When Charles returned home, he made a beeline for his study.

His head was full. His heart was shattered. His world was caving in around him.

His fiancée. His brother. His future.

His life felt worthless. He was worthless. And therefore, he didn't want to be himself anymore.

He locked the door to his study and immediately began to unstrap each and every memory from his shelf. He laid them down in a messy, rolling pile on his desk, running his hands over the vials. He could feel each memory thrumming beneath his fingers through the glass. They wanted to be released; they wanted to be re-lived. He would help them do that.

He found the first one he wanted, a vial with a green glow. He uncorked it, pressed the glass to his lips, and inhaled. He closed his eyes, waiting for the memory to settle into his skin.

It hit him all at once. Suddenly, he was there, in the moment. He was a man—older, larger, but full of unbridled joy. He had just won an election. Other men in the room were cheering for him. They slapped him on his back. They poured champagne into his glass. There was music, a pounding feeling in his chest, and the warmth of success.

But after a few minutes, it faded, becoming nothing more than a memory. Something Charles could access in the back of his head, but never as potent as living it the first time. He needed something else.

Charles started ruffling through his remaining bottles, looking for something, anything, to help him escape. The beach one isn't strong enough, he thought, passing it on. And he skipped over the few that had to do with love—he had no room in his head for that right now.

Finally, he settled for the memory he had obtained from Miss Melissa. He hadn't finished editing it, but he didn't care. He took the pink memory and absorbed it as well.

He closed his eyes, letting it take over, reveling in the touch of skin and the empty pleasure it provided. But just like the other memory, it was over too soon. He wanted more.

He was sorting through his vials, searching for another distraction, when he heard the door to his study click open.

He looked up and saw Lillian and Juliette standing in the doorway.

Charles scowled, his hand clamped around an empty vial. "I locked the door. How did you get in?"

Juliette wiggled her fingers guiltily. "Sorry, Mister Abbot."

"Get out," Charles said, but neither of them moved.

Lillian stood there, tall, with a small frown on her lips. Juliette meanwhile was fidgeting, looking like a child who was caught between two quarreling parents. Then her eyes fell to Charles' desk and the scattered vials of memories. She frowned and pointed. "You're missing two of them. What happened to the green and pink ones?"

When Charles didn't respond, Juliette's jaw dropped. "You absorbed them, didn't you?"

Charles couldn't answer her, so instead, he looked up at Lillian. "What do you want?"

"We saw you rush inside," Lillian said calmly. "We wanted to see if you were okay."

"You wanted to see if you were right," Charles corrected.

Lillian didn't react to Charles' biting tone. Her face was still, like a carved ebony statue.

Charles exhaled. "Well, you were," he mumbled. "Cecilia is a truth void. She admitted it."

"And did you ask her about the cult?"

"No, I did not ask my fiancée if she's a member of a child-sacrificing cult!" Charles shouted, slamming a vial on his desk; it didn't break, but made a loud ting! "Finding out that she had lied to me about being a mage was hard enough today. And then seeing James..." He trailed off suddenly.

Lillian frowned. "What about James?"

But Charles kept his mouth shut, refusing to elaborate. Instead he just put his head down, lacing his fingers through his dark curls.

Juliette wandered into the room, taking careful steps among the clutter, until she was at Charles' desk. She stared at the two empty vials and the others lying haphazardly on the table. "Why did you absorb those memories?" she asked. "I know how much they're worth. Absorbing them seems like a waste."

"It's a distraction," Lillian said simply, stepping into the room herself. Charles would have expected her tone to be scathing, but there was no note of judgement; she was just stating a fact.

Juliette frowned. "Like alcohol?"

Charles wanted to open his mouth and rebuke her. His father coped with his mother's loss with alcohol—this was not the same. And yet he couldn't muster the words.

Thankfully, Lillian turned to Juliette, and gave her a gentle explanation. "Sometimes you so desperately want to be someone else, even for a little bit, that it's worth the risks."

Juliette frowned. "That's stupid though," she said. "Wanting to be someone else. You're great as you are, Mister Abbot."

Charles couldn't agree with her, so he just kept his mouth shut.

Lillian took a seat in the velvet armchair and gestured for Juliette to sit on her lap. As Juliette settled into her spot, Lillian said, "There are lots of reasons to want to be someone else, Juliette. And not all of them are bad." She hesitated, as if debating whether to continue speaking or not, then seemed to gather her resolve and continued. "Once upon a time, I had the luxury of getting to be a new person every night."

Juliette's nose wrinkled, and even Charles turned his head to look at her.

Lillian's dark eyes met Charles'. "I was an actress once," she explained.

Juliette's eyes widened as she looked up at Lillian's face. "Professionally?"

Lillian nodded. "My father was an actor. For most of my childhood, my mother and I traveled with him around the country, watching him perform almost every night. He was brilliant. He could take on a persona so fully that sometimes it was hard to separate the character on stage from the man I knew in real life. The man who tucked me in at night and read me stories. The man who taught me to read by giving me the pages of old scripts covered with his handwritten scribbles."

She wrapped her arms around Juliette, as if she was telling a bedtime story instead of opening up about her past. "I wanted to be just like him. So, when I was old enough to join him on the stage, I did. I got to be a million different people, learn a million different things. It's where I learned how to set a table and wear a fine gown. It's where I learned how to fight and how to cry."

Juliette's eyes glowed. She seemed to regard Lillian with even greater admiration than she already had. "That sounds amazing!"

Lillian smiled. "It was."

"Why did you stop?" Charles asked, the question coming out of his mouth without meaning to.

Lillian's smile faltered. "One day my father caught an illness in one of the towns we traveled through and never recovered," she said. "I continued acting with his old troupe for a little while, but eventually my mom grew ill and couldn't stitch anymore, and we couldn't survive on my acting salary. So I gave it up, switched careers."

"I'm sorry you had to give it up," Juliette said.

"It's okay. I still get to be someone new most days. And it pays a little better."

Charles shook his head, hoping that Lillian wasn't actually recommending a life of thievery to a child. However, Juliette seemed to be lost in thought, and her perpetually happy grin was gone, replaced with a worried frown.

"What's wrong, Juliette?" Charles asked.

"Nothing," she said, but she was fiddling with her fingers.

Charles sent a look to Lillian, but the thief only raised an eyebrow in confusion. "What's going on?"

"Just thinking..." Juliette murmured. "You, talking about your past, made me think of mine. At the orphanage. And I..." She suddenly looked up, staring straight at Charles, and he was startled to see that her eyes were red and lined with tears. "I really don't want to make your day worse, Mister Abbot. I really don't. But the more I think about it, the more I think we need to go to Silvers."

"What do you mean?"

"You were saying the other night that it's possible that Silver's is where the cult is nabbing children from. And I know you were originally planning on asking Cecilia to see if anything is amiss there, but now that we found out she's a truth void, I don't think we can trust her to tell us the truth. We have to go there ourselves and see what's going on. Maybe it's not the orphanage and really it's the mines or the factories or somewhere else, but I just can't stop thinking about the people I used to know, and I feel like if we keep waiting around before checking it out..."

She trailed off, and Charles completed the sentence for her. More dead children. More blood on our hands.

Charles took a deep breath. As upset as he was with Cecilia, deep down he was hoping she wasn't involved with this cult, praying that despite her lies, she wasn't the sort to murder children. But Juliette was right. He didn't have the luxury to pray—not when lives were at risk. "You're right, Juliette," he said, gathering his memories together and placing them back on his shelf. "We can't be wasting anymore time. We should go there. Now."

"Wait," Lillian said, helping Juliette off of her lap. "We can't just rush in there if we think the place is flooded with cultists. We need a plan."

"I already have a plan," Charles said, getting up from his chair and walking quickly towards the door. "We just need to be someone else. Like you said."

Lillian's face furrowed at this, but Juliette's eyes widened. She knew what Charles was insinuating. "Glamour potions!" the little girl squealed.

"Go upstairs and change into that emerald dress," Charles told Lillian. "I'll grab the potions."

Lillian looked a tad stunned by Charles' sudden call to action, but just shook her head. "Come on, Juliette. Let's go upstairs."

Juliette grinned, nearly skipping out of the office. Charles didn't feel nearly as spry, but he did feel a sense of renewed purpose. Now there was something to do. An action to take. And that was better than moping.

Charles left the office and headed towards the kitchen, however, he stopped short when he saw his brother standing at the counter as if waiting for him. Charles hadn't known James was home; he must have missed his arrival while he had been drowning himself in memories.

"Charles," James said. His voice was thin and wavering, like a violin string plucked by a nail. "Can we talk?"

Charles bit down and turned so that he didn't have to look his brother in his eyes. "Unfortunately, I don't have the time to right now." He swung open the doors of the potion pantry, eyes skimming the bottles labeled by his brother's careful hand. However, none of them were the type he was looking for. "Where are your glamour potions?

"I don't have any."

Charles paused and looked at James. "That's not true. You were brewing some with Juliette the other day, and I know we didn't sell any of them at the market. So where are they?"

"They aren't ripe yet," James explained. "Glamour potions need a week to ripen for maximal efficacy." He hesitated, then asked, "Why do you need a glamour potion anyway?"

Charles almost didn't answer him. The anger he felt towards his brother was still there, although quieter, nearly hidden beneath his new drive. Finally, he said, "We're going to the orphanage."

"Why?"

"Because now that we know that Cecilia is a truth void, the orphanage is the most likely place where this cult is getting children from. And if that's the case, we need to act now."

James' face whitened. "You really think Cecilia's involved."

"I don't know what to think. Maybe she is. Maybe she isn't. But I need to know the truth." Charles forced himself to look into his brother's eyes. "Where are the potions?"

"They won't be entirely effecti—"

"Where are they?"

James looked at him, and then sighed. He turned around, picked a small wooden box off the counter, and flipped up the clasp. "I only have two."

"That'll be enough."

James passed him the bottles. "Please, Charles. Before you go, can we talk about what happened earlier? Please?"

Charles' fingers wrapped around the glass vials. "Later," he said, and abruptly he turned away.