(I have no excuse for the long wait, except to say, life. Just that four-letter word is enough to make me burrow into my blanket these days. Thanks for sticking around. Don't mind the typos - too tired to edit. And if you're one of those people who's been commenting along as you read each chapter, I've really enjoyed hearing from you and your words have inspired me to keep pushing myself. I'm now about 75% through and will need to make a decision soon about publishing on kindle. Stay tuned for more details about how you can support WTW/LAD, which will lead to the yet-to-be-named third book!)

Me: How did I get free from the Ancients?

Me: Hansel doesn't believe that the metamorphosis inhibitor serum worked. He thinks that I can break the hold they have over me. Is that true?

Hermes: You already know the answer.

Me: I don't remember the answer!

Hermes: And here I believed you were smarter than this.

Me: Fine, I'm dumb as rocks. Now will you tell me the truth?

Me: For God's sake, it shouldn't take you ten minutes to answer a question.

Hermes: Think of that boy. Davey.

Me: What about him?

Hermes: He knows more than any human should, doesn't he?

Me: Wait. You're right. How does he know about the Ancients and our powers? I thought we can't reveal the truth to regular humans?

Me: You mean I told him?

Hermes: That should have been your first clue that you're not completely under our control.

Me: It's really creepy when you say 'our'. I keep forgetting you're one of them.

Me: You still haven't told me WHY I'm different. Why can I break their control?

Hermes: When two forces meet, the weaker one bends to the stronger. The question you should be asking yourself is, which one are you?



Hermes sends us to Downtown Dallas, where we divide into two teams—surprisingly, Marcus sticks me with him and Janie—and scour the streets in search of a target we've never seen. Our best bet is back alleys and abandoned buildings and anywhere these Ancient beings are likely to hide out. I can't imagine that they like to hang out in crowded and public areas. Not if they look like the alien creature that Dr. Hansel described to us.

Hermes has gone silent, and I'm not sure what to make of it. Could it be he's has no desire to communicate with us until he has a good lead on where the Ancient might be? Or is he making us chase our tails for some sinister reason we can't comprehend?

Dallas is as loud and noisy as any metropolitan city, and I feel dwarfed by its glass-walled high rises as we amble along its sidewalks. It's overwhelming, the medley of rushing cars and harried pedestrians and confusing street signs, and it doesn't help that I'm still in shock after my startling conversation with Hansel. And of course, Hermes' Confucius-esque commentary.

Marcus and Janie are arguing about something, but I can't bring myself to focus. Too much going on inside. I'm not a Blank because of me. Because there's some part of me that's, what, stronger than the influence over my body and mind? Does that mean I have an ability? Or am I stuck somewhere in the middle between Blank and flipper, trading my sanity back and forth with them like it's a football and my brain is the playing field.

I worry my lip between my teeth. Control yourself. Maybe Sam Parker's warning was good for more than I ever realized. Maybe it wasn't an omen of how utterly incapable I am of letting myself go with the people I love, but a conditioned response that's allowing me, even now, to hold on to my identity with everything I've got.

"Hey," Marcus says behind me.

I stop walking abruptly and turn back to squint at him like he's out of focus. "What?"

"Lunch." He thumbs the glass door of the pizza parlor to his left. Janie is already making her way inside, and the crowd inside immediately stare at her in that spooky way humans always do wherever she goes. "You hungry or what?" he asks.

His words aren't hostile, but they're far from warm and cozy. "Um . . . okay."

"Okay?"

I nod and fold my arms over my chest. A cold breeze is sweeping the streets, and I'm afraid it'll take me with it. I feel breathless and shaky, like I'm about to take a test that accounts for thirty percent of my grade—only times ten. The only times I've ever felt this way were during those terrifying minutes after waking up in the morning, when I was still caught in the steel traps of my nightmare and felt like there was no way to get free.

Trapped. That's a good way to describe it.

"Hansel got in your head, didn't he?" Marcus asks gruffly.

I filled him and the others in on the way here. I guess maybe I was hoping that being transparent about—almost—everything would earn me brownie points with the team. And especially Marcus. He can't accuse me of pushing him away if I'm always sharing my deepest and most confounding secrets, right?

"I think that's more of the Ancients' mode of operation," I joke feebly.

He moves aside to let a couple enter the establishment, crossing his arms as he leans against the faded brick wall. The sleeves of his black jacket are tight around his biceps, and a memory teases through my mind: Marcus hugging me from behind, my back pressed to his chest and his strong arms wound around my shoulders.

"I'm fine," I say, reading his expression. God, don't even think about making me sit this one out.

His eyes pin me in place. "Why are you trembling?"

Because I'm trying to hold myself together until there are no cracks left. No gaps for the Ancients to slip through. As much as I appreciate all these pieces of the puzzle falling into my lap, I'm walking a tightrope here and the more my haunted past returns to me, the slimmer the rope gets. There's no getting back up if I fall, not unless I want to start all over again.

"I'm strong enough to carry out this mission, if that's what you're worried about," I say, lifting my chin.

Through the glass door, Janie is lifting her hands like she's saying, What's taking you people so long? Not that she has any reason to worry about holding up the line. Her audience doesn't seem to be doing much except watching her with abject awe.

"You still pretend to be okay even when you're not." He smirks. "No wonder I never knew what was going on with you."

His words sting. "What do you want me to say? That I'm scared out of my mind that I'm going to lose it? That I'm going to prove you guys right by letting you down, or worse, hurting one of you? That I feel like I can do something to make a difference, to, I don't know, save the freaking world from a catastrophe, but I don't know where the hell to start!"

Marcus looks around like he's worried someone overheard my rant and then grabs my elbow, steering me to a deserted corner by some dumpsters. I barely register the smell. His hand around my arm is warm despite the cold, and it radiates heat through me.

"First of all," he says, leaning toward me, "you don't have to do a damned thing to save the world. It's not your job, and the fact that you think you have to isn't helping with your stress levels. Leave that to the professionals and worry about yourself, okay?"

"There are no professionals, Marcus. No one—"

"What about Hermes? Gardiner? We'll do what we can, but if we screw up, that's not on us." He takes my shoulders and bends down even closer until our noses are almost touching. "You hear me? None of this shit is on you. If you run off to some remote island and live the rest of your days in solitude, you have the right to be that selfish. You deserve it."

I nod, my eyes wide. I've seen him bragging, yelling and cursing, punching people in the face, but I've never heard him so impassioned. And yet I'm not completely surprised. His words come from some place that I knew, that I felt, before. And at this moment, staring up into his intense black eyes, those unknown parts of my brain begin to unfurl like flower petals and I'm awash in everything I've gone through the past eight months.

Well, not everything. But enough to know.



The first few months after leaving the facility were spent in blissful ignorance of the darkness shadowing us as we tried to find our footing. We relied on the Janie-Willow combo to get what we needed while we worked on locating other flippers. We sent messages through social media at first. FIGHT THE BLANK was the one that netted us a few worthy responses, specifically from Pablo and this one dude who died months ago—but whose ability was game-changing. He dreamt about people, and if he went to bed with someone specific in mind, he'd see life through their eyes. Finding kids became a breeze after that.

Using social media exposed us to Gardiner. And hunting for people like us exposed us to the Ancients. The Ancients went on the offensive. They turned the dormant kids into Blanks—which is why we implemented a rule that we wouldn't let anyone join until they flipped—and then the Ancients brought out the big guns: human Blanks. We lost so many people at the beginning. More than a dozen. More than I could've imagined. We went from being saviors to hunted prey.

And somewhere along the way, I became their target.



It started with a feeling. This bone-chilling sensation of being watched, or more accurately, of someone watching the world through my eyes, witnessing it with me. I felt like a stranger in my own body. I would stare into mirrors, trying to see this presence inside me, and I could feel them staring back at me.

I don't think anyone noticed the first time I blanked. Even I doubted it at first. One minute I was sitting next to Marcus in the van, smiling at Jones' offkey singalong to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive while kids in the back groaned, and the next, half an hour had passed and we were pulling into our stop and Marcus was looking at me funny.

I think, looking back now, they didn't want to give themselves away. And I was so scared of blowing it out of proportion, scared of calling attention to myself, that I didn't say anything. It became a game with them after that. They messed with my head. I found myself in places I didn't recognize, parched and hungry and so exhausted I couldn't have walked back if I wanted to. Somedays I woke up with blood on my hands, on my clothes. In my hair.

Somedays the blood wasn't mine.

I relied on Davey to get me out of these binds those first days, too ashamed to face Marcus, to see horror and condemnation in his eyes.

Or worse, to see sympathy.



"Talk to me."

Marcus followed me into the motel bathroom, away from the team's prying eyes. I busied myself with unzipping my backpack and pulling out my toothbrush and toothpaste. The water was freezing when I ran the toothbrush under the faucet. "There's nothing to talk about."

He slammed the door shut and turned to me. "The hell there isn't. You were gone for eight hours, Rose. You weren't answering your phone. I was going out of my mind! Then you show up out of the blue and act like you went out for milk and eggs. How many times is it now? Five? Six? You need to tell me what's going on."

I put down my toothbrush and avoided his gaze in the mirror. I needed to let him in: I knew that. But I was barely holding it together as it was. Opening up would release demons that would eat me alive. "Maybe I just want to do my own thing sometimes. Did you think of that?"

"I thought we were a team."

The hurt in his voice was a painful bolt to my chest. Marcus and I were nearing two months in our relationship, including the past couple of weeks of turbulence. It hadn't been easy at the beginning. Distrust and bitterness flowed between us, fueled by what happened back at the stress facility. It took a while to get past that, but our trials forged an unbreakable friendship at first, before it softened to love and warmth and deep, genuine care.

I couldn't say we'd both changed into other people to find a way to be together. Marcus's brashness drove me crazy sometimes, and he hated that I sounded patronizing when we fought, but small squabbles weren't enough to touch our bond. He held me up, taught me to be stronger without ever pushing me too far, and I was the only person he let himself be vulnerable with, that he confided his fears to.

One of which was his fear of losing me.

Overcome with regret, I threw my arms around his neck and pressed my weight into him, pushing him back into the door. "It's not your fault. Baby, whatever I'm going through has nothing to do with you. Nothing. I'm so sorry if I made you think it did."

For a moment, I'm afraid he'll keep pushing the issue. Keep digging until I'm forced to push him out. His arm eventually winds around my waist while his other hand brushes over my hair. He sighed against my temple. "Promise me you'll tell me if you're hurting or you're in trouble, and I'll stop bugging you about this."

My eyes sting. "I promise."



The beginning of the end. That's what that conversation in the motel bathroom was. My blackouts chipped away at my sanity, until I couldn't tell black from white. I know they took me down to their crystal caves at least once a week, but I couldn't remember being inside them. Only the feeling of suffocating for hours. I know I discovered something in those crystals, I know that deep inside my bones, but I still can't remember what. I'm still missing that final link, but I know I became frantic with my discovery after that, working on solving a maddening problem at the cost of everything else.

The lies and secrets, my slipping sanity, my decision to shove him out of my life—it all destroyed my relationship with Marcus. And when Saige showed up, when I found out he had a short fling with her back at the facility, I saw it as my way of saving him from the inevitability of losing me. And just to make sure that I broke that bond for good, I threw his insecurities about his past, his goodness, right in his face.

I've deserved every second of his contempt.



I can't believe that, after everything I've done and said, Marcus would be standing here now, concerned with anything to do with me beyond seeing me throw myself off the nearest cliff. It's a testament to how good of a person he is, and how incredibly inexcusable my actions for the past four months have been. I don't even know where to begin.

Having most of my memories back is overwhelming beyond words. My eyes flood with tears. I fall back against the damp side wall of the building, barely aware of the soda can that skitters across the ground. My back slides against the rough brickwork until I'm sitting on the cold and damp ground, my head cradled against my knees.

"Oh, God, Marcus," I breathe raggedly. "I messed up badly. I did those horrible things—I don't know why I'm still here. How could you let me live? It's not enough that you hate me. You should've stopped me."

"April," he begins as he kneels before me, his hand on my knee.

I lift my head and look at him with bleak eyes. "You should've killed me."

"Stop."

"You should have." I shake my head, but I can't shake the horror. Blood colors my memories. "Do you remember those people? The husband and wife in that old camper in Louisville? You found me with them. You saw what I did to them—what I could have done to you. Why didn't you end me then once and for all?"

"Cut this out," Marcus says forcefully, his eyes flashing. "Jesus, you think I could ever do something like that to you? You want me to spell it out for you? I fucking loved you, Rose. More than I ever thought possible. Letting anything happen to you would've been like reaching into my own chest and tearing out my heart."

I'm filled by a rush of immense loss. "But you hate me now."

He freezes, and I look away, afraid to hear the answer. I know it already, but having him repeat the animosity he feels for me will break me in this state. The opposite of love might be indifference, but it's a longer drop from love to hate and there's no climbing out of that hole.

"If I could take it all back, I would," I plead like it'll erase everything.

He stands, and I feel him pulling away from me already. "No, you wouldn't. You said it yourself today. Being in a relationship with me was hard on you. It broke you down instead of building you up." He smiles humorlessly. "Funny how the first girl I wanted to be with couldn't wait to get away from me."

"It was never about not wanting to be with you." I stagger to my feet, hoping to reclaim some semblance of that connection we shared when his hand was on my knee. "I've been conditioned to push everyone out, to maintain absolute control, and I let myself believe that I needed to do that in order to be myself. But I was wrong. We are not a product of our powers or upbringing. We are capable of making a choice. You know how I know that?"

Marcus stares at me warily, and I take that as a sign to continue.

"Because of Alec. It went against his nature to hurt people, but that's exactly what he did. He killed Sam, and he's been hunting us this whole time. I think it's because finding out that his girlfriend and his mentor used him was so catastrophic that it broke through his conditioning. It's proof that we can change, too."

I can see Marcus considering my words, what it means not just for us, but also for him. His anger controls him sometimes, whether he likes it or not. If what I'm saying is true, there's hope for all of us.

I step closer. "I need to believe that, Marcus. I need to try. The alternative is to live in this hell where I can never be with you because I'm not good enough to keep you close."

My hand seeks the warmth of his body, touching his shoulder before moving to the back of his neck. "Let me try."

"Trying isn't enough," he says.

His husky tone tells me he's affected. I've been fumbling blindly since I woke up from the dark, but not anymore. I know the nuances of his body, his expressions, his voice. I've spent hours studying and reveling in them. I know what ticks him off, what makes him tremble. I know that the only way to get through to him is to give him my heart unconditionally. "Then let me do it. I'll move the planets and stars to make it happen if I have to."

I pull his head down until it's touching mine and close my eyes at the relief I feel that he's not pushing me away. This isn't like that moment this morning when he gave me a desperate kiss, like he was exorcising me from his body. It's a gentle, reciprocated touch that carries more meaning than words. It's familiar and haunting, bittersweet and hopeful. It's both the scariest and the best thing I've ever done.

It's the closest we've been in months, and I want to weep with joy.

People walk past our corner and the world refuses to quiet, but I don't pay it any attention. Marcus's lips ghost across my cheekbone, and every inch of my body tingles. I hear his deep inhale like he's breathing me in, committing everything about this moment to memory. It makes sense he's doing that, because it's exactly what I'm doing.

"Marcus! April!"

Janie's voice is the last thing I want to hear right now. I groan when Marcus breaks contact and spins away from me as she shows up in front of us. She's breathing fast. "Where the hell have you guys been?"

"Hell of a timing, Jane," I mutter.

Her eyes widen at the familiar nickname, the one I started using when I first discovered she's all bark and no bite. She wags a finger at me. "Okay, something's up with you, but we don't have time for that. We have a problem. A major one."

"What is it?" Marcus asks, all business now.

"Alec is here. He walked out of one of the retail stores across the street and headed north toward the intersection."

"Dammit," he growls. "That means we've got Gardiner running all over the place now. Like we don't have enough on our plate."

The look on Janie's face is still bewildered. "That's not the worst part. Adam was with him."