So, once I finally pulled away from the guys, I got up from the table to go find her.

“Where are you going?” Michael asked when he saw me stand up.

“I saw my mother,” I answered. “I mean not really my mother but someone who looks like her. “I’m going to go find her.”

“Lisette, we need to stay together,” he said.

But I had already stepped away from the table.

It was much more crowded than it had looked from the front table, and as I walked through the swarms of people both sitting and standing, I tried not to bump into them but wasn’t having very much luck. I bumped into the back of one man who whirled around and accidentally sloshed his drink on my dress. It went right down the front and even got an ice cube stuck inside my bodice. Someone threw a white cloth napkin over at me, and when I looked up to thank them, I saw that woman again who was wearing my mother’s smile.

I dropped the napkin on the floor and started to feverishly scan the room.

I felt like every time I saw her and went to where she had been standing, that she then moved again, and it became a game of cat and mouse. I actually broke into a bit of a run at one point, which I’m sure looked strange in my long cocktail dress and heels, as I tried to catch the woman before she disappeared into the crowd again. I didn’t even care that people were starting to stare at me as I went around in circles inside the large hall, though. I didn’t care that I looked positively crazy as I ran around the room. Because whoever this was, she was doing it on purpose.

And I needed to catch her in order to find out why.

23

“Lisette, stop!” Adam said as he grabbed hold of my waist and turned me around to face him.

I noticed that the conversation in the room had gotten quieter and almost everyone in the big room was staring at me.

“What are you doing?” he whispered in my ear as he held me close and pretended to give me a big embrace. “You’re running around the dinner hall like a crazy woman.”

The truth was that I didn’t know what I was doing. I stopped and held his hand and let him lead me out of the room. When we got out into the corridor and away from all of the people, Michael and Rob came out to join us and see what was going on.

“There’s a woman at the dinner who looks exactly like my mother,” I said in a hushed whisper.

“Lisette,” Michael said in a tone that was already beginning to make me angry. “You’ve been under an extreme amount of stress lately and—”

“Don’t you even dare patronize me,” I said to him with a glare.

“I’m not patronizing you,” Michael said. “I just think that you’re tired and stressed, as we all are, and that it’s easy for your mind to play tricks on you when those factors play out.”

“I’m telling you,” I said with more conviction in my voice this time. “That there is a woman inside that room who looks exactly like my mother. I’m not seeing a ghost, I know my mother is dead, and I’m pretty sure that there aren’t any hallucinogens at this party. I am thinking perfectly clearly (well except for maybe the running around in circles part) and I am telling you that there is someone in there that is intentionally messing with me. We’ve been trying to figure out who’s behind all these notes and all of the destruction on Lineage grounds and this is the first solid lead we have. So either help me look for her or get out of my way.”

All three men looked at me as if they could tell I’d had enough.

“Alright,” Adam said. “Let’s go look.”

We all fanned out amidst the crowd. Everyone had gone back to their dinners and conversations, and since I was no longer sprinting in a panic-run inside the room, they paid us no attention as we scanned the room. We glanced occasionally through the crowd at each other to see if anyone had found anything yet and to keep tabs on each other so that no one went missing again.

I didn’t see her anymore. I started to worry that maybe the woman had left or that maybe Michael was right and that this whole thing was just my mind playing tricks on me, but the next time that I looked up to give all the guys a glance, Rob tilted his head toward the hallway as if he had found something.

We all followed him out and there she was.

The woman stood at the end of the empty hallway and Rob stood looking at her. Michael and Adam came in behind me as they stepped into the hallway.

“Paula?” Michael said from behind me in shock.

“No,” I answered before the woman had a chance to. “That’s not my mother.”

I could tell it wasn’t her even from here. But she did look a lot like mom. The resemblance was uncanny.

“Hello Lisette,” she said cordially.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The woman smiled, and it was like staring at a not-quite-there version of my mother. “I’m your Aunt Naomi. I suppose it’s been a long time and you don’t remember me, do you?”

She was right, at first, I couldn’t remember her at all. I didn’t even think I had an aunt. But then it started to vaguely come back to me as childhood memories often do in blurry and fragmented pieces when triggered.

“I do remember you,” I said as I walked slowly closer to her. “You’re mom’s sister.”

“Your mom had a sister?” Michael asked. “I never knew that.”

I nodded mindlessly. “Yeah, when I was really small. You used to come over a lot and then you stopped,” I said as I tilted my head. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”

He snickered. “Let’s just say your father didn’t make it easy,.”

“Well, my dad didn’t make a lot of things easy,” I huffed. “What are you doing here? And why were you hiding from me in the crowd when I saw you?”

“First things first,” she said. “Who are all these handsome men?”

“Michael, Adam, and Rob,” I said very quickly in order to get to the answers to my important questions. “Naomi, what are you doing here?”

“I like to crash a good Goldshire party every once in a while,” she laughed. “No, I’m just kidding. I came to see you take your place as acting Headmistress. I’ve been waiting a long time to see that damn school fall into the right hands.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Naomi, you know that I’m Headmistress of Lineage, not Goldshire, right? Mom was an alumni of Goldshire.”

“I know,” she said. “It’s all quite a convoluted mess if you ask me, but you’re running the right school, don’t you worry about that.”

I drew in a curt breath. “Was it you that started all the whispers about how I should be the Headmistress?” I asked, seeing as how she seemed so zealous about it.

And yet, she simply shrugged. “Yes, of course it was. I needed to make up for all that lost auntie time by helping you out now.”

“Helping me out? I appreciate it Aunt Naomi, but things have been going fine.”

That was kind of a lie due the recent events over the past few days, but before then everything had been great at least.

But, she saw right through my lie. “Oh no dear, I could see that they were not. First you had your father’s bastard son getting in your way. Then all of these silly side-projects that you think will bring back the dead. And now you’ve got some sort of boy band entourage. Really dear, you need my help.”

A chill crawled up my spine, starting at my tailbone and reaching all the way to the back of my neck. And Michael stepped in with the question that was tumbling around heavily in my mind.

“How did you know about all of those things?” Michael asked her.