“But he thinks he can find a way to save me,” I whispered.

“At least that’s what he said in the note.” Laylen pulled me tighter against him. “And maybe he will.”

I twisted the ring on my finger—my supposed loophole.

My heart was breaking. I got where Alex was coming from. I got that our feelings for one another were getting harder and harder to control. But it didn’t make the empty void inside my heart feel any better about him leaving.

He left.

I can’t believe he left.

I turned over my hand and stared at the fresh cut. “Do you know what he promised me?” I asked, glancing up at Laylen.

Laylen nodded. “He promised you everything would be alright…and maybe it will.”

“Maybe,” I said, but the hole in my heart told me otherwise.

We sat there in the quiet, and I could feel the hole in my heart growing bigger with each passing moment.

“He told me to keep an eye on you,” Laylen finally said.

“While he was gone.”

“I don’t need to be watched,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, you can, but you’re also precious cargo,” he tried to joke. “And precious cargo needs to be taken care of.”

“I am not precious cargo.” I frowned more at myself than at him and I could feel this icky bitter feeling building up inside me. “I’m destructive…without me, there would be no star, and therefore, there would be no problems.” He pulled away from me so he could look me in the eye.

“That’s why he told me to keep an eye on you…he didn’t want you to sink into this sad pit of despair because he was gone…You need to keep going—we need to find a way to save you.”

“Why does everyone want to save me?” I asked. “And what about Alex—he needs to be saved just as much as I do.”

“Everyone wants to save you because you’re worth saving, Gemma,” Laylen said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

I shook my head as tears dripped down my cheeks. I wanted to say something, but there were no words, so instead I leaned my head on his shoulder and cried until I was too tired to keep my eyes open. Then I went back to my bedroom and drifted to sleep, dreaming of fires, stars, and the missing pieces of my heart.

Chapter 38

I woke up to a loud bang that rocked the house. I jumped from my bed, my eyes wildly scanning my surroundings. My room was stilled fill with the lingering nighttime darkness, and there was a glow from the outside that I assumed was the rising sun.

“What the hell was that?” I mumbled to myself, my heart knocking in my chest. I hurried out into the hall and immediately I realized something was wrong.

The door to my mom’s bedroom was open.

It was never open.

My body shook as I made my way to the open door and glanced inside the semi-dark room. Then my world crashed to the floor. She was gone. My mom was gone. Nothing remained but the chains, which looked like they had been melted away at the cuffs.

“No…” I shook my head. “No, how did she…” And then I smelt it. The scent of flowers and freshly fall en rain.

I slowly turned around and was met by a pair of golden eyes.

“You’re dead,” I stuttered, pinching myself to make sure I was awake.

It stung.

Nicholas raised his eyebrows. “Am I?” He examined his arms over. “Wow! I look really good even for a dead guy.”

“N-no.” I shook my head, backing into the empty room where my mother should be, but wasn’t. “This can’t be happening.”

Nicholas walked toward me, his hands behind his back.

“I think you always kind of knew I wasn’t dead…I mean, you have seen me.”

“But that was a nightmare,” I said in an unsteady voice.

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Was it?”

“How…I don’t…” Get it together. “How are you even here? You shouldn’t be here?”

“Shouldn’t I?” For a moment, he looked as confused as I felt, but the look quickly erased. “I mean, I guess technically I shouldn’t be here, being dead and all, yet here I am.”

“So, you are dead?” I braced a hand on the bed to keep from coll apsing to the floor. “How can I still see you then?” He shrugged, grinning. “Just another amazing thing about you, I guess.”

Great. This was the last thing I needed right now. An annoying faerie ghost haunting me. “Okay, so why are you here?”

“Because you changed everything,” he said simply, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You brought me back.”

I gaped at him. “How?”

“By changing the vision.”

“But I was supposed to change it…It’s what it was supposed to be.”

He took another step toward me and I suddenly felt threatened. “Not that vision. The other one; the one where I was supposed to take you to Stephan.”

My jaw nearly dropped to the floor and I sat down on the bed because my legs would no longer hold me up. “But I…” I was speechless. Never did it occur to me that my father erasing my past would shift future events. Had he known that it would happen?

“So what?” I asked. “Now I’m stuck with you.” His grin darkened. “Well, you are responsible for my death, aren’t you? I mean, if it wasn’t for you changing things, I would never have been in that car to begin with.” A guilty knot wove its way into my stomach. “I’m sorry…I didn’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He shrugged. “Regardless, you’re still stuck with me.”

I sank down on the bed, staring at the chains which once held my mom. And now she was gone. Where did she go?

“Don’t worry,” Nicholas said. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to help you.”

“You left the note on my bed, didn’t you?” I said. “And you were that annoying talk-show host voice, weren’t you?” He nodded. “It was the only way I could communicate with you.”

“But, I can see you now.”

“Yes, but you weren’t wearing that thing.” He pointed to the ring on my finger.

I raised my hand in front of me, staring at the violet gemmed ring enclosed around my finger. “This is why I can suddenly see you?”

He tapped the ring on my finger. “It’s the orbis of silent or ring of the dead…it gives you the sight of seeing the dead.”

“Why would he give this to me?” I stared down at the ring.

“How is seeing the dead my loophole?”

He shrugged, sitting down next to me and I tried not to cringe from his closeness. I mean, the alive Nicholas freaked me out enough, but the dead Nicholas…well, it was beyond creepy.

I had a feeling there was more to his story—that he knew more about the ring then he was letting on. Too bad Blood Promises didn’t last after death because now getting the truth out of him was going to be like pulling teeth.

Nicholas suddenly smirked at the empty chains that once held my mom. “You have such a bumpy road ahead, and you don’t even know it.”

I pointed at the chains. “Do you know where she went?” His golden eyes twinkled in the low light of the room.

“Perhaps.”

I tried to keep my cool. “Can you please tell me?” He gestured at the window. “The answer is out there.” I stared at the window, not wanting to look, frightened about what I would see.

“Go ahead.” He was enjoying this way too much. “Go see the damage you’ve caused.”

I took a deep breath and slowly walked toward the window, my knees knocking together with each step. My palms covered with sweat as I pulled back the curtain.

Garbage cans burned wildly in the streets. A fire lit up the sky. In the next door neighbor’s yard, a vampire was feeding off a human, right out in the open, as if it didn’t matter, as if all the rules had changed.

I whirled back to Nicholas. “What is this?”

“What did you think was going to happen? That you could change the events of your life and everything would be okay? That you could mess around with visions and everything would be fine.”

My father knew this was going to happen. My father had seen it coming. He tried to show me that there were going to be rough times ahead.