Ha. Okay. Nah, she's having me on. I hear Carmen gasp, literally audibly gasp beside me, and I swear this whole thing is a joke. My instinct is to shoot my gaze towards Annabel, who's sitting cross-legged on the rug below us, and her instinct must be to do the same because her eyes are already locked on me when I turn to her. She shakes her head. She's just as clueless as I am. No memories triggered, then.

Before I can formulate any of my thoughts into words, not that I probably could anyway, Maeve stands up and begins shuffling through a cupboard in the small oak table in the corner of the room. She returns with a pile of photos, and hands them to me.

"You don't recognise him? No one ever mentioned him to you? At the hospital?"

I've never seen the photos in my hands before, but they're all images of my family, and he's there. The stranger who's been in my head. He looks younger though, much younger. He looks about my age now from what I can tell in the later photos. He looks like my dad. No, he looks like me, to an almost eerie extent.

All this time of having a single photo of my family, just one snapshot of eight years--one snapshot of nearly forty years if we're going by my parents' ages when they died--seeing all this now feels alien. It's like for the first time ever, I'm fully realising they were people. Real, actual people. The visions haven't even been able to do that, but these normal, boring family photos have finally made it click in my head. I feel sick.

"Do you have a bathroom?" I suddenly blurt out.

"What? Can you hold--"

Ava is silenced by Carmen, who gives her a nudge, and a look I can't quite see because of the angle I'm sitting.

"Oh, sorry," Ava says with complete sincerity in her voice.

"First door on your right when you leave the room," John offers.

It's not until I'm in the bathroom that I realise how bizarre my behaviour was just then. I just needed a moment. I need a moment. I'm not in the room two seconds when Annabel manifests herself with me. She's lucky I don't actually need to go. I can hear Ava, Carmen, John and Maeve speaking in the room next door, but I can't make out anything that's being said.

"Felix, are you okay?" Annabel questions.

None of this makes sense. Why does Connor look so much older in my visions? He looks about my dad's age. Older, even. How could none of the adults in my life after the crash have known about my brother? How is that even possible? I try to take my mind back to conversations with my grandmother before she died, but she never mentioned him. Her alzheimers meant she barely mentioned any of the family though.

"Felix? Felix, hey, look at me."

Why does he look the same age as my dad in my visions? That doesn't make--Wait, of course it makes sense. I'm seeing through the eyes of an eight-year-old in those visions. Every small kid thinks all adults look the same age. The only reason I see the rest of my family accurately is because I knew what they looked like beforehand, from the family photo. My present day self had no clue what Connor looked like, or who he was until now. That must be it. Okay. Okay, that makes sense. Something makes sense.

A pair of cold hands clasp my face, and I'm suddenly brought to the present.

"Felix, you're panicking. It's okay, just look at me for a minute. It's okay."

Annabel stares at me. Her eyes are big and hypnotising, and her presence is warm. How could she turn dark? Why would she do that to me?

"It was you. You turned dark, I saw it."

"What?" Annabel lets go of my face. "No, I wouldn't do that."

"I know you wouldn't now, but you would then. You did then. I saw it."

Annabel shakes her head, but she doesn't deny it because she knows she can't. "I--I don't remember Connor. How can I not remember him? I recognised John the moment I saw him, and Maeve. Why can't I remember our brother?"

It looks like she's about to cry. I don't reply to her because I don't know the answer. There's a knock on the door, and then a voice. It's Carmen, asking me if I'm alright. I take a breath, and tell her I'm fine. Annabel is looking at the tiled wall, her eyes distant.

"It doesn't matter," I say to her. "You're good now, I know that. Everyone knows that. Maybe that's why you're stuck here in the first place, to fix it. That could be the unfinished business Clara was talking about back at the manor house." Or finishing what you started. I shoo away the thought away the second it enters my head. "But this is good. Connor, I mean. It's really good, right?"

"I don't..." Annabel shakes her head, then looks up. "It wasn't me. I remember things, Felix. I remember being here, in this house, with John and Maeve. I remember before everything went crazy, fragmented conversations that would make no sense for me to remember if I was the one who was bad. They're still more like flashes than fully-fledged memories, but--but still memories." She sighs. "I'm not categorically saying there's no way it was me, it just... it just doesn't feel right." There's a brief silence. "Maybe I just don't want to believe it."

I don't want to argue with her, so I just say, "we'll figure it out."

I'm surprised, and kind of embarrassed, when I re-emerge into the living room and realise almost fifteen minutes have passed since I excused myself. I'm guessing Ava and Carmen explained to the Murrays how I'm partial to a breakdown every now and then because no one acknowledges my strange behaviour when I return.

I take the family photos from my seat before I sit back down, and throw them over to Annabel on the floor to give her a chance to look through them. I look back up at John and Maeve to see them with perplexed faces.

"Oh, they didn't tell you?" I ask, nodding at Ava and Carmen. "Annabel kind of stuck around."

Granted, that's not the best explanation, but John and Maeve seem to catch on easily. I apologise, not quite sure what for, and bite the bullet by asking them what they know about everything.

"Well, what the other spirit talking family told you makes sense. Daniel's family, his mother especially, was frustrated with him. Your father really wanted you kids to have normal lives. I think he was pushed a lot as a youngster. He was one of the stronger spirit talkers in the family, and Roisin really tried to test his limits growing up, and he didn't want that for you kids. Your grandmother took his... parenting style personally, and saw it as him trying to kill the spirit talking gene, or something crazy like that. Least that's what Daniel would tell us." John pauses. "He never tried to make you kids hide your abilities, he just wanted you to be careful with them."

From the vision I had where my father was alive, I figure that makes sense. He didn't seem like an arsehole. Way more respectful towards spirits than me too.

"He never told Roisin, or any of the extended family as far as I'm aware, about you being able to physically see spirits when he realised himself. I'm assuming you know that even non-spirit talking children can occasionally speak to and see spirits..."

I glance at Ava, and she nods with a shrug. Huh.

"...But when you were still babbling away at them at five, he realised there was a little more to it. I think he was afraid to tell the rest of the family. We told him he should, as did your mother, but he was sometimes a little too protective over you kids, I think. It wasn't until things... started going wrong that he finally told them."

"Someone turned dark?" I interject. "Do you know who?"

"It's a little complicated," Maeve chimes in.

"Everyone did," Annabel suddenly speaks below me.

Before I have time to question it, Maeve continues. "I think most of the family did."

Is Annabel remembering things? Is she included in her 'everyone'?

"What?" Ava asks the question.

"Other than Daniel's sister, I think most of your extended family turned dark. Daniel was one of the only ones who didn't."

I can't decide if this is better or worse than Annabel being the evil one. Which is worse? Every member of your not-so-close family dedicating themselves towards kidnapping and potentially killing you, or one member of your close family doing it?

"It's possible," Ava pipes up. "It usually starts with one person, and sometimes their reach can go beyond themselves. It would make sense for whoever turned dark first to try and influence the wider family. It's a crazy thought because one person turning dark is rare enough, but it's not impossible."

Ah. So it could still be Annabel. Oh great, so it's not a case of close family trying to kill me versus distant family trying to kill me. It's both.

John rubs his hands together as he speaks, and the melodious tilt in his voice is jarring. "You have to bear with us. The spirit world often felt incredibly confusing to us normies, especially now, twelve or so years on." John pauses, then lowers his tone. "Before we lost touch with you--a year or so before the crash, I suppose, I helped your parents forge documents. I'm a deputy chief constable," John explains. Damn. "Like I said, we never fully got our heads around everything, but you were in danger. Your parents had said the rest of the family had turned against you, and they were terrified."

"Absolutely terrified. It was unnerving to watch," Maeve adds.

"I think something happened to Daniel's sister... Her name escapes me."

"Rachel?" I offer, remembering the sister of my dad's the Gruffudds mentioned.

John clicks his fingers, and smiles. "Yes, that's it. Rachel." His grin disappears completely. "Yes, Rachel. I think the rest of the family may have... I'm not sure, Daniel wasn't even sure. He thinks they may have... hurt her."

I rub my hands against my face, and barely notice the pain when I rub my cheek a little too hard. Jesus Christ.

"Connor was living in England at the time," Maeve says, and I'd almost completely forgotten about him. My brother. Bloody hell. "He was at university, away from it all as far as we were aware. John helped your parents with documents for him too, but they were hesitant about it. I'm not even sure Daniel told him about what was happening. He was always so focused on keeping you kids' safe, it wouldn't surprise me if he never said a word to Connor until he had no choice to."

"Knowing Daniel," John mutters.

"Connor was the last one we ever spoke to," Maeve's voice cracks as she finishes the sentence. "It must have been, gosh, I don't know, probably a few months before the accident. He called us in a panic, asking us what we knew about everything, and if we'd been in touch with your parents. He'd had a frantic call from your parents, and had no idea where they were."

"He found us eventually," I mumble as what could've happened if he hadn't hits me.

We leave the Murrays' house with Connor's full name, date of birth, my family's old address, and a bunch of photos. They even gave me my brother's university name and theoretical graduation year. I can't deny they know their stuff. While we wait for the taxi in silence, I lie down onto the pavement and stare at the near cloudless blue sky. What the actual fuck?

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A/N: err, surprise! As you can probably figure, I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts on this chapter. What are you thinking on the revelation of Connor? Does it feel fully out of the blue? Or in hindsight, sort of make sense?