Mr. Smith took me home and insisted I call him Jonathan. At first I struggled, feeling like an embarrassed child trying to play grown-up, but after a few botched attempts, I finally became more familiar with the word, the way it sounded when I said it. By the time we sat down in his cozy living room, I was calling him Jonathan a little more comfortably.

He'd made us two cups of black tea with plenty of milk and sugar, just the way I had it when he'd known me all those years ago. I shifted in my seat, unsure of how to steer the conversation to what interested me the most: what happened to Astor.

"Do you ever come up to visit the graves?" Jonathan asked me in his soft, calm voice. "I've never seen flowers, but there are always plenty of candles. I thought maybe one of them was from you."

I looked at my lap again, unwilling to admit my own wrongdoings. The truth was I hadn't come to visit my sister's and parents' graves ever since it happened. Ever since I escaped Hollyhock and all it had done to me, leaving it in the dust as Kain's men drove me off to take care of Ophelia.

"I don't," I finally admitted, the guilt lying heavily upon my shoulders.

"I suppose that's why you didn't know about the asylum."

Jonathan's words were meant to soothe me, but I felt the silent pressure of them weighing on me. 

I should have come sooner. I should have known what happened to her, to my own sister. I was a bad person for staying away for so long.

My shoulders hunched and I felt the embarrassing, familiar sting of tears in my eyes. I crumpled in on myself, covering my face with my hands as I sobbed quietly, my shame seeping out through every pore in my body.

"I'm sorry, Jonathan. I've let everyone down."

"Oh, Miss Adley," he said, soothingly touching my back. "You haven't. It was a hard time for everyone. You just dealt with it in your own way. You had to mourn, to process what happened."

I raised my eyes to him, wiping my face. I was probably a mess by now. The long train journey and the trip to the asylum surely hadn't helped, and the crying fest probably smudged my makeup considerably.

"I need to find her," I told him. "Astor."

"Why? Why now?"

I sized him up, wondering whether he knew more about my sister than he let on. I couldn't ask him outright, so I just chose to tell him the truth. Mr. Smith was a nice man, and despite not being his favorite of the three Adley girls, I trusted him. Still, after all these years, he was the man who consoled me when I cried, even when my father wasn't there to do it.

"I received a p-package," I admitted, my voice shakier than I would have liked. "It had a blank tarot card."

"A tarot card?" He raised his brows. "Like the ones you girls used to play with?"

I nodded wordlessly, remembering those carefree days. I'd had no idea then that evil lurked right underneath the shadows. That my own sister would cause the downfall of an entire family.

"Which card?"

"It was blank," I replied. "Tabula rasa."

He paled at the words, the ones that had been mentioned countless times after the fire, after the police were done digging up their dirt, pinning it all on my sister. After the horrible, shameful day when they made me accuse her of burning down our house, our parents and sister still inside. The day I'd stared into Astor's tear-filled eyes and condemned her to spend the rest of her life in an asylum.

I couldn't stay behind after that. But I needn't have worried. With our case making headlines, I received a lot of strange mail and phone calls. One of them changed my life.

When Kain made an appearance in Hollyhock, I thought him too big, too grand for the small town. But there he was, offering me an amount of money I could've only dreamed about before when I didn't know how I'd make it after I turned eighteen. I followed him, took care of his girlfriend, the beautiful, elusive Ophelia who didn't speak when I met her. Through them, I'd met Ryker Marino, the man who shaped my life forever. The man I'd been running from since the day he told me he loved me.

It occurred to me that I'd spent a lot of my time running. It seemed like it was my knee-jerk reaction when I was in a difficult situation: turn the other way and run in the opposite direction as fast as I possibly could. I'd done it one too many times to keep denying the truth to myself. It was painfully obvious, and as I looked into Jonathan's eyes, I saw he'd had the same realization.

He gave me a sympathetic smile.

"The card could have been from anyone," he tried to console me. "Someone trying to play nasty tricks on you."

"I recognized the handwriting," I told him brokenly. "Do you remember the little hearts our sister used to dot her i's with?"

His eyebrows knitted together, and he said the name I hadn't thought of, or uttered, in eight years.

"Allegra?"

"Don't say her name," I begged him hurriedly, shame burning my cheeks a bright red as I tried to avoid his gaze.

"All right," he agreed, seeming a bit confused. 

"She even did that," I said shakily. "She even dotted her i's just like Allegra used to. That was the one way I used to be able to tell them apart, those silly hearts."

I chuckled out something resembling a sob, and he offered me a tissue. Blowing my nose, I refused to meet his eyes, overtaken by a bone-deep betrayal because he was so obviously still on Astor's side. She was always his favorite, and I had a sudden urge to call him out for it.

"You really have nothing to say about that?" I asked. "Isn't that sick, Jonathan? Just as sick as the rest of the things she did. Why am I still surprised? She was—is a monster."

"Calm down, Ginger," he begged me. "I know you're angry, but maybe I can help you find your sister. I might have an idea where Astor went."

I turned my eyes to his sharply, demanding answers.

"Where did she go? Please, you need to tell me. I'm afraid… I'm afraid she's dangerous. That she's going to hurt somebody else."

"She wouldn't," he stated matter-of-factly, still stubbornly convinced that the idea of my sister he held in memory was true.

I bit my tongue before I called him out for his utter ridiculousness. Of course she would have. Astor stopped at nothing to get her way. She'd proved it when she killed our family.

I blinked away the tears threatening to drip from my eyes yet again. 

"Where did she go?" I repeated. "I need to know, Jonathan. I need to find her before something bad happens."

"I used to talk to her a lot." He leaned closer to me. "You know we were close. Remember all the books I brought her?" I nodded.

"Eventually she'd read every book I had at home. I started bringing her more: books with art, books about traveling. Books from… a long time ago."

I briefly recalled Jonathan had been married for ten years until his wife passed away in a tragic car accident. They used to travel a lot, Dad used to tell us. That's why Jonathan knew so much about the world.

"There was a tourist guide to Italy," he went on. "She loved that one so much, I even bought her a special book one day as a present for her birthday."

"Yes, I remember," I cut in, earning a smile from him. "The book about Venice. I remember how angry our sister was because you'd only given her candy. She thought it was unfair that Astor got a book and she didn't."

I let out a strained chuckle, and he patted my shoulder again.

"She loved that book," I remembered. 

"She did. And she told me one day she would live there."

"In Italy?"

"In Venice. Her eyes lit up when she talked about it."

"I can't see how she'd get out of the country," I said worriedly. "They took her when she was admitted into the asylum."

Jonathan looked away, and I could tell he felt guilty about something. Desperate, I reached for his hand, imploring him to tell me what happened.

"After you left town," he said, his voice shaky, "I took care of what was left. The estate… even though it was burned to the ground, I still try to keep it tidy. Some personal belongings, the things that survived the fire. Things your father kept in a safe."

"Yes?" I urged, knowing he was working his way up to a big reveal.

"There were some documents among them," he confessed. "Including your sister's passport. Allegra Adley."

"You gave it to her," I said softly, and he nodded, the weight almost visibly shifting from his shoulders.

He must've kept that secret for a long time.

"When?" I barked. "When did you give her Allegra's passport?"

"After the fire in the asylum. She was waiting for me when I got home after helping at the scene."

He'd betrayed us. Again. Betrayed not only me but Astor's twin sister, and our parents. He'd helped their murderer.

He wasn't a good man. He was the enemy.

I needed to know more though, so I swallowed my anger and offered him an icy smile that was meant to be reassuring. I hoped he hadn't noticed what my true thoughts on the matter were.

"Did she ask you for it?" nn

He nodded, his head sagging as he did, then stared at his wrinkled hands peppered with liver spots. He really was just an old man now. An old man who had been alone for a very, very long time.

"Did she say she was going abroad?"

"She said she was going to Italy," he replied. "She said it was time to start a new life. I gave her some money for the ticket."

I couldn't believe his naivete. He'd been played by Astor, just like I'd been, believing my whole life that Allegra, her twin sister, had been the bad one.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

"Why are you telling me this now?" I asked pointedly. "You have no reason to help me. You always liked Astor best of all."

"There was something wrong that night," he said, shaking his head. "Something about her didn't seem right."

There was something very obviously wrong with my sister, but I wasn't about to point that out. Instead, I waited patiently for him to go on.

"She didn't seem herself. She seemed… strange. Snappy. Not the way she usually was with me."

"That was years ago now. I have no idea if she's still in Italy."

"You need to find her," Jonathan said, and I raised my eyes to his.

"Why?"

He looked at me, then, as if changing his mind, stood up and started digging in a drawer.

"I'm going to give you some money for the plane ticket to Venice, like I did with her. It's time this ended, that this curse was finally lifted."

"Curse?" I repeated, but he ignored me, seemingly lost in the past.

I approached him slowly, and when I touched my hand to his, he jumped, his eyes wide with fear.

"Why do I have to find her?"

"Because," he insisted, softening after a moment of my inquisitive glaring, "she sent me a package too. And I'm afraid she's going to kill again."