By the time I make it out of the Orbs Hall and back into the Peripherals, my ring begins to tighten around my finger, burning with the light of another name. I curse to myself.

"Really? Again?" I mutter to it.

There have been more names burned into my ring in the past month than I received during last year's entirety. I think of the information that Eleanor shared with me. Exactly how many Diviners and keys have been stolen? How many portals have been opened? A plunging swoop dives into my stomach, and I place a hand on my abdomen. Though it is difficult to hold onto the fear that yet another portal has been disrupted because I have yet to be able to find even one of them.

I'm failing you.

But first, Emily Collins.

I dodge around a couple walking their golden retriever down the sidewalk and brace my back against one of the maple trees that line the park where I will supposedly find Emily Collins. Since I'm not yet a Seer, I wasn't able to read Emily's Orb. Instead, the Orb showed me only what I needed to know in order to get the job done—a face, a place, and nothing more. The sun had still been out, I was given that much at least, but no date. Nor a time. It's like skimming through the pages of the book, gaining a vague sense of the plot, but missing the details that fill in the frame.

Bloody maddening is what it is.

All I can do now is sit and wait.

For nightfall. Because Shades only detach from their hosts in the safety of the dark.

Glancing around, I don't see any humans close by let alone a dark mass of daemonic venom, so I take a breath and hold my ring finger in front of my face, pulling it upwards into my line of sight like it's a grenade about to go off. The ring remains warm from the remnants of the name. I've already broken down and seen Emily's name, and it's like now that I've given into the ring once, I can't stop myself from looking at it any longer.

I glare at the silver disdainfully.

"You're the worst," I accuse it.

The words have started to dull, but I can still make out the letters that dwindle like embers; my heart skips a beat, and I allow my eyes to soak in both words.

Jam Toast has reappeared, but I can no longer ignore the rest of the name: Jamison Clancy Miles.

An amused snort escapes my lips. Somehow, I think Jam Toast sounded better.

"Yo, Catwoman!"

My hand shoves itself behind my back on an instinct that jumps into action much quicker than I do.

"Is this your big secret then? Disorganized girl by morning, superhero by afternoon?"

I jump at the smooth voice, twisting towards it and nearly tripping over an exposed root, but my Settler shoes allow my toes to grip the grass and steady myself. A pair of brown boots peek up at me from the ground.

I drag my gaze upwards and meet Jase's grinning honey eyes. Seriously, how small is this town? My brow quirks at him. "Yo?"

"I was trying to disprove your southern stereotypes," Jase says. "Didn't work, huh?"

"Not particularly." I stare pointedly at his worn cowboy boots. "Do you have a habit for appearing out of thin air?" I keep the fingers of my left hand fisted into the thin material of my Settler outfit.

"If I said yes, could I join you on your quest to fight graphic novel villains?" he counters, eyeing my black bodysuit with bright eyes. He runs a hand through his wavy brown hair; it flops to one side just like the smirk that teeters across his expression.

"Funny," I retort, crossing one arm across my chest: another instinct that's almost as defensive as my lying. "I just came from yoga."

As soon as the feeble excuse leaves my brain, I cringe. For the love of the Orbs, could I honestly have come up with a worse lie? What kind of crazy psychopath wears a full body suit to yoga? Judging by the high position of Jase's thick eyebrows, he would argue that I couldn't have.

"You California folk sure are a strange breed," he confirms.

"As you have already so nicely pointed out." From behind my back, the ring has cooled and loosened, so I add another arm to the shield I've folded over my heart. "Can I help you with anything?"

"You still haven't apologized, you know."

I narrow my eyes at him as his feet shuffle closer. Does he have no respect for personal space? "For what?"

He waves a hand around his neck; a thin, copper chain sneaks beneath his white t-shirt. "You nearly decapitated me with that door!"

"Trust me, I could have found a more creative way to rid you of your head," I point out before I can stop myself.

His laugh is low and easy; it rumbles like the beat of the train tracks that run through Main Street. "That would be one way to keep yourself from making any friends here."

"Because girls everywhere would be stricken with lost love, I imagine."

The smirk on his face widens. "Actually I was thinking that violence is one sure way to ostracize yourself in the midst of the Bible Belt, but thank you for noticing my rugged good looks."

I grip my elbows in a vice that will forcefully repel the flush that threatens to lick up my neck and betray my icy stature. "And so modest as well," I add with a sarcastic cluck of my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

"Modesty is a myth recited by the unfortunate."

The lopsided dimples in the corners of his cheeks widen, but then I'm the one laughing. It sounds like music, and for a moment I'm taken aback like his joke grew an arm, and it sucker punched me in the jaw. I even stumble backwards slightly, my back fetching up against the trunk of the wide tree behind me, but before I can shake the feeling and gather myself, Jase has already rattled off another question.

"So, should I call you Catwoman, or can I stick with Cali Girl?"

"Guinevere," I tell him before I can think not to.

Pull yourself together, Vera.

I pinch my thigh to sober myself and push away from the tree, and I suddenly wish that my Settler life was my secret identity. But, in this moment, I realize that this, being a normal girl meeting a normal boy, is what I've kept as the secret: a foreign life that I live and can never quite make work. There was a reason Jericho was one of my only true friends. Because forcing my mystical life into a Peripheral one pushes together two halves of me that don't line up and fit together.

My ring is a tether to my reality.

I skitter my gaze away from Jase's as I say, "Well, if you'll now excuse me—" Even though I don't want to be excused—"I'm meant to find someone..."

Jase catches my elbow.

I try to shove past him but his hand is so large and his fingers so nimble that they wrap around the entirety of my forearm. "Guinevere?" he repeats my name, the drawl of his accent making it sound somehow both foreign and polite, though I would never tell him that. "That's an unusual name."

I shrug, tearing my gaze away from his with the same half-effort I'm using to pull my arm free from his grasp. "My mom grew up on folklore and legends, so I got named after the harlot of Camelot's Court."

He grins at that and, as has somehow become his usual, ignores my attempts to flee. "Her reputation is debatable, you know. Some believe her to be the true queen of the kingdom."

"Smooth save," I compliment, and I should leave it there, dot the period, but I keep speaking like a semicolon. "Though I suppose it's better than my brother who's named Leonardo."

"DiCaprio?" he guesses automatically and then smirks at me. "That's so California."

"Da Vinci," I amend, rolling my eyes. "My father's an inventor. He's currently trying to solarize our microwave."

A part of me is horrified at how much I'm divulging. Shut up, Guin, my brain hisses, stop it, and yet I'm enjoying whatever this is, his unpredictability, his ability to swing with my obscurities. I glance up at him again, and he's watching me with a hint of amusement twitching the corners of his lips. He seems to always be in motion so I can't predict what he'll do next; I'm not sure if he wants to laugh with me or at me. I clasp my hands together and lean backwards and away from him, biting my tongue to keep any other embarrassing family secrets from spewing all over him.

There's a self-satisfied hum to Jase's throat when he glances at my puckered grin. "See?" he points out, holding his hands out wide, "It's not so hard holding a polite conversation, is it?"

My smile is a little rusted. "Does that mean I just graduated from your finishing school, then?"

"Don't get cocky. That was only the first lesson, Guinevere."

I decide that I like how my name sounds with his slight twang, and he still holds my elbow, so when I take a step back, he gets pulled along with me. There's an awkward second as we watch each other, lips parted on words we don't know should come next, but then we're both rambling over each other.

"You can call me Guin—"

"I think you just smiled at me—"

"—Guin is shorter, and my little brother could never say Guinevere—"

"—Must be my holistic, southern charm—"

"—I mean, you can call me Guin, if you want to—"

Jase squeezes my elbow, grins crookedly, and takes a quick breath, the first one in what feels like hours. It pauses me. "I want to," he affirms, "so does this mean I'll be seeing more of you, Guin?"

My jaw is sore from the smile that has forced its way across my face, so, for once, I'm left without any sort of comeback. But there's no time for me to make any type of silence awkward, because, from somewhere to our left, a child screams.

I jump, my arm ripping from Jase's, nearly popping him underneath the chin.

Jase's honey eyes are staring past me; a hand jumps to his brown hair, rubbing against the shorn sides. "What was that?" he asks, but I can't even nod or shake my head because I've already located the sudden sound.

I clench my fist around my ring finger.

Good news: I've found Emily Collins.

Bad news: so has my brother, and he's talking to her demon.

O * O * O

"Has your brother shown any signs of Seeing?" You looked over at me from behind the page of the book you were reading in order to watch my reaction. I had always been protective of Leo, and you knew that.

I strung my fingers together and placed them in my lap. "No."

And it was the truth, at the time. But I understood why you were asking: for four years, I had failed you. For fours years, I had disappointed myself, unable to locate the gift of portal Sight within me that I wanted to use to honor my mother.

To avenge her murder.

To use her talent of seeing portals in the changed world you envisioned. There was only one drawback: I hadn't received the ability to see the Void portals.

So that had left only one other person in your immediate reach that you could use: Leo.

"But he's barely even five years old yet," I said, noting your expression that was now a light extinguished.

You straightened the cuffs of your collared, white shirt. Prim, crisp, orderly. There was something about you that was always reliable in the same way that a line could always be counted on to be straight. "Gifts like these sometimes only emerge under duress," you pointed out, setting down the heavy book you were using as research. "I've been looking through the Seers' archives."

"How did you get permission to do that?"

Your lips threatened a smile at my surprised tone. "Not everyone is as sullen as yourself, Vera."

I huffed. "I'm not sullen, Fancy British Pants."

"We call them trousers, actually."

"Oh, my god, you're the worst. Besides, it probably helps that you live here in the Halls," I pointed out. It was unheard of for anyone other than a Seer to live their whole lives in the Orbs Hall, among the Shelves. I'd always found that a rather fascinating part of your story, though it was one that you hardly spoke of.

"Do you ever miss the Peripherals?" I asked.

Your jaw popped. "Would you?"

I shook my head, biting my lip. "I don't think so, except my family is there."

"Don't you find it odd that the Seers separate us like that, making us choose between families and duty?"

"If it weren't for Leo and my dad, I would stay here. With you."

You watched me silently, your eyes so heavy that I held my breath, not knowing when I would be able to take another. Just when I was about to gasp noisily, you waved a dismissive hand at me. "This is all besides the point, Vera. We were talking about the portal Sight. Now, what we need is something that will scare the gift out of hiding, a shock value. Duress."

Though the word slid from your tongue easily, duress hardly sounded pleasant, and my fingers clenched into the stiff material of my jeans. "We can't hurt Leo," I argued on instinct.

When you met my defiant stare, your gaze sharpened in reaction. I was the flint, and you were the spark that would ignite the realms. "I wasn't thinking of Leo, Vera," you clarified, tawny eyes boring into my own. "I was thinking about you."

I looked into your face—found myself truly looking—and, for the first time that I could remember, my breaths stuttered to a halt, thoughts falling uselessly from my brain and onto the floor. It was like fourteen was a magical age that had struck me with the ability to see you not just as Jericho Crosse, my sworn Comrade, but as Jericho Crosse, a sixteen-year-old boy. I realized that I liked what I saw.

The faith you seemed to have in me strummed a low chord within me. "You think I still have the ability?"

Your hands were cold when they met my wrists, but I jolted like it was a spark. "I know that you have the ability, Guinevere Paqad. Mariamne was speaking of you. We both heard her, and Diviners can't lie."

Our clasped fingers laid between us. "She only said I was born with something within me," I countered, "but you're the one with the power to change everything."

The cuff of your sleeve smelled like starch as you brushed a strand of hair away from my cheek. "Together, then."

"We'll avenge our lost parents," I promised.

Your eyes hardened, an amber fossil that preserved your deepest secrets. "And my brother."

I so often forgot we had that in common because you hardly ever mentioned him: brothers, a firm tie that knotted us even closer. The pain in your voice was as tangible as the tightened line of your sharp jaw. I could do nothing but nod, but both of us knew I would have been more than willing to do whatever you asked of me. We were in this together, hand in hand, blood to blood.

You knew that I would have walked through any trial if it would have helped your dream come true.

The dream of tearing through every Void portal until you found the parents that the Conclave Council had abandoned.

I gripped your hands in return. "Jericho, we can do this."

"Of course we can do it," you amended, dropping my fingers and picking up the book again. "It just needs to be done faster."

_ _ _

Yikes, Leo! We must protect Leo at all costs!!

Thank you so much for reading!