I stared out my dorm room window as a group of friends walked past, all dressed up in costumes from a show I hadn't seen for Halloween.

I glanced down at the talisman. It hadn't left my sight in—how long was it?—some amount of time. And I wasn't sure I'd ever set it down ever again.

I also hadn't used it since I got it back from Harvey. It wasn't like I needed or wanted anything anyway.

"You know," Sierra's voice said from behind me, "you never did apologize for abandoning us at your mom's. And you were right. She really is a piece of work."

Well, we went back for them eventually. What more did they want from us? "Yep."

"What are you even looking at? If you want to go out for Halloween, all you have to do is say so."

"I don't."

She sighed. "Then I really don't know what the hell you want."

A long silence lulled between us before I finally spoke up. "I actually am sorry, Sierra. But you get why we did that, don't you?"

"I do. I just," she hesitated for a moment, "I just wish I could've been included in the super cool rescue mission. That would have been awesome."

It was not awesome. Dominic looked and sounded like he was about to die for most of it.

But I didn't say that. It wasn't going to make me feel any better.

Before either one of us could change the subject, someone knocked on the door.

"Lindsay? Sierra?" Jack opened up the door just enough to peer inside. "You guys don't have any Halloween plans, do you?"

"Why would you assume that we don't have plans?" Sierra asked.

"Because you're sitting here looking out the window, probably," Jack said.

I nodded. I sure as hell didn't have any plans, and Halloween was supposed to be a good day for me and my dear talisman. At least I liked to imagine it that way.

"Well, if you want, there's this party that a few of the guys—not Harvey, obviously—are going to, and I figured I'd extend the invitation," Jack said.

Oh, what a great idea to spend some time with the guys whose memories I had erased! Good plan!

"That sounds like fun," Sierra said. "You wanna go, Lindsay?"

I shook my head. "I think I've had enough spooky excitement for this lifetime. Maybe next time, you know, after I die."

I turned around just in time to see Jack shut his eyes for a moment and pinch the bridge of his nose. "Okay, you go ahead and be like this. It's not gonna help anything."

"I don't need anything to help. I'm fine," I said.

The talisman heated up ever so slightly in my hand. Oh, shut up, talisman. You're not Pinnochio's nose or whatever. I don't need you calling me out on my bullshit too.

Sierra glanced back at Jack, then at me. "So you're not okay with us going to the party then?"

I shook my head. "Of course, I'm fine with it. You guys have fun. Seriously. I'm just not into it tonight."

Jack raised an eyebrow.

"It's not a trick. I mean it. I'm not that crazy," I said.

"If you're sure," Jack said, and after Sierra grabbed her purse, they left me alone.

I let out a long sigh. "Well, looks like it's just you and me now. I know normally our conversations are in my head, but that's just so people don't think I'm crazy."

I paused for a moment, and when the talisman didn't respond, I bit my cheek. It wasn't much of a conversation, really, except when it found some way to tell me what it needed to.

Sometimes it called me a liar, sometimes it told me that what I really needed was for someone to push me and give me a reason to be a better version of myself, and sometimes it let me know that despite my mistakes, I was eventually going to be okay.

Other times it just turned the whole sky into an evil latte. I still wasn't entirely sure what the deal was with that.

"Dammit, Lindsay, would you turn that thing off for one second? I was trying to take a nap, and that stupid feeling came back, and—"

I interrupted the voice at the door. "Dominic, you don't have to bitch at me through the door. It's open."

He opened up the door. "As I was saying, dammit, Lindsay, would you—" He trailed off when he saw me at the window. "You look like you're waiting for your husband to return from the war, but you don't know that he's dead yet."

"Wow, that's nice," I said.

He smiled at his own joke. "Look, you don't have to let my near-death experience bother you so much. I'm fine. You're fine. Everyone is fine."

"I don't know why everyone thinks I'm upset or something. Just because I don't want to go out for Halloween, that doesn't mean that something's bothering me."

"You're staring forlornly out a window. Excuse us for getting the wrong idea."

A small smile tugged at my lips. "So why did the talisman call you over this time?"

"You tell me."

"I don't know. Maybe it thought I was lonely, which I'm not, because I have absolutely no problem having a one-sided conversation out loud with it, or maybe it thought that you're the only person I really want to be around right now," I said.

"It sure is crazy that it would think that. That's certainly not the case," he said as he nudged me on my arm so I would move to make a spot for him next to me.

"Absolutely not. I can't stand you, and I have no idea why we just seem to always—" I paused as he sat down next to me— "end up together."

We had long suspected that somehow we were connected through the talisman, and whether Dr. Reed's speculation that it once belonged to Dominic's ancestors was true or not, it was mine now. And even if that explained the original connection, it certainly didn't explain eveything that followed between us.

"So what are we going to do with it?" Dominic asked. "With the talisman, with us?"

I shook my head. "I haven't really thought that far ahead."

"Well, maybe you should."

I bit my cheek. Well, maybe those thoughts were scary.

***

I knocked on Dr. Reed's office door. She was much better at having thoughts than I was.

"Oh my god, look. I don't give a shit about how you need to pass my class to graduate, Alex. Get your head out of your ass, study the damn PowerPoints, and quit bothering me when I'm trying to work," Dr. Reed spat from inside.

I cleared my throat. That was harsh. "It's me, Dr. Reed. Lindsay Hughes."

Her voice chippered up. "Come on in."

I took my usual seat at her desk and set the talisman on the surface.

She looked down at it. "Something on your mind?"

I nodded. "Surprisingly, there usually is when I visit you. So I think there's something to your idea that this once belonged to the OG Oregon Trail family of Dominic Bachmann, but how did it end up in my hands then?"

Dr. Reed let out a chuckle. "Lindsay, I don't know. I wish I could be more helpful to you, but I specialize in items for ceremonial purposes, not real magic. Maybe it knew you were impulsive enough to find it and he wasn't. Or, if you're more of a hopeless romantic than I could ever dream of being, maybe it found his soulmate."

I didn't respond to that. We had only known each other since the beginning of the semester, when I got him to hate me, and he got me to hate him. I certainly wasn't that much of a hopeless romantic.

"Or, you know, that theory could be flat-out wrong," Dr. Reed continued. "That's the beauty of something like anthropology. You speculate, speculate, speculate. Sometimes you'll come up with an answer that makes sense and fits in with other history you know. And sometimes you won't, and all you can do is appreciate what's left from people who thought it was important enough to make and keep."

I looked down at the talisman.

Well, how could I not keep it safe and sound with me when I had the pressure of Dominic's ancestors on my shoulders? That was the theory that made the most sense to me, after all.

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Hello, and thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate your support throughout this whole book. We're really getting close to finally finishing it up (after more than two years of writing, so congratulations to me).

So for today's question, what are some questions that you think still need answered? It has been a long time since I started this book, and I've forgotten parts of it over that time, so this will be helpful for me to finish the story and clean it up with edits and revisions. Plenty of stuff needs cut, and more explanations need to be added.