She plopped down on the concrete shed floor and kissed me on the cheek.

“Do you love me, Cassia?”

I smiled ridiculously. “Of course I do. You’re like my sister.”

She cocked her head to one side and folded her hands in the hollow of her lap.

“Remember that time you told me you wanted to go wherever I go? That you wanted us to be sisters forever, no matter what?”

I nodded with an even brighter smile, because it was true. I did want to go wherever she went. She was my best friend. I wanted us to grow up and grow old together.

“Yeah, I remember.”

She smiled and softened her eyes. “Good. Then tonight we’re going to run away together.”

My face fell and I tried to swallow the knot that had suddenly formed in my throat, but it was too dry.

“W-What do you mean, run away?” I felt guilty for even having the conversation.

Seraphina pulled me into a brief hug, afterwards letting her hands brush down the length of my arms until her fingers found mine. She held my hands firmly and said, “I want to go to New York. I’ve got it all planned out. We can get on a bus—it’s easy, they do it in the movies all the time and no one ever checks for identification unless they look like kids. But we don’t look like kids”—she waved her finger back and forth between us—“I can easily pass for seventeen, and you, well I think you could too if you put on a little makeup.”

I was shaking my head absently the whole time she was explaining her plan, but she just kept on talking with the excitement of it all ever-growing in her eyes.

“I want to be a singer,” she said with the biggest smile of wonderment I had ever seen on her face. She gripped my hands tighter. “And Cassia, you could, too. We could both be singers. You sing even better than me!”

I blushed and lowered my gaze to our hands.

“I-I don’t know, Seraphina.” I looked toward the shed door, terrified my parents might’ve been listening in. “Running away won’t be easy. My parents check in on me every night. First my mom. Then later my dad. They’d know I was missing before we made it to the bus station—and what about money? I don’t have any money.”

Seraphina grinned and leaned forward so she could reach around to her back pocket. There was a wad of cash in her hand when she brought it back around.

“Stole it from my mom’s jewelry box,” she said with a proud smirk and then placed the money into my hands. “This’ll get us both to New York.”

I looked down at the cash and then back up at her. I didn’t want to tell her no, but at the same time, I was scared. I was scared of running away. Getting caught. Getting grounded for the rest of my life.

But I think most of all, I was scared of Seraphina.

“So, are you going to leave with me?”

She sat there with her hands in her lap, her fingers coiling anxiously around one another. Her face was full of excitement and danger and risk and trouble—everything I always steered clear of. Everything I was afraid of.

But then finally I said, “But what if my parents wake up and see that I’m gone? What if they catch us before we get to New York?”

“They won’t catch us,” she said with such resolve that I couldn’t help but believe her. “I’m going to take care of that before we leave.”

Before Seraphina snuck out of my shed that afternoon and went back into her yard, I had agreed to go with her. And to trust in her, no matter what she had to do to help me get away.

I’m lying down against the bed now with my head on Fredrik’s thigh. I don’t even recall when I shifted position, I’ve been so engrossed in the memory. It’s been a year since I’ve remembered any of this, or anything about my life at all, so it’s all quite a lot to take in.

Fredrik’s hand moves softly through the top of my hair, sending shivers from the back of my neck and throughout my body. It feels like he’s consoling me, but more than that, it feels like he’s hurting and I don’t want to go on. I know he had a terrible life and that he went through some horrific things when he was a boy, things that he will probably never tell me. But I know they were much worse than anything I ever went through.

“What did Seraphina do to your parents, Cassia?” he asks in a soft voice while spearing his fingers through my long locks.

I stare out at the television on the wall across the basement and let the scene from that night play out before me as if it were playing out on the dark screen.

And then I answer, “She stabbed my father in the throat while he was downstairs asleep in his favorite chair. And then she poured gasoline she took from the shed in my backyard all over the house and set the house on fire. My mother burned to death in her room.”

A part of me misses them, but another part of me feels nothing because it was so long ago.

“I didn’t go to New York with Seraphina,” I say distantly, picturing Seraphina’s face in my mind, the way I saw her when she was driven away in the police car. The way her face was pressed against the glass as she looked at me. “I told the police what she had done and they sent her away. She admitted everything. I never saw her again.” My fingers grip the sheet beneath me on the mattress. “I never saw her again until a year ago when she found me in my apartment in New York and tried to kill me. I know she thinks she was helping me by killing my parents—I think she killed hers, too, before mine. But I betrayed her by giving her up. And now…she wants to get back at me for the life she lost.”

Fredrik says nothing for a very long time and I grow concerned about what he must be thinking. Can he still love her now that he knows what she did? It was never my intention to make him stop loving her by telling him the truth, but I can’t help but hope that maybe he will now be able to see reason.

“Fredrik?”

Fredrik

“Yes?” I answer her, though at this point, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to force anymore of an answer than those three letters.

My life is over. Everything I ever thought I knew about Seraphina, about our life together, the love that we shared, it’s all over. Because now I know that there’s no way I can help her, there’s no way I can bring her back to me. She’s a danger to me, to herself and everyone around her. Even Cassia. Most of all…Cassia. Seraphina was disturbed when I met her eight years ago and when I fell in love with her. But I never knew the extent of her illness until now. I never knew that she suffered traumatic experiences as a child just as I did.

I never knew.

But she and I are very different despite our somewhat similar pasts. I don’t kill innocent people. I, while although a sadistic bastard and torturer and killer, have limits and standards. I know when to stop. I feel guilt for my mistakes. But Seraphina, I know now, doesn’t understand guilt or remorse.

How could I ever have been so wrong about her?!

How could I ever have been so blind?!

Love.

Seraphina was right all along. To be in love is to be dead already because eventually it kills us all.

Cassia raises her head from my leg and pushes her naked body up propped on one arm. She looks into my eyes.

“Talk to me,” she says and kisses my cheek. “Are you OK?”

I force a very light smile around my eyes and I nod in answer.

Then she lowers her eyes and I feel sadness and worry consume her emotions. Reaching out my hand, I raise her chin with the tip of my finger.

“Now you talk to me,” I tell her gently. “What’s on your mind?”

She swallows nervously and looks up, her brown eyes soft with worry. “Will you still protect me from her when you finally find her?”