world, every vision is connected so say you make the decision to become a singer. You go down to the local talent show, try out, win, and go on become a famous singer.” His fingers fold tightly around the crystal ball. “Each one of those events that took place in your life to get you to the grand finale would be seen as their own vision. The decision, the trying out, the winning—all of them led to you becoming famous. They’re all connected to one another—each one had to happen in order for the other one to happen.”

“So if I never made the decision to become a singer,” I say. “Then none of the rest would have happened—I would have never tried out or went on to make a career in singing.”

“Exactly,” Nicholas says with a snap of his finger. “And if a Foreseer wants to change the path of your life, he could just alter the first event and it could change everything from that point on. So say he put the idea in your head to become a ballerina. But on your way to tryouts, you left a minute later because you had to put on your tutu so you get in a car accident and die.”

“But how could changing what I wanted to be, change my life that much?” I ask. “How can one tiny thing f**k up everything so that I’d die?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of the butterfly effect?” he asks, arching his brows.

“Yeah, I learned about it in one of my classes.” Classes. Such a normal thing to say yet it feels so abnormal.

“Well, it’s like that. Change one small thing in your life and it alters everything. Ruin it or sometimes make it better, depending on what you do.” He pauses, mulling something over with a thoughtful expression. “I’m not sure what your father erased and recreated in order to get the world to end, but for us to stop it without doing too much damage, the best thing to do is to erase him before he changes the event. Well, not actually erase you father, but we would go into the mapping ball, find the memory of your father where he changed the vision, and erase him before he does it… like you did with yourself on the beach.”

“And how are we supposed to find the exact memory?” I remove the crystal ball from Nicholas’s hand. “If this thing is full of them.”

Nicholas taps the side of his head. “That answer is in here. Literally.”

My mood plummets. “In your head? You have got to be kidding me.”

“Actually I am.” He winks at me and positions his finger to the side of my head, disregarding the dirty look I give him. “It’s actually in yours, which makes more sense if you think about it.”

“My dad said the same thing to me,” I say. “But I’m still lost.”

“I’ll explain more when we get in there,” he says, lowering his hand to his lap. “It more easy to show you then to explain it you.”

I sigh wearily as I recline back against the armrest. “And what if the vision my father changed still ends up leading to death?” I look over at Alex, thinking about the vision I saw right before I was dropped into the place where my father was. Alex and I by the lake, dying in each other’s arms.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s how things were—are supposed to be.” Nicholas traces the Foreseers’ mark on his wrist, an S outlined by a circle. “Despite how powerful some of us get, Foreseers are only supposed to see visions, not change them or control them to our liking. No one should ever have that much control.”

For a second, Nicholas actually seems like a decent person who cares about the world and has values. It’s strange seeing him like this, serious and somewhat normal.

My father seems like the opposite. He changed a vision so the world would end in the most horrible way. Everything’s going to freeze and all the witches, fey, vampires, and Death Walkers linked to Malefiscus are going to run the streets killing everyone.

“Let’s go then.” I sit up straight. “I want to get this over with as quick as possible. The sooner we put everything back together, the sooner we can maybe all have a normal life.” I can’t help but glance at Alex. Is there hope for us yet?

“That’s easier said than done.” Nicholas snatches the mapping ball away from me. “This thing uses a lot of power. It’s not as simple as placing your hand on it and going into it, like the other crystal balls you’ve used in the past.” He throws the ball in the air and catches it, making me tense. “We need the power of the main crystal ball that all the other crystal balls run off in order to pull this off.”

“The giant crystal ball that sucks its energy away from people?” I shudder at the memory of Alex strapped to the crystal with tubes embedded into his skin, along with a ton of other people.

“That would be the one,” Nicholas says uncaringly.

“And the Foreseers are going to just let us take the power?” I ask doubtfully.

Nicholas looks down at his hand as he opens and closes it. “No, we steal the power and bring it back with us and use it here. It’s safer that way.”

“You actually think I’m going to let you go off to the City of Crystal alone with her.” Alex gets up and walks over to us, sitting on the armrest just behind me.

“You could always let me go by myself and hope I’ll come back,” Nicholas replies snidely. “But I’m guessing you’re not a fan of that idea either.”

“Alex, back off. I can handle this,” I say, not meaning to sound so rude, but it kind of slips out in my tone. “You have got to stop trying to protect me all the damn time.”

“How am I supposed to stop doing something, when it’s all I want to do?” He brushes his fingers across the back of my neck. “All I want to do is protect you. That’s it. I can’t even think clearly when I know you’re in harm.”

Recollection clicks in my head. He said that once to me, in another time, in the erased vision, before I ran off and got captured by Nicholas. It’s strange that I’m remembering these little details, instead of them fading like the event did.

“Yeah, I give you two a day before you end up killing one another,” Nicholas remarks with a laugh. “Seriously, it’s like watching mild porn, watching you two eye f**k each other every two seconds.”

“We’ll be fine.” Although, I’m not sure I believe my own words. Fine. Nothing feels fine. Not me. Not Alex touching me. Because he shouldn’t be just touching me. He should be holding me. Kissing me. Slipping inside me over and over again…

“We have a problem,” Aislin announces as she whisks into the room, interrupting my dirty thoughts. “A big problem.”

“Of course we do,” Alex says with an eye roll his fingers coming to rest on my back. “The world is going to end unless we fix it.”

She shakes her head and puts her hands on her hips. “No, not that problem.” Her eyes land on me. “Gemma, your mom just called and told me that she found Laylen and that he’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” The pitch of my voice is alarmingly high and I reach out to grip something for support and end up grabbing Alex’s knee. “He didn’t… bite someone did he?”

“He’s…” She trails off, giving a cautious glance at Nicholas before leaning in and lowering her voice. “Maybe we should discuss this in private.”

“Why? He can’t go anywhere,” I point out, but she is still hesitant.

“Just say whatever it is,” Alex says, his finger tracing circles on my back. I wonder if he’s even aware that he’s doing it, touching me like that.