I saw Eve less than an hour later.

Sure, she may have had a pixie-cut with straightened, blonde hair, but I knew her face like my own reflection. After all, I’d seen it almost every single day of my life for over two decades.

I gasped as my chest tightened. Maybe it was the days of chasing her, the hours and hours in the car, or just the fact that she’d abandoned me and Pops to run off like this. I clutched Jake’s arm and pointed across the big open hall full of white-robed cultists to the table at the other end of the room. “That’s her. That’s her right there, Jake! That’s Eve!”

Still chewing a mouthful of beef, he turned to me, both eyebrows raised. “What?” he asked in a muffled voice.

“Oh, gross!”

He closed his mouth and finished chewing before swallowing abruptly. “Excuse me. Must have been around the guys for too long, sent my manners right out the window.” He brought his cloth napkin up and wiped his mouth clean. “Up there? You see her?”

“See? The blonde one up there with that fake look on her face? Like she’s only pretending to enjoy this?”

He looked from her and back to my face. “Yeah,” he said, “I see the resemblance now. The hair change threw me off.”

“If I know Eve, and believe me I do, that’s what she was betting on.” I turned to him. “I’m going to go talk to her.”

“Sure that’s a good idea? She’s under an assumed name here, Elise.”

“She’s my fucking sister, Jake. I have to say something, especially after all the shit we’ve been through because of her.” I went to stand just as I heard his cell buzz in his pocket.

“Elise!” he called, his voice low like he was trying to avoid a scene in front of all the white-robes. He pulled his cell from his pocket, and cursed low as he checked it. “Elise!” he hissed again.

I started to head down the little path separating all the folding tables that made up the seating placements. I walked between the crowded tables full of meat-eating Great Alpha followers, their voices like an out-of-tune orchestra as they filled the hall.

Behind me, I heard a crash of metal folding chairs, Jake swearing quietly and murmuring an apology.

I stifled a grin that came to my face despite the seriousness of the situation, and glanced back.

Jake was busy apologizing to one of the congregation members, their pristine robes soiled in meat.

I went down the center aisle and headed right for the main table.

Boots sounded behind me as Jake tried to catch up.

My head spinning from a mix of emotions, I practically charged up the middle as fast as I could while still walking. My eyes locked with the man seated in the center, a man I recognized from his image on the website: Reverend Fenris.

He went to stand, his graying eyebrows raised almost to his thinning hairline as he took in my plain clothes. “My child, how may I–”

“Can it, Reverend,” I snapped as I turned to my sister, who was seated two spots down on his right, and pointed an accusing finger right at her. “She’s the one I want to talk to. Not you.”

Eve’s eyes were as wide as dinner plates as she stared at me over the napkin she’d pressed to her mouth. She shook her head almost uncontrollably and sank back into her chair. Behind me, the crowd was beginning to realize there was something going on up front, and the sound of chairs moving and robes fluttering began to fill the air.

I didn’t care.

My emotions got the better of me, building up inside my head like a fever. “You fucking bitch,” I spat with more anger than I thought I had in me, “I finally fucking found you. I can’t believe you’d abandon me the way you did! I’ve been cleaning up your messes all over, Eve!”

“My child,” Reverend Fenris said from behind Eve’s chair, “there must be some mistake. Elm is a child of the Great Alpha.”

I glanced up at him, my brow furrowed. “Stay the fuck out of this, preacher.”

Eve took the napkin from her mouth, the look of surprise already gone from her face. “Sister, he speaks the truth,” she said in a voice completely unlike the Eve I remembered, and almost identical to Sister Veronica’s in both tone and rhythm. “My name is Elm, and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I gritted my teeth together. That wasn’t like Eve, either.

She smiled beatifically at me, like some kind of low-rent saint.

The Eve I knew would have climbed over the table at me, nails raised like talons as she went straight for my eyes. We were sisters, and even though we’d grown up with our mom preaching love and happiness and acceptance, Pops still thought we needed to stand up for ourselves. I’d be the first to admit that sometimes the two of us took that a little too far.

I stepped back, shaking my head as I looked into those eyes of hers, those eyes that matched mine perfectly. “No,” I said vehemently. “You’re Eve! You’re my sister!”

“We’re all Sisters here,” Eve said airily, her lips still curved into that warm, perfect smile of hers. “Sisters in the Great Pack of the Great Alpha.”

“Elise,” Jake said from behind me as he gently took my arm, “we should go. We’re causing a scene.”

“That’s her, though,” I said, my voice somewhere between anger and a whine. “Don’t you see it, Jake?”

“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice so low only I could have heard it, his words like a knife through my heart. “She says she doesn’t know you. Maybe she doesn’t?”

My teeth ground together harder, my nostrils flared as I sucked in the meat aroma in the air. Denied again. I’d finally found her. I’d finally caught up to my sister, finally found a place to put all my anger. And now Jake, the man I cared about, didn’t even believe me. The bastard. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. 

“Elise,” Jake said in a low voice, looking down at me. “Not here.”

Suddenly, the crowded hall felt like it had ten times as many people crammed within its walls, all sucking the air out of me. I yanked my arm from him and turned away, pushed past him, and headed to the doors leading outside at the back of the hall.

Behind me, Jake tried to fumble out an apology, an excuse for my behavior. In my mind it just sounded like a rumble of words, a mumbling burble that seemed to join in with all the conversation overflowing around me.

The whole way, as I was stomping my heels with each step, I had the same constant question in the back of my mind: Why didn’t Jake believe me? Why was Eve pretending? I knew it was her, I just knew it. Was she that afraid? Was she that worried they’d throw her out, and she’d have nowhere else to go?

Concerned faces followed me as I fled back down the center aisle.

“Poor girl,” one said.

“She must have lost her mind,” said another.

I slammed the door open, fled out to the cold, away from the voices of the white-robes.

I needed to get away from them. I needed to be by myself. I needed to think.