Rather than lose time driving all the way back to the house in Ohio, Rend let me use his demon door.

Once Azure and I had said goodbye, I walked through the Hall of Doorways, searching for the door with the green scarab beetle etched into its surface, anxious to get back to make sure Brooke was okay.

On my way there, though, the sight of a blue demon door caught my eye, and my heart tightened in my chest.

Peachville.

I stopped in front of the door and stared at it for a very long time. Beyond this door was home. Brighton Manor, long before it had been turned into Shadowford Home For Troubled Girls.

Beyond this door was a family I had never known.

My mother would not have been born yet, but I had spent many long nights talking to Aerden about my family history.

I thought back to our conversations and realized that in 1951, my grandmother would have only just been born a few years ago. If I walked through this door, I might have the chance to see her. It wouldn’t be the same as seeing my own mother, but it would likely be my only opportunity to see any member of my family when they were still alive.

I knew it was risky. If anyone saw me, it could somehow alter the timeline in ways that would ruin the future we had built.

Still, how could I let this moment pass? How could I know they were just on the other side of that door and not take this risk? This one chance?

I shook my head and with heavy footsteps, I walked past the door, determined not to put my own future at risk.

But I only got a few steps down the hallway before I turned around and put my hand on the doorknob. I could be careful, and they would never know I was there, right? Walking away would break my heart, and hadn’t I suffered enough for one lifetime?

I had earned this. All that torture, being away from Jackson and everyone I loved. Screw the timeline, I deserved to see them. I deserved this one small gift, to make up for all I would still have to do just to find my way home again.

My heart raced. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help myself. My entire life, I had longed to know my family.

It was something most people took for granted, and something I had never known. To belong to someone. To look into their face and see yourself. These were things I had never known except those precious months I had spent with my father.

And even then, my father was a demon. In my human form, I looked almost nothing like him at all.

There was simply no chance I was walking away. I had to see them.

I connected to my power and closed my eyes. I took a deep breath and focused on turning to nothing. Air. Invisible.

When I opened my eyes, my body had disappeared.

I turned the knob and stepped inside the pentagram-shaped room on the third floor of Brighton Manor.

I stood there for a few minutes, listening for any sound of voices or movement on the floors below. When I didn’t hear anything at all, I nearly convinced myself to turn around. Maybe they weren’t even home.

But I had to know.

I opened the narrow door that led to the hidden stairway down to the second floor. I moved carefully, conscious of each footfall. No one could see me, but if I knocked something over or stepped on the wrong step and made a creaking sound, they would most certainly hear me.

I glanced into the bedrooms and smiled. Everything looked so different from the time when I had first been moved here. Instead of a home for girls where each room was set up with an impersonal dorm-room kind of feel, the house had a real lived-in look. Toys on the floor of a bedroom with a white crib and teal wallpaper embroidered with flowers. A brush and makeup strewn across the dressing table I had used for years as my own. Was this my great-grandmother’s room now?

I listened at the top of the stairs, and when I didn’t hear anything going on downstairs, I tiptoed onto the first step. I knew this place so intimately, I knew exactly which steps creaked and which ones didn’t. I took each step with care, skipping the ones that might betray my presence in the house.

When I had made it to the bottom floor, I took my time walking toward the back of the house.

The front sitting room looked almost exactly the way it had when I’d first moved to Shadowford. Stuffy and unused.

One glance in the common room showed that back in the fifties this room was not filled with old, worn couches and ancient computer equipment. Instead, this had been the dining room. A gorgeous mahogany dining table with matching chairs took up most of the space. I stepped inside and ran my fingers across the mahogany china cabinet.

The dishes inside were beautiful bone china, decorated with delicate blue flowers. I wondered what had happened to my family china in the years after my mother died? I had searched every inch of Brighton Manor and had never seen anything like it. It must have been sold or given to another family.

I almost wished I could take a piece of it home with me, just to have a token of this place where I once belonged. But I left it all behind and continued on to the kitchen.

Instead of a long table meant to accommodate a dozen people, there was a smaller, more casual round table made of oak. A wooden high-chair sat at one end, and I could almost picture my great-grandmother feeding her small child there.

But there didn’t seem to be anyone home.

Sadness engulfed me, but as I turned around, determined to get upstairs and back to Brooke, the sound of a child’s laughter rang out, distant but clear.

I glanced out the window over the sink, and my heart rose into my chest. She was there. My grandmother, Julia. She couldn’t have been more than three years old, and she was standing by the fountain, splashing her hands into the water and giggling.

Her hair was exactly the same color as mine. Her eyes were brown, and even though she was just a tiny little thing, she could have been my daughter. I placed a hand over my mouth, watching her in awe as she played.

The garden outside was not the overgrown mess I had found when I first moved to Peachville. Instead, it was flourishing and full of color. It was spring here in Georgia, and the flowers must have all recently bloomed.

A woman emerged from the maze of flowers, and again, I saw so much of myself in her. She couldn’t have been much older than I was now. She pulled her gardening gloves off, and she dipped a hand into the fountain, splashing water toward her little girl and laughing.

I gasped, clutching my throat when I saw the sapphire pendant around the woman’s neck. It hadn’t occurred to me until this moment, but right now, Aerden was trapped inside that woman.

I wished I could send him some kind of message to let him know that someday, he would be free again. Just to give him any hope to hold onto in the dark days yet to come. But I couldn’t do anything to help him. Not here.

I watched them for as long as I could, their laughter reaching me through the thin glass. They seemed happy, and I wished more than anything that I could join them, just for a moment. That I could belong to them and convince them to leave the Order. Convince them that there was another way.

Maybe, if things had been different, we could have all fought together.

But in a way, I knew both of these women would someday fight against the Order’s evil, because they were a part of me. As long as I still drew breath into my lungs, a piece of them still flowed through my veins, and some part of them had made me who I was today.

I glanced up at the clock ticking above me, and realized I had stood there for way too long. The sun was beginning to set in the distance and soon, they would come inside for dinner. My time was up, but I sent up a thought of gratitude.

Thank you for this moment. This one gift.

I brought a hand to my lips and sent a kiss toward the mother-daughter pair. Then I turned around, made my way back up the stairs and out into the Hall of Doorways.

I had lingered in the past for as long as I cared to stay. Now, it was time to get back to my future.