I searched for his cell phone, for his shoes, but they were gone, too.

He was gone! My brother. Gone!

“No!” I screamed even louder.

Something fragile inside me crashed to the floor, shattering into a thousand painful fragments. A pain I had never felt before in my life.

I wanted to scream, but no sound came out of my throat.

Then I slumped down on the bed, sobbing, and buried my face in his pillow.

“Please... Come home, Ezra...”

Epilogue

He stood in the kitchen of the old house, which had been completely renovated.

The last time he had been here, it had smelled of her freshly applied perfume, but also of her. He had picked her up for the winter ball. The last time he had seen her happy.

The memory of what had happened gave him mixed feelings. On the one hand, he longed for that time, for all the things he had been able to experience, for the project they all had striven for, but most of all, he longed for her.

On the other hand, he also wanted to forget. But you couldn't forget what your heart had been so deeply attached to.

“Why are you back here?” he asked instead, curious as to what had brought Diana back to Blairville. Why she had come back to a place where she had lost her best friend.

“Personal reasons,” she said quietly, and he could imagine it had something to do with the Circle.

When he'd walked in, he'd spotted her work ID in the key bowl on a dresser. She worked at the DeLoughrey Science Center. He wondered if she was still researching the same things. But he wouldn't ask her. Not now. Now, it was about something else.

“Why did you want to see me?”

He pulled his hands out of the pockets of his trousers and leaned against the kitchen counter. Just as he had done back then. This house made him feel young, even though there were almost twenty years between his current self and his old self.

“Why did you give my daughter this book?”

She turned to him questioningly. In her hand was the blue leather book with the golden dragonfly. But it wasn't just any dragonfly that she had let print on her cover back then. It had been their dragonfly, the dragonfly of all the members. Their common symbol.

He cleared his throat.

He had never expected Diana to confiscate it. The fact that she had discovered it alone was something he should have taken into consideration. Diana had always been the most observant of them all.

“So that someone other than us can read her words,” he said, to be honest at least.

Diana eyed him thoughtfully before expressing her displeasure.

“Her words are dangerous, especially for our kids. Just like the contact between our children is on campus.”

“Diana, you know how I feel about the contract.” He was annoyed, not with Diana, but with this ridiculous agreement that seemed to haunt him like a curse. “You know what she thinks...thought of the contract...”

In his mind, he was back in the past.

“We saw last night what can happen when the species don't stay away from each other,” Diana dodged his suggestion.

Her eyes were bloodshot and her shoulder-length dark blonde hair was disheveled. You could tell she was exhausted, especially after what had happened to her daughter.

“It's not about the species, Diana. You know that as well as I do.” She looked down at the floor. And he knew he'd hit the mark. “If she saw what we've become, she'd turn over in her grave.”

His own words caused him incredible pain.

He bit his lower lip.

How could something so far in the past still affect him so much? He asked himself that every last Tuesday of the month when he wrote another letter and then put it in the drawer; when he went through the pictures from back then and when he was always on the verge of entering the room. A room full of memories.

“We both signed the new contract. You were there, Alarik,” Diana told him firmly. “And we should finally realize that it's better this way.”

He wanted to see it. But he didn't see it. He remembered the values they had all shared, a higher idea they had all held. She had warned him that the project must not be forgotten. He remembered that. The way she had laid there and stared at him, her pleading look, almost panicked. It had broken his heart.

“I'm giving you this book hoping I'll never see it in Bayla's hands again.”

She looked at him insistently.

He wondered what she had done with her own copy. He still knew Diana from back then. She had even helped work out the plans. It would never have occurred to him that she would change her mind in such a radical way. That she would even give up on their shared project.

But he finally nodded.

Diana looked at him for a moment, and he was about to ask if something was bothering her when she pressed the book into his hand.

“I know her words meant a lot to you,” Diana sighed.

He swallowed and looked at the dragonfly imprinted in gold. Her words were the real gold. They were music to his soul.

“She would have liked others to read it, too,” he finally said and turned to leave.

He was in no hurry, but he didn't want to stay here either. The house with all the memories evoked far too many emotions in him.

He thought about how Diana had managed to live here – going to work every day, cooking here, sleeping here – up there, where her room used to be. He wondered if it still looked the same.

“Alarik...” Diana said when he had almost reached the door. He turned to her with expectation. “I miss her just as much.”

He looked at her sadly and saw in her glassy eyes that she was telling the truth. However, he didn't have the strength to respond, so he just nodded and opened the door.

It was windy outside. Just as windy as the day he had lost her. Brown leaves flew through the Adams' front garden, just like all the ravens in the street... as if they were fleeing from something threatening.

In fact, the next storm was coming. Just like twenty years ago.

Something had changed recently. Not only had the weather become more unsettled, but so had the entire town. 

As Alarik walked down the porch, he didn't know that much would soon change in his life. Nor did he know that he had set something in motion when he had given Bayla Adams the book. And what he knew least of all was that in his hand was the key to her legacy.