Tears like hot acid burned the backs of my eyes and clouded the scene before me. "Are you real?"

Aiden came to me and pulled me into his arms. "Does this feel real?"

"I don't know." I sniffled against his chest. A desperate longing to wrap the thick fleece of his jacket in my fists overcame me, but I couldn't let go of the precious bits of my mother I'd found in the secret drawer beneath the throne that bore my family's name. "I think... I might be... I can't tell... I remember, but..." No adequate words would come to me. How could I explain that I'd suddenly come to understand I'd lived in multiple realities all my life? Now Jack built a whole new world for us and I didn't yet know my place in his creation.

He took a step back, but his strong hand remained firm and reassuring on my shoulders. "Leave these things here, Jess, and come with me."

I clutched my mother's belongings to my chest. "They're mine now."

"Yes, but they need to stay here. They are yours to use, but they belong to this place. It's not right to take them away."

"Where will we go?"

He kissed my forehead and brushed my hair from my eyes. "We'll get coffee and talk. I know the whole story, baby. The real story. But it will take time. We need to go somewhere warm and comfortable."

"I don't want to go to my father's house."

"No, baby. We won't go there."

The last two days rushed at me, an unstoppable locomotive and I had no chance to jump out of the way before it hit. My hands ached from gripping the book and dagger so forcefully.

"Go put them away," Aiden coaxed. His voice acted like a balm to my tortured soul. "We'll find a place to talk and I'll explain everything."

"Everything?" I asked.

He promised.

"How can you know?" This was my entire life, from the time before I could remember, and I'd only known Aiden a little more than a year.

"Trust me."

The knife had not grown warmer in my grasp. It was like trying to hold onto an icicle. "I don't know who to trust. I can't..." What was there to say? The entire universe had become no more substantial than a sandcastle submerged beneath a powerful wave.

"I'll tell you everything." He pulled a small folding multipurpose tool from his coat pocket, unfolded the knife, and drew it across his forearm. A three-inch cut welled with blood and he turned his arm so it dripped in the space beneath the all-seeing eye like crimson tears. "I swear to you on this blood. If my words be untrue, let Lucifer shatter this physical shell and drag my soul to the pit to be devoured by my enemies."

I'm not sure any other phrase could have so perfectly captured my attention. I tucked my mother's precious tools back in their hiding place and followed Aiden back out of the crypt. We climbed into the SUV he'd rented and I gave him directions to a bar in the downtown area where we found a middle-aged bartender reading a romance novel and Stuart Francis nursing a cheap American beer.

"Why are you scowling at them?" Aiden whispered in my ear.

"It's all fake, right? They're trying to trick me."

"It's not all fake." He gestured for me to slide into a booth as far away as possible from the bar's other two occupants. These people live here. He lowered his voice further. "The town drunk does not cease to be the town drunk simply because the world is watching."

We ordered fries and cokes from the woman who seemed annoyed to be roused from her book and while we waited, Aiden took my hands in his across the table. "Do you have any idea how happy I am to be with you here and now in this time and this place? You have no idea how long I've waited for this moment when there would be no more secrets between us."

"I didn't keep secrets from you." The longer I thought about it, the angrier I became. How much had he known about my life? More than me, by the way he was speaking. And yet, he'd chosen to hide all that away while I shared myself with him?

But that wasn't exactly true either. I'd never really shared myself with him. I'd never really shared my life with anyone except maybe Jack. Always, it had seemed Jack was the only one who could possibly begin to understand. He was the only one who knew exactly what it was like to feel the lash of our father's belt against bare shoulder blades. He was the only other person who'd wept the day of my mother's funeral.

Aiden prattled on about traffic and weather as if he was hosting a morning talk show until the food and drinks came. Then he pushed the fries toward me and told me to eat. "You'll be able to think more clearly if you're not half sick from starving yourself."

I nibbled the end of a fry and had to admit that the hot food felt good on my tongue. "Start at the beginning."

He laughed. "It would take ten lifetimes to tell. How about I start with your father and why he be—" the word died in his mouth and he tried a different track. "Why he was always such a hard man."

"He's broken," I said. "He gets some sick pleasure from crushing us under his heel."

"No, baby, you've got it all mixed up. Your daddy's not broken. He's a stronger man than just about anyone I've ever known, but that's not going to be enough. In time, a rock will crack under the pressure of a river. He should have learned to bend, to adapt. His mistake was in being too strong."

"Go on, then. Start with my dad. Tell me how much you know about me."

When Aiden smiled, it was hard to believe any human could be so beautiful. "As soon as he knew the score, your father tried everything. He married your mother for love. She was the prettiest girl he'd ever known, and she saw the steel core in the center of him and hoped to build an empire on his strength. She said all the right things until he was under her spell and then she married him.

Pretty soon after that, he knew the truth about her. Imagine it and you'll understand what I mean. How long can you live with a religious fanatic and not realize their zeal. Your mother ate, slept, and breathed loyalty to our Lord. Her only goal was to serve him, to be his vessel in every way she knew how."

I wrapped my hands around the cold glass and let the condensation soak into my palms. The chill reminded me of the dagger and as soon as I thought of that I wondered what it would feel like to slip that blade between my father's ribs and watch the blood drain from him. I didn't believe he'd bleed as my mother had. She was rich and full of life. He was dry and hollow as a shell on the seashore. Her killer had turned her blood to water. His would be thick and dark as tar.

"Your dad grew up in an extraordinary home. He was the only son of the high witch and wizard."

They would have sat in the thrones upon the dais and presided over the ceremonies. I'd never witnessed them, but some kind of genetic memory played out within the recesses of my mind and I understood the power those positions held.

"He could have had power beyond imagining, if only he'd had the stomach for it. Instead, he turned to stodgy protestant beliefs and began trying to earn his way into Heaven by following a set of impossible rules and putting in his quota of time in the church pew. Can you imagine how he panicked when his wife, the irresistible witch—and I assume she was irresistible because he couldn't help himself from impregnating her, no matter how holy he strove to be—gave birth to a boy and then a girl. A future high witch and wizard."

He laid his strong hand on my forearm and his palm was so warm it burned through the fabric of my shirt. "Do you understand? Your dad tried everything he could think of. He tried taking you and Jack to church at every opportunity. He beat you both when you broke the rules, or even had thoughts that didn't align with what he believed was right and proper. He did it all to try to push you into the light, but it was no good. You delighted in your mother's company. You frolicked in the cemetery with her. And then one day your father caught you playing at sacrifice. It wasn't the real deal, but it was close enough to terrify your father. He'd seen his mother perform the great rituals, and he'd seen the darkness wrap itself around her naked form. You had caught a field mouse and Jack had snatched a steak knife from the kitchen. Your old man wouldn't stand for it."

"He killed her so she couldn't teach us," I said.

"You always knew it was him. He put rat poison in her food, a little at a time, until it interacted with the drugs she was taking. An accident that would have left a healthy woman with no more than bruises or maybe a few fractured bones became fatal."

Aiden gave me a few minutes to process what he'd said, but I didn't need to consider it for long, His story had the ring of truth.

The bored woman came to check on us and we assured her we didn't need anything. When she'd left, Aiden went on.

"All those years, your dad watched over you like a tyrant because he knew he couldn't afford to let his guard down for a second. There were people in this town loyal to your mother, and to your grandparents, and to you. When you both got out and created your own lives two thousand miles away in a land of sunshine and opportunity, your father breathed his first sigh of relief in twenty years. He hated himself. He no longer held out hope for Heaven, but he thought maybe he'd saved his children from certain Hell."

I knew where the story was going. With every word he spoke, every bit of my life made more sense than ever before. "Jake couldn't make it out there. Not really. No one would give him the break he needed."

"Exactly," Aiden agreed. "The only work he got was crap work. B movies. Nothing that would, you know, win him an Oscar, for instance. But then he thought about the promises his Mama made to him when she bounced him on her knee back when he'd been a boy."

"She told us we were special, chosen."

"And so you are. You and Jake, together might be the most powerful magical force the world has seen since the Jew walked across Lake Galilee."

"He came back here because this is where our power is centered."

Aiden nodded like a proud school teacher. "He came here and build Lot 72. Do you now why he named it that? That's how many generations your family has ruled. Think about what that means. Think of the power that has accumulated in your DNA since the year 200. Millenia of power."

"So when he came here, it all worked out just the way he hoped. Just like that he had fame and riches and power." I wasn't sure if the thought made me proud or sickened me.

"Just like that," Aiden agreed. "He had everything he wanted except the one thing he wanted most of all. He didn't have you, Jess."