James pulled up to the Evers house just after dawn.

“Get cleaned up and meet me back here in a few hours,” I said. “I’m hoping my friend Brooke has already rescued a few of the girls, but I may need your help to get the rest of them back here.”

“Brooke?” he asked. Then, recognition settled in his eyes. “Melody.”

“Yes, I said. If you can, arrange for Monica Evers and her nurse, Melody, to visit each of the hospitals. We’ll prepare the proper paperwork to have them discharged from the hospital, so they can come home with us.”

“They’ll never agree to let you bring a hundred girls here to this house,” he said.

“They won’t know that’s what we intend to do,” I said. “We’ll make it appear as if the girls’ parents will be picking them up. Evers Institute was a private facility, after all. None of these girls were every officially committed to any type of state hospital or mandatory facility. As long as we make it look like their parents intend to take them home, I don’t think it will be a problem.”

He shook his head and glanced up at the house. “But how will you keep them all here?” he asked. “It’s a big house, but feeding everyone and making sure you have enough beds is going to be a nightmare.”

“Once their memories are restored, I’ll let the girls decide what they want to do,” I said. “They were brought here against their will, and right now, I can’t promise them a trip back to the present day. We may have to face the fact that we’re all stuck here, at least for a while. If they want to stay with me, maybe we can find a place to rebuild and start our lives over.”

“But what about the danger of disrupting the timeline?” he asked. Stress formed wrinkles on his forehead. “If you just restore their memories and let them go and do whatever they want to do, they could change everything. We may get home to the present and find out that nothing is at all what we thought it was.”

I thought about his words for a long time as I sat staring up at the house. He made a good point. What if any of these girls decided they wanted revenge for what happened to them? The emerald priestess might be dead in the present day, but there was still another version of her here in the 50’s, living her life and making plans for this horrible place. Hundreds, if not thousands, of girls would die here in the years to come, and right now, there was something we could do about it if we had no choice but to stay.

It was a powerful temptation to try to change the things we knew were yet to come, but at what cost? We could save hundreds, but if that meant the Order itself would be free to continue enslaving demons and witches for their own evil purposes, what would we really accomplish here?

Yet, how could I free these girls and expect them to sit back and let it all happen? If I ended up stuck here for the rest of my life, how would I live with myself knowing all the things happening around me that I could have changed?

I took a deep breath to calm my racing mind.

For the past several years, ever since I was brought to Peachville and told that it was my last chance to make something of my life, I’d been fighting. Through it all, I had somehow found the strength to believe that I would survive and that we would win this war.

And somehow, I had. Even in the darkest of times, when hope had seemed to abandon me, I believed that I would make it through.

I had no idea what the future would bring. I had no idea if I would find my way home. But even now, with the portal closed and no way out, I knew in the deepest part of myself, that it was going to be okay. My job wasn’t to know how it would work out. My job was simply to trust.

“I don’t have all the answers for you,” I said. “I don’t know how this ends. What I do know is that I will always continue to do what I know is right. And restoring the memories of these girls is the right thing to do, James. Beyond that, it’s up to something greater than me.”

James gave me a strange look. “How can you say that after everything you’ve been through? How can you even know what the right thing is? I thought for sure that joining the Others was the right thing to do. That killing you was right. But now…”

“The difference, I think, is that I’ve learned to let my heart guide me. This war against the Order is not about revenge for me. It’s not even about justice. Not really,” I said. “I want to put an end to the Order because as long as they exist, the people I love most are in danger. You want to save your sister? Fight for her. Don’t fight for revenge. Fight for love.”

His lip trembled, and he looked away.

“Do you really think we can save her?”

I touched his hand. “I know we can try,” I said. “Let’s save these girls, first. Then we can find our way home, James. We can free the emerald gates and restore your sister’s true memories. One step at a time. We can do this as long as we believe we can.”

He nodded. “Somehow, I believe in you. As crazy as it sounds.”

“Come back in a couple hours?” I asked.

“I’ll be here,” he said.

I opened the door of the police cruiser and stepped into the cool spring air. I was exhausted, scared, and the future was uncertain, but in my heart, there was still the whisper of hope.