I wiggled the firefighter teddy bear in front of Em's smiling face. It was one of her favorite toys. The damn thing would throw water from its pipe when you squeezed its belly—not the most appropriate toy for kids—and make the sound of a passing firetruck every single time someone was dumb enough to press its furry ears that stuck out of the yellow helmet it wore.

I had no idea why she liked it so much. The thing was loud and annoying, but she gave a wide smile and reached out for Mr. Flame Fluffs. I noticed the beginning of teeth peeking out from her gums, realizing how fast time passed. A year ago she hadn't even been there. Mom would walk around the house with a big belly—like Mr. Flame Fluffs'—and Dad would be right behind her, handing her chips and ice cubes every time she asked for some.

Our lives were average, boringly normal, and now, less than a year later, Em was here and my life was barely recognizable. It felt like a game of hide and seek, where my sanity and wellbeing were really at stake, and I'd always sucked at playing.

A set of keys grated in the lock and the front door swung open. Dad's heavy footsteps came in through the kitchen door soon after. He set down his briefcase on the countertop and loosened his tie before taking a look around. Emilia let out a joyful squeak, her hands dropping the bear to reach for Dad.

"Hey, sweetheart," he said tiredly at me as he walked up toward Em's chair. "Where's your mother?"

"Upstairs. She's cleaning Emilia's crib." I picked up Mr. Flame Fluffs and set him on the table. A little splash of water squirted out from the pipe. "She puked all over it."

"I see." He frowned, picking her up and rocking her lightly. I remembered how safe his arms felt every time they wrapped around me—like this morning—but now I couldn't bring myself to look at him or Mom the same way. Not after what Gideon said. "Daddy's little princess has an upset tummy?"

"And an upset crib that I now Mommy has to clean," Mom said, walking into the room with two rolled up blankets on her hands. "The mashed potatoes and banana she ate ended up all over the pillows and sheets. It's like a nuclear bomb of vomit went off in there. Maybe we should take her to a doctor."

"We can see how she does tonight. I can take her tomorrow morning, if you want," Dad offered while Mom headed into the washing room. When she came back, she rinsed her hands off in the sink. "Are you still going to Indiana?"

"You're going to Indiana?" I asked, my head snapping upwards. I'd been too focused on Mr. Flame Fluffs' leaking pipe to notice it was Mom who held Emilia now while Dad took some things out of the fridge to make dinner. "When?"

"Tomorrow. Mrs. Chapman wants me to organize the new expositions of some paintings we're receiving, and she thought I could put one or two of my works in there, too. See if anyone likes them," she said, her eyes shining with excitement. It didn't last long, though. "But I'm not sure if I feel comfortable leaving with everything that's been going on."

"Mom, it's gonna be fine," I said, unsure if I believed that statement myself.

"I'll take care of them," Dad said. He sounded somewhat indignant. "And Olivia is old enough now. I'm sure she knows how to avoid danger—right?"

"I still look both ways before crossing the road," I admitted, resting my chin against my palm. Mom didn't seem to appreciate the humor. She settled Emilia back on her chair and handed her the leaking bear before her expression darkened.

"I'm serious, Olivia. I've been with Glenda the past few days, and for a mother to lose her child..." her voice cracked, but she composed herself. "I just don't want your name to appear on the headlines."

"It won't, Nora," Dad said before I could, rinsing the carrots and setting them on the cutting board. "Don't say that."

"Mom, it's a chance you cannot just throw away," I said. She'd been painting for as long as I could remember. It was all she did when she had a bit of spare time, handled the paint brush better than she handled anything else. "We're gonna be just fine."

"It's only two weeks. And I will call you twice a day, Jack," she said, giving Dad a warning look. "Twice."

"I like hearing your voice, love," he replied with a smile. "Might as well call three times."

I wanted to roll my eyes. Sometimes their mellow-y talks got too mellow-y for my taste. "I'll go get some pans from back there so that we can put those in the oven with some potatoes. Liv, honey, why don't you set the table?"

She walked out of the kitchen and I went to the counter to grab the table sets. Dad was silently dicing the carrots and Emilia was busy playing with the water on her table, Mr. Flame Fluffs' hair darkening when it damped. For a moment, I didn't think it would be a good idea to ask, but a sudden waft of courage swept through me.

"Can I ask you something, Dad?" I immediately regretted it. What if Gideon was playing with me? How would I brush it off if he didn't know what the hell I was talking about? I didn't want to sound crazy.

He gave me a quick glance, the knife still dicing the carrot. "What's on your mind, Liv?"

My heart raced. I was sure if it went even a beat faster, I'd most certainly end up having a heart attack, but I let the question slip out of my mouth anyway. "Does the word Keeper mean anything to you?"

Every inch on my body wanted a confused reaction from his part. I wanted him to frown. I wanted my Dad to be clueless, to ask me if I was feeling okay. But none of those things happened.
The moment the words were out of my mouth, the knife slid down an inch to the side and cut into his finger. Drops of scarlet blood fell next to one of the carrot chunks and I felt the color of my face draining as it did.

"Where did you hear that?" he asked, taking back his finger with a cuss and rinsing it under the sink. I couldn't find the right words anymore. He wouldn't have asked that if he didn't know—would he? That meant he knew. And if he knew, it meant Gideon was right. He knew and he hadn't told me. "Olivia," he pushed, taking a step closer to me with his finger wrapped in a paper towel. I didn't know why, but I staggered back. That shocked him. "Sweetheart, how—"

The doorbell chimed through the house, and Mom walked into the kitchen in that instant with a brown pan on her hand. "That must be Homer."

My head snapped on her direction, the void in my stomach growing. "Homer?"

"Guests?" Dad asked, his voice tight. "Again?"

"Jack." Mom's brows met. I could've sworn she was about to ask what he meant, but her attention derailed to the blood soaking the towel. "What happened?"

"I'm fine, Nora," he said, throwing the towel to the trash and rinsing it again. "It was an accident. Go get the door."

She sighed, her cheeks red. "There are band aids in that drawer." She pointed to the cabinet next to me and headed to the entrance. I reached inside and took one out, handing it to him. There was still some distance between us, and he noticed.

"Olivia—"

"Does it mean anything to you, Dad?"

"Did you ask your mother?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Did you ask your mother if she knew what a Keeper was?" He sounded flustered, his voice barely over a whisper. I heard Mom opening the door and greeting Homer.

"No." I felt something burning in the back of my throat, a sour taste, and I worried I would end up vomiting like Emilia. "Why?"

"I can explain. Just don't tell your mother," he said, but it sounded more like a plea.

"Don't tell your mother what exactly?" Mom asked. She came into the kitchen with one of her eyebrows up, followed by a smiling Homer. And as if I didn't feel weak on my knees already, I had to hold on to the counter for support when Jared stepped in from behind his father. He held our gazes together before looking down at the floor, his Adam's apple wobbling in his throat.

"That I need to chop new carrots," Dad said, hesitating for a moment. He regained his composure fast, however, and dumped them in the trash. "I got blood all over those."

Homer let out a deep laugh, walking over to Dad and giving him a short hug. "Don't know how to use a knife, Rhodes? And to think you were able to shoot deer from—how many feet?"

"Five hundred," he said calmly. "But I left those days behind. I guess I'm a bit rusted on my motor skills."

Homer said something back to him, but I couldn't hear him over Mom's voice when she stepped up in front of me. "Is everything all right, Liv?"

"What?"

She pressed her delicate hand against my forehead, and it felt cold. "You're looking a bit pale. Are you feeling okay?"

I noticed Dad glancing in our direction. "I...." My throat felt tight, my lungs empty. You cannot be a Keeper if it isn't by bloodline. "I just need some air—I'll be right back."

Mom, Jared, the stairs, they all went by in a blur. I closed the bedroom door behind me and tried to steady my breathing. My thoughts were all over the place, but they all came back to one single conclusion: Gideon was right. My parents lied to me. And even that statement felt off, because it seemed like Mom was unaware—if not, why would Dad panic about it?

So did he know? Maybe that's what he meant this morning when he asked if there was anything going on. Was he a Keeper himself? Did that mean he could see Hunter the way I did? Did he know that the disappearances and what happened to Sally at school were somehow connected to the fact that I was a Keeper? No. It was certainly too much of a stretch.

He couldn't know so much.

I walked up to the window, letting a waft of air flow inside when it opened. No lights were on in Hunter's house, and I couldn't find his car or the bike, which were usually parked on the driveway. I considered calling him, see if someone could help me sort the pile of questions that was clouding my mind, but a knock on the door startled the idea out of my mind.

"I'll be right there, Mom," I called out. "I'm fine."

The door opened, but when I turned to tell her off, I found Jared's tired eyes staring back at me. He leaned against the doorjamb, taking a look around the room before he stepped inside and flicked the light on. The past few days I had experienced various levels of panic. None of them felt like this one.

"Your cheek," Jared said, his voice steady. We were a couple of feet away. He stood in front of my vanity table, staring down at my notebooks while I tried to steady my weight against the window frame.

"Gideon healed it..." I said.

"Of course he did," Jared muttered under his breath, and I noticed there was a small bruise on his jaw. Before I could ask if he'd gotten that from Caiden, he went on. "Your new best friends are super cool, you know. An extremely metrosexual guy who can heal you and make spells, three annoying bodyguards who enjoy kinky shit like tying people to beds, and a hot boyfriend—"

"Hunter is not my boyfriend."

At that, he raised his eyes, staring at me through the mirror. "Yet."

I didn't want to fight. Not anymore. "Are you going to let me explain?"

"Explain what exactly? Why Hunter manages to look like a Ken doll with or without his stupid mask?"

"It's called a glamour," I said. "Not a mask. Now—will you let me explain?"

He turned around, arms crossed over his chest. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

I took a step toward him, my head still light from the train wreck happening inside it. "You do: you can choose to walk out that door and act as if nothing happened, ignore me if you want, or you can let me explain why I couldn't tell you anything, why I didn't have a choice."

Jared eyed me. I could've sworn he was going to walk out, but he stopped before the door and closed it. He then sat on the edge of the bed, a sigh deflating his chest. "All right. Tell me. What's the deal with Hunter Black?"

I never thought it would be so easy to explain the events of the past days, but it was Jared I was talking to. He made it easier for me to open up. He'd always been a good listener, even when I came to him with stupid problems or complaints. There was only so much a best friend could do, and yet he seemed to surpass those limits for me. I didn't remember one single time I called him and didn't find him knocking on my door ten minutes later, which is why I owed him this.

He showed himself reluctant at first. Like I was telling him a fairytale or the pilot of a new TV series, but he eventually came around and started asking questions.

"So, let me see if I got this. Sally was attacked in the parking lot by a guy named Roland."

"Roy," I corrected him.

"Yes, that. She got attacked by Roy, who happened to be the one who threw her off the balcony at Will's party, too. Then you saw him at school, but he was wearing someone else's face. You said Hunter explained later on that that was a glamour...?"

"Some sort of spell-like thing that the Forgotten are able to cast on themselves so that humans don't recognize them," I said, noticing how he scratched his head. He only did that when his brain was conspiring with all the information it received. "And only other Forgotten can see through those glamours."

"Which is why Roy was intrigued by you," he concluded. "Because you could see through Hunter's glamour from day one. The thing that I don't get is—why would he suspect you're a...what was it? A Keeper?" I nodded, and he went on. "If that warlock—God, saying it out loud sounds crazy—was able to tell what you were, why couldn't Roy or Hunter do it, too?"

I crossed my legs and hugged one of the pillows to my chest. "I don't know. I asked Hunter and he said it was maybe because he wasn't focusing on that part of me...." The image of his lips on mine flashed through my mind, and I threw it away quickly. "The thing is, I've been thinking about that, and it seems to me that Gideon knows something. Will couldn't tell either. So if Keepers were as rare as everyone says—why go unnoticed like I have all these years?"

"You think he's hiding something?"

"Back at Hunter's house he said he had his own unfinished business with Roy, and he always seems to know more than you think."

For a moment, Jared remained silent. Then, brushing a brown strand of hair away from his forehead, he said, "You think he knows why nobody has ever realized what you are?"

"Yes, and he also knew about—" My voice cracked. I tried it again. "He knew about my parents."

Jared's green eyes leveled up with mine. Slowly, he shifted closer to me, and I tried to hold back the burning tears in the back of my throat. "You said you thought it was your dad. But what if he doesn't know what he is either?"

"You didn't see the look on his face, Jared," I protested. "He knew what I was talking about. The minute I said the word 'Keeper'...it was as if a switch had been turned on. And then he started acting strange, telling me not to ask Mom about it."

"Maybe you should let him tell you what he knows first." Something darkened in Jared's expression then, and I understood why when he spoke again. "Liv, when I went out with Patricia today—or Danielle, or whomever it was—I heard her picking up my phone. I was trying to get some bottles of vodka from the storage room, and when I came out, I heard her saying your name."

He fumbled for the right words, hands fidgeting, but Mom's voice chimed from downstairs before he could continue. "Dinner is almost ready, guys!"

"We'll be down there soon, Mom." I yelled back. "It's okay. Go on."

Jared sighed. "The reason I didn't stop her from picking up the call was because..." he paused, his voice lowering, "because I wanted you to feel what I felt with Hunter. I wanted you to know what it was like not to know where or with whom I was for once."

"Jared—" I wanted to reach my hand out and touch his shoulder, but I restrained myself from doing it.

"It was stupid, Liv, and if I could go back and change it, I would. Had I known it wasn't really Patricia...and even if it had really been her, I shouldn't have done it. It was wrong and childish and you didn't deserve that." He swallowed, taking a moment to pull himself together. "I didn't get to hear what she told you, but what I'm trying to say is—when she hung up, she sounded nervous for a second. Like she didn't know what she'd just done. I convinced myself it was because we were alone. I thought maybe she'd never ditched class, much less with a guy, but now I think it might've been because of you."

"Because of me?" I echoed, somewhat abruptly. "She was the opposite of nervous when she saw me." My hand reached instinctively to the bump on the back of my head where she'd pushed me into the wall, and a shiver ran through me when the memory of the blade's burning metal slicing my skin crept into my mind. "I really doubt someone like me made her nervous."

"Maybe I'm wrong," he said, but his eyes were burning with the same spark he got when he was sure of something, when a theory of his solved the entire puzzle happening inside his head. "But think about it. Perhaps it's not that she feared you, per se, but she feared what you are—what you could be. She didn't know what she was up against. Like you said, Roy has just speculated you're a Keeper, Danielle had to use that blade to figure out if you were human or not.... The only one who knew for sure when he saw you was Gideon."

My head was turning like a carousel. "I don't get what you're trying to say, Jared."

His cheeks reddened, his eyes blazing with realization. "I'm trying to tell you that the best chance you have right now is figuring out what the hell this Gideon guy knows. Your advantage is the uncertainty people have toward what you are. Liv, you could be the key to everything—"

"Can you not make it sound like I have humanity's faith in my hands?" I snapped. "This isn't a movie, Jared. I cannot wait for a magical moment where suddenly I know how to defend myself against things one week ago I believed weren't real."

He rolled his eyes. "You're missing my point. They need your heart to open the interdimensional door, and—"

I stopped him one more time. "Interdimensional door? Why does this sound like a Star Trek movie?"

"Because what if it is? This Veil thingy, it's like the Mirror Universe. Only that instead of humans, you have...well, crazy, psychopathic, possibly murderous creatures that want to eat all of our faces off."

"I'm not sure if I like the fact that you're taking this better than I expected," I admitted, my stomach turning with a burning feeling. What if I was putting him at a greater danger by telling him all of this? But not telling him would be just as bad. Danielle said it. We were playing by this new world's rules now. People didn't ask for things. They took them from you.

"Can I ask you something?" he asked, and I nodded. "What does it feel like?"

"What does what feel like?"

"Being a Keeper. I mean, do you feel any different now that you're aware of that part of yourself? Is it like...discovering you have the Force inside of you?"

It was me who rolled her eyes this time. "No. I'm exactly the same. If anything, I feel more useless now than ever. It's not like I can sense something moving or shifting inside of me. The only thing I've been able to do was get that vision when I touched the Reaver Blade."

"And what about the knife in the kitchen?" he asked.

My brows puckered. "The knife in the kitchen? What?"

He blinked slowly. Like he was trying to organize his ideas before he shared them. "Back in the kitchen, at Hunter's house, when you came in and told me to stop.... Liv, I was scared, angry at those guys, but when I saw you, when I saw your eyes, I felt something. Like a bolt of electricity, just as if you had taken that knife and shoved it to the floor."

I worried on my lip. "It was probably Caiden or Owen."

"No," he said, his words firm. "I know it was you."

"I'm not even sure of what I can actually do. The only thing I know is that I'm supposed to keep humans safe, and apparently, I suck at it."

I probably looked vulnerable, sitting next to him, dismay written on every inch of my face, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. These sort of things did not include manuals that told you how to escape the people who want to take your heart or how to clean your pet fairy's wings or anything related to this new reality I found myself in. And Jared noticed that—of course.

He slid his hand across the mattress and laid it atop mine. "You didn't know about all of this. You can't protect something if you don't know you're protecting it in the first place."

I shrugged. "I honestly have no idea what I'm supposed to do."

He stumbled for words for a moment, an odd, nervous look on his face. "This may sound stupid—and I do apologize if that's the case.... But have you tried looking it up on Google?"

I winced. "Jared, come on."

"What?" He took his hand back, arms crossing over his chest. "I'm serious. If you look vampires up, you'll find deceiving creatures that feed on people's blood and then they kill them."

"Vultures don't drink blood. They—"

"Steal memories, yeah, I heard that part. The point is, you get an idea of what you're up against, trends and similarities included. For example, vampires are all about sucking things." He paused, frowning. "Which would explain a lot of theories about Jacob and Edward on Twilight actually."

"But those are things you hear about on a daily basis," I objected. "Vampires, werewolves, shape shifters, faeries, warlocks.... There are stories about them. You will find them on Google. But try typing in Inferno or Keeper and see what you get. It'll be pointless. They don't exist."

As if he'd been challenged to a duel, he dug his phone out of his pocket with his chin held high. "Let's see what we can find, then." A couple of seconds later, I saw him scrolling through a couple of webpages. "Well, you're certainly not the Best Password Manager and Secure Digital Vault...so perhaps it's this other article—oh, yes, here it is. A Keeper, otherwise known as a person who manages or looks after something or someone. Also called a Guardian."

"Wow, Jared. Thesaurus will definitely light up my path to unraveling this mystery."

He grunted. "I'm not done reading, thank you." He kept scrolling, his eyes following the lines of words. "It says here there have been Guardians all throughout history, but they were mostly prominent in Greek mythology. Supposedly, Gods and Titans needed to protect their loved ones and their valuable possessions, so they created these creatures to do such thing."

That was nonsense. "So—what? I'm supposed to believe I was created by Zeus or something?"

"One of them was Kampe," he continued, completely dismissing my comment. "She had snake hair and the body of a dragon from her waist down." Jared gave me a casual once-over, his eyes narrowed. "You don't have any dragon-looking things down there, do you?"

"Oh, most definitely. If you get too close, it will spit fire at your face," I said. Jared tilted his face to the side—almost like he was imagining the whole thing—and I glared at him. "Be serious, dude."

"Okay fine, I was just trying to help." Jared threw his hands up, defeated. "I would also offer to help you clear up the whole Inferno deal, but, you know, I'd be bored to hear about how Hunter inspired Dan Brown to write a book."

I shook my head, rubbing sleep out of my eyes. My body felt worn out from everything, and I hadn't been able to get much rest lately. "I'll just ask Gideon."

"Sounds like a plan," Jared said. For a second, he looked at me wearily before speaking again. "Liv, what do you think happened to Sally?"

His question caught me off-guard. "What do you mean? Roy happened to her."

"Of course, I understood that. But why would he even care about her?" He sighed. "I don't want to sound mean or anything, but Sally Mason is a complete bitch to everyone. Her powers cut down to sleeping with half of Chicago's male population and judging every single person she sees."

I picked on a small cut on my finger. There was dry blood coating it, nothing too major to have noticed before. "Maybe she was at the wrong place in the wrong time."

"Maybe—" Something flashed in Jared's eyes then, and he jumped out of the bed. "Holy shit. You said Danielle used the Mighty Blade to cut you so that she could prove whether you had special blood running through your veins, right?"

"It's called a Reaver Blade, and yes. What does that have to do with Sally?"

He pressed his lips into a line before saying, "Remember the other day, Liv, when she stumbled into the hallway. She was clutching her arm, crying in pain because someone had attacked her."

It was hard to swallow. "You don't think..."

"What I think is that maybe someone was testing her, too."

Help me, Olivia. I felt like I was getting spun around. Like they had tied me to a merry-go-round that never stopped turning. Why would they test Sally? Was she a Keeper as well? There were too many questions and I barely had enough answers to fit into any of them.

"You need to touch that blade again," Jared said. "See if it shows you anything else."

"But how—"

The sound of the doorknob turning made us jump, and Homer walked into the room with a worried expression on his face. "Dinner is ready," he said. "But I'm afraid I have to go."

Jared's brows met. "What do you mean you have to go?"

"Yes, something came up at work," Homer said. He was almost choking on his words when he handed him a twenty dollar bill. "Here, you can take a cab to your Mom's house."

Something jumped inside Jared's jaw, and I knew he was upset. "I was sleeping at your place tonight, Dad."

Homer rubbed a veiny hand over his face. "Jared—"

"He can stay here," I offered. I got on my feet and walked up next to Jared, who seemed enveloped in a light cloud of anger. "What happened, Homer?"

Homer sighed, his eyes set on the ground when he spoke again. "It's the Harris boy. They think they found his body."

My stomach contracted, and I could taste bile in the back of my throat. Jared tensed next to me. "They think they did?"

"He's dead?"

"It's not only that, son." Homer looked at Jared, then at me. His eyes were hard and flat. Then he said, "They found his body, yes, but he was missing his heart. It looks like someone cut it out of his chest."