When I woke, coughing and crying, I was cradled in Lucas's arms. I was on the bed; he was kneeling on the floor. And the minute he saw I was awake, he gripped me in an embrace of relief. I was breathing so heavily, and when he let me go, held me at arm's length, I saw that he had damp cheeks.

I tried to laugh, but my throat hurt. "You? Crying?" I croaked out.

He quickly put his hands over his face, wiped a little at it, and when he removed them, there were no traces of tears beyond the one or two sniffs that followed.

"Are you all right?"

I pulled myself back from him, sat up on my own. My head swam, ached, and my throat was sore, but I felt okay. "Yes, I think so."

"You were out for about thirteen minutes."

I just breathed, took in air, filled my lungs. We sat there like that for several moments, he on the floor, I on the bed, and the two of us just reacclimated. After a while, Lucas stood and walked away from me a bit.

"I hope that worked, because I'm not going to do it again."

"Hey—" I gained his attention and smiled when he looked my way. "It did."

In spite of what he'd felt about what I'd asked him to do, he became suddenly animated. I told him to sit down next to me, but he preferred to stand, so I told him what I'd remembered, start to finish.

"I was in a church, that big, fancy church in San Judo, the one that's all done up with stained glass windows and pillars and everything. It was really beautiful. There wasn't anyone in there, as far as I could see in my memory. It was just me, and I was waiting for Henry, at these rows of candles. You know, the ones that ask for a donation if you want to light one. And as I waited, I remember feeling . . . sad. Really sad, and nervous. Maybe nervous that he wouldn't come. But--then I saw him, walking toward me in all the shadows the candles created, in this sort of spooky light, and when he reached me, he said--well, things from an old memory of mine, something I remembered a long while ago, back when all this started. A conversation, but I never knew where or when it was. Now I know: we were talking about how he had to kill a man, that in four months time, he'd have to kill someone, and he didn't want to. But I tried to convince him to do it. I remembered all that a long time ago, but I didn't realize it was a part of this larger memory. I never knew the next part--what Henry said after that; it was something strange . . . that no matter how many times they did this to us, we'd find each other again, like we always did. That they would keep trying, but they'd never succeed, and our best chances were, as I'd said, to play along. But he'd learned something, and he wanted to tell me, in case we were separated later. And that's when he turned to the candles. He told me that he'd had a memory about a special candle, in the White Bear. If both or one of us ever got there, he said, we had to light the blue flame, when it's completely dark. And I asked him what the White Bear was, but he didn't know. He hadn't remembered that part."

Lucas waited a moment, then asked, "Is that it?"

"Yes." No, I thought to myself. Then he drew near, took my face in his hands, electrified my skin . . . and kissed me by the hundred burning candles, and everything melted like wax. And I was still warm and fluttery from reliving it, even now that I was awake. But I didn't tell him that part. What would it have mattered to Lucas?

"We risked your life for that? We already thought we might have to light it."

"At night. In the dark. And he said, specifically, the blue flame." I would've risked it again to go back to that kiss.

He scowled. "I still don't understand how it will help us. And how do you light a blue flame?"

"A gas flame is blue."

"There's no gas in the candle."

I stood up. "It's dark, now. Let's go and look at it. Maybe something will become obvious. You have a lighter, don't you?"

He confirmed that he did, and away we went, quietly out of our room, down into and through the restaurant, and out onto the back patio. The owners of the place lived in the building, so we made sure to be extra careful. The patio was well-lit; above, the sky was so clear we could see a thousand stars and a full moon, all of which shed light on the picnic tables and the giant candle. I strode immediately to it but wasn't tall enough to get a good look at it; the thing towered above me, was at least a foot or two taller than the fence itself. When Lucas, who was much taller than I was, looked at it, though, he noticed something.

"It has three wicks," he said in a hushed voice.

I put things together. "I bet they burn in different colors. Light them."

He looked down at me, questioningly. "Are you sure?"

"Yes. We'll put them out quickly if none burn blue."

"All right." I thought I sensed resignation in his words, but he did as I asked, opening the glass lantern, removing the paper sign inside, and flicking his lighter until it touched and caught on each wick.

We were immediately gratified. Two of the wicks burned gold; the other burned blue. Lucas quickly put out the yellow flames with his bare fingers, and he backed away as we watched the blue flame glow against the night. It was really rather bewitching to see it. The flame itself grew tall and danced in little ripples, though no breeze could touch it inside the glass lantern. And it was blue--like, sapphire blue. Not a gas fire blue. I stood rooted next to Lucas as we watched it burn.

But moments passed, and neither of us was sure what we were supposed to be looking for, what was supposed to be happening. The more time that passed, the more anxious I became, but what had I thought would happen? Lighting a candle would magically open a door? Make some apparition appear and guide us somewhere? Create some explosion of meaning? Lucas must also have been growing impatient, because he began searching the patio, looking for any changes. But then he got up on one of the picnic tables, and he quickly motioned for me to do the same. I stood up on the opposite table, and he pointed off into the distance, to our left. Way out, in the flat prairieland, a small blue light flickered and blinked--could it be a signal flame? Had lighting ours been a message to someone else to light the other?

Our minds were in sync; neither of us had to say a word before we exited the patio through a door in the fence and set off toward the sister flame, leaving the patio candle to continue burning.

Though it was the middle of the night, the fields were flat and well-lit by the thousand welcoming starlights in the skies above. We moved quickly, checking every so often to make sure the candle behind us still burned. It was a lot farther away than it had looked--the other flame. It must have been at least a mile before we neared it and could make out a small body of water, not more than a large pond, and, across the way, a small, ramshackle building, nestled in a shallow dip in the ground. The building was a square in shape and certainly housed no people. Its roof was caved in; its windows had cracked and fallen out long ago. And yet, there in front of the house was a lantern identical to the one on the patio of the White Bear Hotel, and in it burned a candle with a blue flame.

This was where we needed to be--I was sure of it! But, could this really be the entrance to some devious lair, where people in masks with a million resources at their disposal could bring others and hold them hostage . . . could this really be . . . Xanadu?

"Before we go in there," Lucas said, and I turned to face him, "do you really want to do this?"

"You don't even have to ask me that."

"There will be people, probably bent on killing or incapacitating us. How do you want to go about it?"

I glanced at the land around us, thinking. "We should make it up as we go, but we should have a code word, or a signal, in case things go south and we need to get violent. Something kind of . . . subtle."

Lucas watched me speak, then suddenly reached out and laced his left-hand fingers through mine. "I'll take your hand, like this."

"All right, that's fine," I replied, thinking that was a relatively normal and sensible signal, wouldn't rouse much suspicion, but then I realized he was holding on a little too long, and I grew flustered. "Lucas . . ."

He released a breath that sounded as if he'd been holding it for a long time. "I know, Nadia, that . . . we're not . . ." He closed his eyes for a moment, keeping my hand in his, then opened them again. "I know. But whatever happens, I want to tell you--I've been trying to tell you for a long time--"

I stood there, petrified, afraid of what he might say to me, knowing I couldn't return any feelings he might have for me if that's where he was going with this and dreading the awkwardness of having to say as much. But he didn't actually go there. Instead, he calmed the fervor out of his features, became his serious, distant self again. Sighed.

"The reason Henry didn't tell you that I was coming, at that carnival--"

He had my full attention, now, though a moment earlier I'd been praying he'd stop talking.

"--it wasn't that he wanted it to happen. He kept it from you because we were trying to evade Amirah, or figure out how to fool her. He--Henry--he knew that we were coming and Amirah would hurt you if she got a hold of you, so we found a way to get you to come with me. Henry . . . trusted me with you. And he couldn't tell you about it or about any other plans we made because . . . because Amirah can read your mind."

I took that in. "She can read my mind? I know we can communicate through our thoughts, like you and Henry, but--"

"Maybe it's because she spent so much time near you, watching you; I don't know. But she knows what you're thinking. And if Henry had told you what we were doing, she would've read it in your thoughts and found out."

"Why didn't he tell me later, at the mansion? It wouldn't have mattered at that point."

"He wanted to get you and him out of there, the night we stayed. He didn't want her to know, but she must've gotten suspicious, because she stayed by you the whole time. Wouldn't let you out of her sight. You saw how dangerous she is."

A breeze picked up and cooled my cheeks, and I realized that Lucas was still holding my hand. Slipping my fingers out of his, I thought of the anger I'd felt toward Henry, how I'd let my pride separate us. And then I wondered something: "Why are you telling me this, right now?"

His hair shifted gently across his crystal eyes, and they caught the starlight. "There's no reason for you to be angry with him, now. If you need to be with him--I just thought you should know."

My heart felt a sudden pity for Lucas. That he couldn't have what I had with Henry with Amirah. That I'd forced him to do something to me against his will. That he'd helped me so much and all I could offer him in return were words: "Thank you, for everything." I said it with the utmost sincerity and he, without an expression of any kind, merely accepted what I'd said and gestured toward the building, indicating we get a move on.

Cautiously, we approached. As we neared the place, Lucas gave me the air gun and got himself the handgun we'd taken off the man in the tunnel. Both of us were on high alert, watching for any sign of movement. The closer we drew to the building, the more obvious it became that it was a dilapidated old shack, but there burned the blue flame. Someone had to have lit it. It had to mean something, all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere. We reached the lantern post, looked up at the candle still burning and then at each other, shrugging in confusion. The open doorway of the building was before us, blacker than the moon-lit night, but we went through it and saw that the interior of the small structure was not quite empty. To the right, the roof had caved all the way, scattering debris across the wooden floorboards; in the left corner, on the ground, was an open square, as if someone had pulled back a sliding trap door, and from that square emanated a faint gray light.

This was it! This was most definitely where we were meant to go. Lucas and I moved to the opening, making sure no one was in the building itself, hiding and waiting for us, and upon reaching it saw yet another set of stairs leading into the earth. I felt immediate apprehension--not another tunnel!--but was assuaged by the look of the stairs. They weren't earth or stone--they were smooth and pale blue, tiled. And as we followed them to their distant end, the light around us became stronger, until it felt as if we were in the interior of a building. This was much brighter than the other tunnels we'd seen. The blue tiles lined not only the stairs but also the walls and even, when we reached the bottom, the ceiling and floor of it. The tunnel looked almost pretty, actually, with the frequent and bright lights glowing against the shiny tiles. We stood for a moment, staring into the endless depths of that tunnel, which appeared to be lit all the way down rather than only three pairs at a time, and I was about to ask Lucas whether he thought we should start walking when a voice from behind scared me half to death.

We spun about to find a woman standing there, clean and crisp in a uniform of some kind, white pants and jacket. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight roll, and she was smiling the creepiest smile with the whitest teeth I'd ever seen. If anything, she reminded me of Ms. Indelicato, who'd met her end on the cliffs outside the beach house months ago. There was something too sterile, too pristing about her. But she looked entirely non-threatening, standing there with hands clasped in front of her, grinning at us, no apparent weapon.

Lucas and I didn't lower our guns, though.

"There's no need for that, I promise," she spoke, her voice a deep, lulling sound. "We've been waiting for you for a long time."

"Wh-where did you come from?" I asked.

She waved a finger behind her, and I realized that there was a space behind the stairs, that the way the tiles were arranged played a bit of a trick on the eyes, making it seem they were one smooth wall when there could be barely visible openings at any place the tiles appeared to meet.

"Where are Henry and Amirah?"

The woman cocked her head to the side, gave us an amused smile. "I'm not sure what you mean. But I'll have to leave any explanation to them. It's my role only to take you to Xanadu."

"You'll take us?" Lucas asked, narrowing his eyes. "I don't know that we'll let you take us anywhere."

She laughed. "Well, you can walk, but it's quite far."

"How do you intend to get us there?" I asked.

Lifting a hand to indicate we should wait, she slipped behind the staircase.

"What do you think?" I whispered to Lucas, not ready to lower my gun, anticipating absolutely anything to happen at any moment.

I could hear him breathing. "I don't know, yet . . ."

Suddenly, we heard the sound of an engine, and what looked like a small go-kart rolled out from under the stairs, the woman in its front. Behind it were two empty seats, presumably for us. As she drew near, she put the thing in neutral and left it running as she stepped up and out of it.

"It's twice as fast as you're used to in our other . . . locations." She lifted her shoulders a few times, bit her lower lip in excitement. "It's pretty fun, actually. You see a few yards ahead?" We turned to where she pointed, down the tunnel, and the floor suddenly descended about a foot, revealing tracks beneath. I spun to face her again, realizing she'd pushed some sort of hidden button in the wall,.

"What's to stop us from shooting you and taking it ourselves?" Lucas asked, and I found myself wondering the same thing.

Placing her hands in her pockets, the woman strode a little closer to us. "Well, you could do that, but I should tell you first that it runs on an eye scan. So unless you want to cut an eye out of my head and use it as your key--which would be a little morbid, even for you two--killing me is a relatively poor choice. Besides, I'm the least of your threats, now."

Lucas and I exchanged glances, not really liking how that sounded, but there was nowhere to go but forward. We couldn't turn back, now. And that woman was right--she didn't appear too dangerous, especially as she hadn't requested our weapons, hadn't even asked that we lower them.

Pulling him aside, I whispered quickly, "Let's go with her. If what's at the other end looks bad, we can use her as a hostage. Or as a shield, at least."

He agreed, and within moments, we were climbing into the go-kart, which our driver lowered onto the tracks, and were off in a blur of speed that took my breath entirely away.