Isabella sat in a squat on the front step of the Foxworthy Hotel, frowning at a crack in her family insignia. The emblem bronzed into a marble plate had been there for fifty years. Now, a jagged rift split the "Fox" from "worthy" and left each half of the family crest on opposite sides of what looked like a dried-up river. The "earthquake" induced by Jack Heel last Christmas had caused it. Jack. The frightening mad man was gone now, thank goodness. According to the Midnight Brotherhood and the Light Council, Jack fled the Violet City but was still underground somewhere in Europe.

"Watch out, Miss Foxworthy," a man in a yellow hard hat and an orange vest called out to the sixteen-year-old as he slid out of the hotel lobby with another construction worker. They carried a long plank for what Isabella had no idea, the renovations were almost finished. She looked down at the emblem again. Well, almost finished. She couldn't wait for them to fix the crest. She'd hardly paid attention to it growing up, taken it for granted in a way, but in the back of her mind, she'd felt pride at its existence. After her parents died, it came to mean something more to her. It was a reminder of the family she didn't have any more.

"Sorry!" She leapt to her feet to give the workers room.

"Just taking this around to the theater at the side entrance," the man announced to her as if it were very important for her to know.

"Sounds good," she said, turning to find her friend Cleo, standing in the lobby door, plump arms folded over her curvy frame.

"We've been summoned," said Cleo, sounding bored.

"By Elyse?" Isabella asked, brows lifting as the hot dry winds of the day kicked up and slapped across her face.

"She's letting this power thing go to her head," said Cleo, referring to the former waitress turned assistant manager to the hotel.

Isabella drew in a breath. The air was nasty. Hot and dry and turning her constitution a bit dizzy. The Santa Ana Winds. She followed Cleo inside quickly, reveling in the air conditioning swirling around the paint-smelly lobby. "She just wants to do a good job," said Isabella, noticing that Cleo's twin brother, Xander, moving away from a small group of teenagers clustered near the thickening epicenter of the crowd gathering to hear Elyse's announcements.

"Hey!" Xander called out. "We saved you a spot up front," the pudgy blond fifteen-year-old said, growing closer, nodding toward the people he'd just left.

Isabella stiffened, taking in the tall muscular but lithe form of one of the other boys Xander had been standing by. Seth Logan. He'd grown at least an inch since she'd met him, and his shoulders had broadened. He was fully a man now at eighteen. Not that it mattered; he wasn't hers to admire. "I'm okay, Cleo," she told her friend before Xander got to them. "I'm going to just wait right here. You go stand closer to the others."

Cleo's right eyebrow shot up. "Why are you still avoiding Seth? That stupid book again?" she asked, referring to the book Isabella's half-brother, Colin, had taken from their family vault and given to her. It was a book written by a man named Joseph Gaut filled with all sorts of postcards, pictures, old clippings and hand-written notes about their world. It was very well organized and very old. She considered it a link to the truth about who they all were.

Isabella pressed her lips together. "I don't think that's any of your business."

"He wants to be with you, Izzy," she said.

Isabella snorted. "Because he's bound to me as my 'guardian.' That's the only reason. He even said it himself. And—"

"The book confirms it. Ya-da-ya-da."

"It's my choice, okay?" Isabella said before chewing on her bottom lip.

"Whatever you say," said Cleo, moving ahead swiftly and snatching Xander's arm to pull him back toward the main crowd and away from a grouchy Isabella, who found a spot behind a tall plant in a comfortable leather chair to listen but not participate in Elyse's meeting. The hotel was crowded with staff, mostly old, some new, but still bare because there were no guests to be found.

Isabella looked out of the large picture window that faced the front drive of the hotel. No cars waited to be valeted. No guests moved about. The Foxworthy Hotel had been closed for an entire month for renovations. The doors would open tomorrow at 1 pm to a lot of fanfare with the press present, as well as a special guest Elyse and the concierge, Rolf, had arranged upon Catherine's order. There was no way they'd fix the cracked Foxworthy emblem before then, and that mattered to Isabella. It just wasn't right for people to flood the hotel and have it so obviously imperfect.

Her grandmother had put a new one on special order, but Isabella had been told that morning that there was some sort of delay, and now she was not here to deal with it. Isabella turned around and tuned her ears in to listen to Elyse's update about tomorrow.

"Everyone, we will be re-opening tomorrow. And we will be having a very special guest—Serena Silver."

"The author?" she heard Cleo squeak. The staff exchanged chatter. Isabella stood up. She knew who Serena Silver was. She was the woman who'd been wanting to write a book on The Foxworthy family for years. Fashioned herself to be some sort of expert on them. Her grandmother was letting her come to the hotel? Isabella pushed her way through the crowd toward her friends.

"I've never heard of her," Seth was saying.

"She writes my favorite mystery series. It's full of history and language and, just everything," Cleo explained. "I started reading it when I was about seven."

"Those books are like five hundred pages a piece," said Lana, who had joined the staff recently to work in the Foxworthy's gift shop for her first summer job. "I didn't start reading them until I was at least ten." Lana was smart like Cleo, but different. Cleo was eccentric where Lana was practical. Isabella considered both of them friends, but she'd been closest to Lana the longest. But then Cleo was the only girl in her cohort, the group of people she'd recently learned were bound to her by some sort of crazy cosmic Empath Society law because she was what was known as a "diadem" child, a specially gifted empath. Her cohort included not only Cleo, but Seth, his brother Micah and Cleo's twin, Xander. This meant they were bonded in a special way, which Isabella suspected made her best friend a bit jealous. Of course, Cleo had her own reasons for rivalry with Lana. It seemed Cleo's twin, Xander had taken a great liking to the striking cocoa-skinned girl and thought she could do no wrong.

Lana had only been working there for about three weeks before hotel had closed its doors. Most of the full-time staff had taken vacations with pay until last week when they had been summoned to return to prepare for the reopening.

"Oh, you read her books, too?" Cleo asked.

"Yeah, but I'm more into dystopian novels and classics."

Micah shushed them. "Elyse is still talking." The tall thin boy stared up at the woman waiting for everyone to focus on her again.

Cleo rolled her eyes. It was no secret that Micah had a large crush on Elyse. They all quieted to listen to the rest of what the assistant manager was saying.

"Ms. Silver has a special announcement for the press, and she will do it right from our hotel lobby. Won't that be fun?" said the fair-skinned former waitress. She wore a simple black dress with large gold hoop earrings with glittering stars between them. "So in honor of our special guest we will have a dinner in the Rooftop Ballroom following her announcement. That is all. Thank you."

Isabella turned to walk away. "Where are you going?" Cleo asked.

"Up to my room."

"To read that book again?" she asked.

Isabella did not answer. Lana followed her.

"Hey, I'm not the biggest fan of Cleo, but she's right about one thing. You probably need to lay off that book."

"You know you can go home now, Lana. The announcement's over, and there's nothing left to do."

"Thanks a lot, best friend. Seth isn't the only one you're brushing off."

"I don't mean it like that," said Isabella. "There's just a lot to do tomorrow, so you might as well go rest."

"And leave you to your book?" Isabella hit the elevator button and waited for it to travel down.

"Tell your family I said hi," she said as the doors opened. When she got inside she saw Seth heading for them with elongated strides. She slumped back against the wall of the elevator after the doors shut just before he'd reached them. She wasn't being nice. She hated herself for it, but sometimes being nice wasn't the answer. Her mind shifted to the guest Elyse had booked. Serena Silver. She wasn't sure at all how she felt about that. She didn't want some woman coming and making things up about her family.

Once the hotel re-opened fully, Isabella's grandmother wanted Theophilus to host a few local directors and do events based around the Foxworthy family history along with a film screening or two. Her grandmother, who was set to return late that night, had also instructed Rolf and Elyse to find a special guest related to the Foxworthy history while she was out of town attempting to secure investors.

Isabella did not understand how her grandmother could keep so focused on the hotel when she knew the whole Empath Society was bustling beneath their feet, but that world wasn't news to her like it was for Isabella and her friends. Seth seemed fixated on it, or at least, fixated on making sure whatever ills it held did not come back to haunt Isabella. It would have been sweet, but the fact that his role in her cohort of five was as her guardian diluted the sentiment. She wanted someone who really cared about her, not a guy who was forced into it.

Of course, she really did care about Seth. That was the whole problem. She oftentimes felt like going back underground to hide from her feelings. Down there, she didn't feel as fragmented. But there were more frightening things that kept her from wanting to go back Underground beyond the fact that the portal was closed until two weeks before the end of the year for everyone it seemed except for Colin. Or at least, that's what people kept telling her. She had a feeling it wasn't that simple. The Light Council had passes someone had told her once, but they supposedly only used them in an emergency. Still, that meant there was a way down outside of the restrictions. No one would talk to her about it, of course. She had a feeling they were just trying to make her less afraid that Jack would come back and snatch her in the night. Isabella wasn't afraid. She knew she was foolish not to be, but she'd come to realize that life was going to do whatever it wanted to her. She just had to stand up to it. And the way to do that was to learn everything she could about her world and who she was.

Isabella plopped down on her bed and pulled out the large book she had tucked under it, Our World, and began to read.

***

7:35am. Isabella shoveled cream of wheat with sugar and butter into her mouth. It was something she used to eat as a little girl and had recently taken up in the morning for comfort. She had to be downstairs by eight. Her grandmother had delayed her trip another day, which was fine with her. She had the place to herself. Her mind drifted to Seth. He'd called her last night, something he hadn't attempted in weeks. She did not pick up. Maybe she was being a coward about the whole thing, but she thought it was for the best that they remain friends. At the rate things were going she was probably not going to have even that with him. You needed to speak to be friends, didn't you?

Tonight, it would be hard to avoid him. Seth and his family's band were playing in the lobby lounge at 6pm with her old music teacher turned mentor, Theophilus. Isabella was happy she'd been asked to simply greet guests at the door with Cleo and Xander rather than perform. She wouldn't have to speak to the Logan brothers at all.

Isabella finished her breakfast and went to finish getting dressed. She didn't bother with any makeup and swept her dark wavy long hair back into a ponytail. As she left her suite, she was thankful that the top apartments had not been affected by the construction. At least, this summer, she had her peace in her own realm. The theater, her new favorite place aside from Betty's Basement—a commissary style restaurant at the subterranean level of the hotel—was open for business on Friday and Saturday nights and all day Sunday as the construction crews had gone home so there wouldn't be any pounding away to stop their enjoyment of the movies. The Beatrice Foxworthy Theater played first run movies on Fridays and Saturdays but ran classics and independent features on Sundays. But now things being half open would end and the bustle of the hotel would be back. She wasn't one for crowds, and she secretly wanted to hold onto the peace she'd gained spending time with her new family, which included Colin and in some ways her cohort, too. But now, things were going to get back to normal. She was both grateful and scared out of her mind. She needed to keep the Foxworthy legacy intact, but she also needed her new family to stay solid. The best way to do that was to keep their new routines going no matter what.