I feel like somewhere between there and here, I made a turn toward the ocean without knowing and flung myself off a pier. I must be dead, standing here talking to this strange being, letting his words open doors I never knew were hidden, flooding my afterlife with the answers to everything. Yet, these answers are only creating more questions and death is supposed to be final.

I swing my body at the waist to see Malachi still sitting on the step, the light from the lamppost leaving only one side of his face in the shadow of the building.

“Please,” I beg, my hands out in front of me, “just tell me what you are!” The truth is that I have too many questions and they’re all scrambling for the only exit of a burning building, completely choking the way out. I go back to the one thing I know he won’t tell me, just to keep myself talking, to keep my mind from collapsing under the weight of all those questions trying to break free.

“I can’t tell you because it’s forbidden,” he says, rising into a stand. “We’re unable to speak our own name.” The door to the Mexican restaurant opens and a small group of young couples file out, their appearance made evident by the lamppost on the sidewalk. “But that boyfriend of yours can tell you though.”

He steps up beside me and watches the people across the street. I watch them too, only because he seems more interested in them than normal. I soon realize who they are. It’s the group of people he had been walking with earlier. I see the short blond-haired girl he had held hands with come out last, and for a split second, I hope she doesn’t see me talking to him alone like this in the dark. I don’t want or need any jealous girlfriend trouble. But then I see Malachi walk out of the restaurant behind her, taking her hand into his. She laughs and reaches up touching his face and nuzzles her head underneath his chin.

I look back and forth between Malachi and…Malachi standing next to me.

“What—How—?”

He smiles at me. “I have to go,” he says, “but it was a pleasure meeting you, Adria Dawson. Tell Genevieve I said hi, will you? Oh, and…that I still love her.”

I’m too speechless to say anything back to him, my mouth parted halfway. I can’t believe he’s here and there….

Malachi walks across the cobblestones toward the people shuffling down the sidewalk. I see his form slide into his duplicate form like a spirit taking over the body of its host and no one sees it but me. He looks back at me once, his aquamarine eyes glinting in the darkness, and then the group slips into the shadows and out of sight.

I sit down on the curb, my legs bent upward. I put my head in my hands and close my eyes, letting the sobs rock me until suddenly I hear a familiar voice yelling out my name.

“Adria! Baby, where have you been?” I look up, only now realizing that it’s nighttime as if I’ve been snapped from a dream. Between trying to understand how that’s possible and seeing Isaac’s agonized face staring across at me as he approaches, I can’t do anything but look through him.

In seconds he’s crouching in front of me, both of his hands bracing the sides of my head. “Love, are you okay? Adria—baby, look at me.” I lift my eyes to see his face is tormented by worry. “Adria….” He crushes his lips against my forehead.

When he pulls away, I look at him and tell the truth for the first time: “No, Isaac, I’m not okay.”

Back at the beach house, Isaac agreed to let me think for a little while before I tell him what happened. He almost wouldn’t let me sit outside by myself, afraid that something else might happen to me. But I needed this and after Nathan convinced him, Isaac let me go.

I sit outside alone on the tree swing near the house, my favorite beige knit sweater pulled around my body to keep the cooler night air from making me uncomfortable. The wind has calmed since earlier in the day, but I can hear the leaves dancing in the tree above me and the soothing sound of ocean waves gently lapping at the shore out ahead.

Most of the lights in the house are on, letting a faint orange glow spill out of the windows. I hear my friends inside talking, but their voices aren’t raised so I can’t make out what they’re saying. But I know it’s probably mostly about me and all of the strange things I’ve done lately. I wonder if Harry will keep my secrets. I do trust him, but I know that he’ll spill my secrets if it means it might save me.

Somehow, I know Isaac isn’t contributing to their conversations. It’s as if I can feel his concern, his fears. I imagine him sitting quietly off to the side as everyone talks around him. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. I don’t know how I can see it, but I can.

I look out at the endless ocean covered by darkness. Every now and then I can see a small white-capped wave rise up and blink out again. I think about the ride home and about what everyone said as I sat there, completely still and utterly quiet, lost in my own uncertainties. Apparently, when I left Zia, Daisy and Hannah at the restaurant, I had been gone for over four hours. It never even occurred to me that as I stood talking with Malachi that the night had fallen. Only now as I think back on it do I remember the lampposts coming to life and the car lights blinding me. But just like in the clinic when the nurse drew my blood, time had been completely stripped from my mind.

I know now that it was Genna, there in the room with me at the clinic that day. I know she was there when I saw the wall move. Somehow, Genna made me calm, like she had tried to do at Isaac’s when Nataša was giving her speech. And in the library.

But why would she do that?

I know the only way I’m going to understand any of this is when I tell Isaac about her in just a few more minutes.

And I’m terrified. I’m terrified because now more than ever, I know that my Blood Bond and Genna Bishop are somehow linked, even despite seeing her before I ever met Viktor.

Isaac will know now. He will know everything. He’ll know that I’m a liar and that I’m not fully his because the blood of his enemy keeps me alive.

The tears pour from my eyes and I don’t try to stop them this time. I just let them flow, my body shuddering in a surrendering mess. I cry quietly in the night under the tree, my legs pulled up onto the swing seat, pressing against my chest with my arms wrapped around my knees. My bare feet are cold, but I didn’t care to put on shoes before I came out here and I don’t care to put any on now.

I hear Isaac’s footsteps shuffling through the grass and sand behind me.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but that’s as long as I can leave you out here by yourself.” The swing shifts as he sits down beside me, pulling me into his lap. His closeness only makes me want to cry harder, but I don’t. He wraps his arms around me and kisses the edge of my chin. The sweetness of his breath lulls me. “I’ll wait for as long as you need before we talk about it, but I need to be here with you.”

I reach up, my fingers halfway hidden in the sleeve of my sweater and I wipe my face. Nathan and everyone else come out of the house from the side door and walk toward the beach carrying blankets and other various items I can’t see.

I pause, looking only at Isaac now, letting my gaze fall to see the outline of his beautiful face, his perfect lips and then once again the endless depths of his eyes.

“Why do you love me?” I say, my voice soft, almost a whisper.

I try to make myself believe I’m only testing the waters right now, feeling out his answers before I tell him the one thing I don’t want to, but really I think I’m just looking for reasons to put it off.

Isaac draws back a little, mildly surprised by my question. But his eyes grow softer and I can sense how easy this is for him, instead of it catching him off-guard and leaving him scrambling to find the perfectly-worded answer.

He kisses me on the nose and says, “This could take a while.”

A tiny smile warms my face, pushing through the tears and the pain.

I feel his arms squeeze me.

“I love you because you’re extraordinary. You have all of the things I respect about a person wrapped up in one package, while every other girl I’ve ever met only had a few of those things. I love you because you’re selfless, incredibly strong and because you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

An unexpected sob rattles my body and more hot tears stream down my cheeks, but I’m smiling behind these tears.

Isaac lets me cry for a moment longer, smiling back at me before reaching up and wiping the tears away with his fingertips.

“I believe there’s someone out there for everyone,” he says, “and when you meet that person, sometimes you know right away they are who you were meant to be with. And sometimes, years can go by before you let yourself believe that the feeling you’ve had about a person for so long, is actually love. And what a waste that is.” He stops and smiles more warmly, his eyes searching my face. “I love you because I knew the first night I spoke to you, when I pleaded for you to get in the Jeep, that you were the one meant for me and I’m glad I was lucky enough that it didn’t take me years to figure it out.”

This time he kisses my lips. I shut my eyes, feeling his lips linger on mine for a long moment.

Right here, in this moment with Isaac, I truly feel like I would die without him in my life. My heart would die. My soul would die. I would be an empty shell devoid of anything solid. Any other time with any other person, something like that would seem absurd to me, but not with Isaac. And I try not to let Beverlee’s words of warning ruin this moment, but they wake up inside my head and reach down into my stomach, crushing it into a mass. ‘What worries me the most is falling so fast and hard for someone only to get your heart broken later. That kind of love is the most dangerous.’

Beverlee was right.

But so was I. To love Isaac so deeply really does mean that it will hurt a thousand times more when he disappoints or leaves me. I’m not ready to face that. I never will be. But the longer that I wait the more painful it’s going to be in the end.

I move out of Isaac’s arms and stand up from the swing, pulling my sweater closed around me. I notice a fire near the water, flames rising high into the air.

With my back to Isaac, I begin: “Downtown, there was this guy…well he wasn’t human. He said he couldn’t tell me what he is because it’s forbidden. I followed him to the street where you found me because I noticed a tattoo on his hand that was identical to the one I saw on Genna Bishop’s hand.” I look out at the ocean and work the words out in my mind some more. “But he was mostly interested in me because apparently I could see him and I wasn’t supposed to.” I turn at the waist to see Isaac still sitting on the swing behind me. His face is blank, devoid of emotion, but I can already see that he’s holding back a thousand emotions the best he can. It’s as if he already knows what has happened and that he already knows what Malachi is. If this is true, then Isaac likely also knows why I could see Malachi…because I’m somewhere between life and death, sanity and insanity. Because of the Blood Bond.

My heart falls into the pit of my stomach, but I also hold back a thousand emotions and try to finish my story with tears in my throat. All of my words, my explanations, are coming out in a disorderly sequence, but it’s the best I can do.