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Kierse was flat on the chaise. Her heart raced, and she couldn’t seem to calm it down.

There was no reason for fear. It certainly wasn’t about Graves, but more what she might find in her broken memories.

Cillian Ryan had put this spell on her. He’d been the one to hide her from the world.

And she was almost certain that he was the one running Sansara.

There were too many coincidences for it to be anything else.

The only way to find out was to go through.

“Breathe. You look like you’re about to panic. I’m not going to torture you.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m not panicking.”

“I’ve seen it with others,” Graves said casually. “You’re going to show me something you don’t want me to see if you’re not relaxed.”

“Should I meditate like the tree cult?” she asked, feeling snippy.

He sank down onto a chair opposite her. He looked at her for a long moment before leaning back. “Are you nervous about what you’ll find? Or about seeing Ethan again?” He paused again. “Or Lorcan?”

Kierse let the tension drop from her shoulders. “I don’t know. All of the above.”

His expression was serious. “That’s understandable. Ethan is your friend. Things will work themselves out. Having Gen there will help.” His eyes darted to the closed door. “Are you sure you haven’t trained her in espionage? She’s incredibly adept at getting information out of people.”

“That’s just Gen.” Kierse shrugged. “She’s too good for this world.”

“Hmm,” Graves said uncertainly. “And as far as Lorcan…”

“I can handle Lorcan,” she told him.

“The soulmate bond is powerful. He’s going to try to use it against you.”

“You talk about it like it’s a weapon to be wielded.”

“I wouldn’t underestimate him,” Graves said solemnly.

Kierse lifted her chin. “I have no intention of falling prey to him.”

“Prey don’t have as many teeth as you.”

“Then don’t worry about me. If he can use it against me, I can do the same.”

He was silent a moment, as if refusing to say he did worry about her. Especially when it came to Lorcan. The connection was strong, and she didn’t know what that meant for her uncertain future.

Finally, Graves nodded. “I believe that you believe that.”

Which was not the same as saying he believed she wasn’t in danger.

Still, she let it drop. She didn’t want to discuss Lorcan any more than he did. Lorcan was a thorn in her side that had released a drop of blood but hadn’t yet ripped her open.

“As for my work,” Graves said, transitioning smoothly. “You didn’t want me in your head at all. Now we’re not just skimming for memories of your parents.” He grinned devilishly. “Or during sex.”

“No, that part I do not mind at all,” she said with a choked laugh.

“This is deeper work. I’d be remiss to not warn you that it may be trickier.”

“Why?”

“You don’t have any memory of Cillian. As far as we know, you only met him once. While we have his magic signature and the knowledge that he put the spell on you, you don’t remember anything else about him. It’s very little to go on. It might take a few tries to get to the night that it happened.”

“Okay,” she said, breathing out harshly. “But we will get there.”

“Yes, we will.” Graves ran a hand through his hair. “Also, I heard from Mafi.”

Kierse’s head jerked up. “About the psychiatrist?”

“She’s back in the city.”

She relaxed back down, her mind spinning.

This whole thing with therapy and doctors still freaked her out.

She couldn’t explain it, except that it had been so hard and expensive to pay for doctors for so much of her life.

She wasn’t sure how to trust or open up to a paid professional.

It was hard enough doing it with people she cared about.

To think of Graves in her mind digging for answers.

“If you want to see her,” Graves added. “Mafi said we could come in whenever we wanted.”

“I’ll think about it.”

He acknowledged her and then went straight to business. “What are you going to focus on?”

Kierse bit her lip. “My parents. The night they left your house.”

“That’s as good a place as any. We can try to skip forward until they reach him.”

“Should I think about the smell at Sansara, too?”

“Let’s try this first. We don’t know exactly where we’re going, and too many points of entry could drag us to the wrong person or time.” He slid his gloves off. “Whenever you’re ready.”

She slowed her breathing. She could do this. She flipped that switch on her absorption, feeling it give as smoothly now as her slow motion. She turned it to off and let Graves’s magic settle into her skin.

She was leaving the library, a yawn escaping her little mouth as she walked between her parents to the elevator. She stumbled from exhaustion, and her dad picked her up. She laid her little head on his shoulder and fell asleep as if the night had been peaceful and she was safe and loved.

A tear leaked from the corner of Kierse’s eye as the memory faded to dreams.

“Should we stop?” Graves asked, pulling back.

“No.” She replaced his hand on her arm. “We need to keep going.”

“I’ll guide from here,” he said, his voice taking on a smooth, melodic tone.

How many times had he done this before? How often had he stolen information from someone’s mind by guiding them? Enough. Enough, and it didn’t matter, because they needed the information. She needed the information.

“You just woke up after leaving the library. What do you see?”

Kierse distantly felt his magic entangle with her consciousness, encouraging her to show him what he wanted to know. She also felt an immediate instinct to fight his touch and cast him out, but she pushed that down and concentrated on what he wanted.

Her dad was putting her to bed on the couch, tucking a blanket around her shoulders. Her eyes fluttered open, and she yawned. “Did I fall asleep?”

“It’s okay,” he said, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “It’s late.”

He ran a hand through her hair, and she closed her eyes again. But she was restless, once more opening them to look up at him.

“Is Mum going to be okay?”

“Don’t worry about your mum. She’s a strong one.”

“But if they’re after us…a spell isn’t going to hide her, too.”

“No,” he told her truthfully. “We’ll figure something out.”

It was the first time she realized that her father was lying to her.

She fell back asleep, but Graves’s voice was in her ears, already guiding her to a different memory. “You went to see the Druid, Cillian Ryan. Your parents took you to see him.”

Her mind whirled, sorting, processing, coming up blank. It was like a computer search engine looking for a name and finding nothing. But there shouldn’t have been nothing.

Her absorption switched back on, and Graves leaned back. He passed her a chocolate cookie. “Eat something. Switching your powers on and off will drain your magic.”

She took the offered food and finished it before sighing. “There’s nothing there.”

“We don’t know that. It was our first try. The rest has worked.”

She huffed in frustration. “Okay. You said it’d be harder, but…”

“This is not the toughest interrogation that I’ve done. It can take some time to get where we’re going. Trust me.”

And she did. He was darkness and winter and the villain of his own story. And yet she put her trust in him.

She listened in on her magic and saw that Graves was right. Using her absorption like this was draining her. They couldn’t do this all day.

Her powers winked off once more, and Graves was back in her head. That slight push as he directed her into her little New York apartment. Time seemed to move in fast forward.

Kierse recalled through his magic the rest of the next day with brilliant clarity.

Waking up to her mum making an Irish breakfast, her dad complaining about missing the food from home.

Dough proofing in a bowl nearby—her mum only baked when she was nervous, and today, she was making Kierse’s favorite: cinnamon babka. She’d have it ready after school.

Kierse went to school. She was a silent type who knew all the answers but refused to raise her hand. Hour by hour, her fear grew, and by the end of the day she sprinted out of the building and ran home.

Her parents were there. The babka had just come out of the oven. She had an afternoon snack. They were speaking in careful, cool tones. Low enough she couldn’t hear even with her advanced wisp powers. Well, they weren’t that advanced yet. Her mum had told her they’d get stronger.

“…tonight…” Mum said.

“Let’s see what happens tonight,” Graves said, burrowing deeper.

The memory flitted forward. It was dark outside. Kierse was wrapped in a coat as they got off the subway in an unfamiliar part of Manhattan. It was drizzling and cold, fall pressing in on them as winter approached.

She wanted to go home. She didn’t like it here. When she looked up at her parents, their brows were creased, their mouths set in firm lines.

They stopped at a large, red-brick building that looked like it might have once been a warehouse but at some point in the last hundred years had been converted into condos or lofts with the fall of manufacturing in the city.

Kierse shuffled forward into the dingy vestibule, and her mum pressed a button on the door.

A buzzer went off, and her dad heaved the door open to let them into the drab lobby.

There was no elevator. She panted up the many, many stairs. Daddy offered to carry her, but she didn’t stop. Just trudged along until they reached a long corridor with flickering overhead lights that smelled of piss and vomit.

She pinched her nose. “Gross.”

Mum put a shaky arm around her shoulders, and they continued down the hall. A woman stumbled out of an apartment up ahead, cursing in a foreign language, before careening past them.

“7016. 7018,” Mum said. “Next one.”