Again, I looked at Miles, whose gaze had lingered on my neck. He squinted his eyes for a moment and then took two steps back as if something was bothering him.

“Thanks,” was all I said, and I got into my car, head still throbbing.

The steam rose in the form of warm mist, settling on my skin like a damp layer and fogging up the bathroom mirror as well as the window, which otherwise offered an extended view of the forest. Even though I had felt like I was being watched more than once, it was clear to me that there was no one out there. This was Blairville. And I had become paranoid over time.

I tried to get my legs completely under the water, but I hadn’t been able to do that for years. I was no longer the little girl who dreamed of her first great love. My heart had been broken several times, but only really mended once.

He had helped me out of there. He had pushed me back there.

They weren’t quite as visible in the candlelight, but I still recognized the many little stripes on my thighs. Each one represented a moment of weakness. Until I had to promise him to be strong.

I no longer hurt myself. But my tears flowed into the hot bath water. My vision blurred until the lights of the candles were only orange dots in my field of vision and I began to sob.

Ezra wasn’t home yet. And so, I was alone with my thoughts. Alone in that place where I was allowed to cry, where my tears became one with the water that surrounded me. The only place where I still felt close to him. Even if every time anew my heart broke into countless pieces.

Mayor’s Office

“Tell me that the Copeland Alpha has made a bad joke,” it escaped from the mayor, who usually knew how to control herself. But an hour ago, the chief physician had shown up here and given her the startling news. “You sent your offspring to Vanderwood?”

The pretty lawyer took a deep breath and stared at the carpet as if she were heading for a nervous breakdown, while Laurent, the DeLoughreys’ brown-haired bodyguard, took his gaze from her and looked at Bastien. Bastien stood in front of the desk, his arms folded behind his back, his gaze a mask.

The mayor had trouble looking into the man’s gray eyes without thinking of the old days.

Three of them in her office. Three!

“You have nothing to worry about, Ms. Blair,” Bastien assured her formally, even though they had once been closer.

“If one of your guys breaks the contract, it’s not just a problem for you or the Copeland pack...” the mayor continued tensely. “The Circle will be affected as well.”

“The three of them are well-behaved,” Bastien countered.

The mayor thought she saw a smirk cross the lawyer’s lips, but ignored it with a troubling gut feeling.

“I understand if you have doubts. The situation is tense. However, it will resolve itself quickly.”

“Was this your idea, Bastien?” the mayor accidentally broke the formal tone, and the lawyer looked up in surprise.

The mayor quickly collected herself and kept eye contact with the agent in front of her.

This man was running the DUIO. The DeLoughrey Underground Information Organization, a department of the FBI that was responsible for keeping order in places with high supernatural occurrences. Thanks to it, forums about supernatural occurrences in Blairville disappeared.

But with this move, the family risked confrontations with their enemies on a campus full of mortals.

“In the long run, I’m doing this town a favor.”

The mayor was speechless. What he was doing was risky, and she knew where this interest in peace came from. From the same source as with the Vanderwood director.

The two men left the office without further comment, and the mayor sank back into her chair.

The lawyer was about to turn to leave, but the mayor stopped her.

“Camille,” she said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into Bastien.”

An indistinct expression spread across Camille’s face.

“Bastien is the most reasonable man I know,” she replied to the mayor.

This one bit her tongue, knowing something Camille did not.

“He has noble intentions, Ms. Blair.”

Noble intentions.

The lawyer gracefully walked out of the office, leaving the overwhelmed mayor behind.

She looked at the Blairville Daily headline screen. And all she saw in her mind’s eye were the mistakes they had all made back then. A disaster like that could not be allowed to happen again.

Chapter 22

Julie

I had intended to check my study schedule for tomorrow, but I had accidentally downloaded it into the folder with the patient reports from Blairville’s psychiatric facility. A folder I had wanted to delete for two years now, but I had not been able to do so, even though I had not been there in ten years.

Grace’s mother had taken me to a psychologist without warning when I was just eight. ASD was the diagnosis I wished had never been made, especially not by Amber Smith’s mother, to whom doctor-patient confidentiality were foreign words.

Since then, all the girls in the Circle treated me like I had a mental disorder that needed to be cured, either staring at me strangely or ignoring me like I was air.

Grace was the only real-life friend I had, even though it was complicated with her sometimes.

I often wished that Amara hadn’t taken me to a psychologist. Maybe my life would be different today. But maybe I was just telling myself that because deep inside me, a shattered fragment knew that my diagnosis wasn’t the cause of my problems.

“Hello?” Grace waved her hand in front of my face. “Earth to Julie?”

I looked up, confused.

“Someone tried to call you.”

My eyes widened, and I immediately unlocked my display. But to my relief, it was only my pill alarm clock.

How had I not heard that one?

“By the way. About last night. You have to stop giving such hints all the time,” my cousin admonished me anxiously.

I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“When it comes to the Copelands.”