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The candle burned brightly, the light flickering on all our faces, making our eyes look like they all had tiny candles in them as well.

"But what do we actually do? Swear on a Bible or cut an X in our palms or something and take some sort of blood oath?" Misty inquired.

"Too typical, right out of comic books," Jade replied. "So, then what?" Misty looked at Star who looked at Jade. She nodded at the candle.

"We have to toss something into the small flame," Jade continued, "something that will prove how much we trust the OWP's."

"I don't understand," I said. "Into the flame?"

"That's just symbolic," Jade said. "Fire consumes, burns away the se/fish part of ourselves. It changes one form of energy into another. That's why it's so often used in any ritual."

"But what would we toss into it? What form of energy?" I looked at Misty who didn't look worried anymore. She looked intrigued.

"We make an offering, a deep secret," Jade said, glancing at Star, which convinced me the two of them had talked a little about all this. "We change a secret into a common bond, an offering, a

commitment to each other. It has to be something we didn't even tell Doctor Marlowe, something so close, so revealing, we couldn't do it. Obviously, something then, that no one else knows about us. If you've told someone, it's no good. In fact," she said, tightening her lips and making her eyes even darker, "we need something you even hate to tell yourself."

Everyone was silent. The candle licked the air, the flame snapping at each of us as if it was challenging us, calling for our secrets.

Jade finally broke the silence. "Cat, why don't you go first."

"I can't think of anything worse or more secret than what I told you all about my father and me," I said.

"Think harder," Jade ordered.

I struggled with memories. I've told them everything that matters when I was with them at Doctor Marlowe's, I thought.

"Well?" Misty asked, shaking my hand. "Give her a chance," Star ordered.

I really did tell them almost everything about my father and me, I thought. I wanted to get all that out of my system. What could I give them now?

And then it came to me. I couldn't have told them this because I didn't know it then myself.

"My mother," I said, "is more than just my adoptive mother. She's my half sister."

Misty and Jade dropped my hands at the same time I opened my eyes. They were all looking at me.

"Your half sister?" Jade asked. "I don't understand."

"Remember how you all kept asking me why my parents would want to adopt me, why my mother especially would take on the responsibility of a child if she was so uptight about everything? Well, that's the reason."

I told them what I knew about my real mother getting pregnant with me and how my half sister had been influenced by her father and eventually got married and was persuaded to pretend she was my adoptive mother.

"No one else but me and my mother and father knows the truth," I said. "No one but you now."

"But who's your real father then?" Misty asked

"I don't know. There's a lot I still don't know. It's worse than pulling teeth to get my mother to tell me anything else."

"You still call her your mother?"

"It's hard not to call her that when I speak to her, but I really can't think of her like my mother anymore. It's easier for me to think of you all as my sisters than her. She wants me to call her my mother anyway, and she's always reminding me that she's legally my guardian and I've got to neat her with the same respect a parent deserves. She says sisters don't have the same reverence for each other. You know how she rules the house, how she always did.

"It's complicated," I admitted, "but up until now, I've done what Jade said, I've avoided thinking about it myself. I mean, I'd like to know more, but I don't as well. Know what I mean?"

"No," Misty said. "That's all too wild. Your whole life you thought your sister was your mother? I don't know what I would do if I found out such a secret. Why did they keep it a secret? It's crazy."

"I know. I guess anyone would think we're a sick family," I said, and stared at the flickering candlelight. "How I wish that what Jade said would happen could happen," I told them.