The color drained from Laith’s face, and he flinched away from me as if he’d been burned. “How did…?”

  “A little birdie told me.” Maddox glanced at Josh. “You see, I had this habit of randomly checking for Ava to come back, and this one morning in particular, I ran into Josh on the stairs. The grumpy little shit commented on how he’d just seen you there a few minutes earlier—he apparently couldn’t tell us apart—and he made one of his sarcastic quips about you being a rooster in one of your past lives since you arrived just as the sun came up. I didn’t realize it then, but the kid had given me the perfect weapon to use against you.”

  “He’s lying!” Josh cried. “That never happened!”

  A sadistic grin twisted Maddox’s face. “No. Not yet. But it will… Or rather, I guess it won’t since we’re here changing everything from that morning, but one thing that won’t change is that we can’t be in two places at once.” Maddox kept his eyes on the gold watch. “Do you feel the static, Laith?”

  “Ava…” Laith reached up to cup my face, and a tiny jolt of electricity shocked me.

  “Don’t touch her!” Maddox growled. “You’ll drag her into the paradox with you, and I’ll never find her!”

  Laith let his hand drop, a single tear crawling down his cheek. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve been more careful.”

  “No! I’m coming with you.” Blinded by tears, I reached for Laith, but Maddox yanked my hand back, caging me between his arms. “Maddox, please. You can’t do this! Give him your stone.”

  “Sorry.” Maddox shrugged. “Can’t do that.”

  “But he’ll be lost out there forever.” Another spark of electricity licked at the air, and my knees nearly gave out. “No! Laith… wait.” I tried to pull myself away from Maddox, but he refused to budge. “Please, don’t go. I can’t do this without you!”

  “I love you.” Laith’s voice broke as the air around him crackled. “I’ll always love you.”

  “Maddox, please!” Shamelessly, I begged, knowing he’d never help his brother, his only rival for my affections. “Just do something, and I’ll go with you!”

  “Ava, no.” Helpless to stop the pull dragging him away from me, Laith’s eyes pleaded with me not to give up.

  Didn’t he realize nothing mattered without him?

  “This is all my fault.” I sobbed, my lungs burning as they tried to keep up with my hyperventilating. “This can’t be happening.”

  Laith took a sharp step back as the vortex opened. The hair on my arms stood on end, and he vanished into thin air.

  “No!” I screamed, collapsing to the damp ground. Sobbing, I rested my forehead against the rough gravel. “Why? Why would you do that to your own brother? He can’t come back without a stone.”

  Maddox crouched down beside me to whisper, “That was the whole point. I don’t want him to come back. Now we can move on with our lives. Be happy.” He wrapped his fingers around my upper arm and dragged me to my feet.

  “I will never be happy with you. Not now. Not ever!” I wrenched myself away from Maddox, falling to my knees beside my mother and brother. “I love him. I love Laith.”

  Josh stood silently beside me, tears filling his eyes while Mom comforted him. I didn’t want anyone but Laith to comfort me. And now he was gone, forever lost in time.

  “I hate you!” Bitter acid pooled on my tongue, and I fought the urge to spit in Maddox’s face.

  “You’ll get over it.” Maddox checked the time again. “But, as I said, Laith and I almost ran into each other, so it’s about time for us to leave before I get caught in a paradox too.”

  “Us?” I wiped my nose with the back of my sleeve.

  “Yep.” Maddox grabbed me by the elbow, avoiding the slimy trail on my sleeve. “You’re coming with me.”

  “No, she isn’t.” Mom shoved between us, pushing me behind her.

  “I don’t have time to argue, Joanie. We’ll be back… eventually.”

  “You can’t take my sister, you big jerk!” Josh slammed into Maddox, shoving him toward the cliff.

  Caught by surprise, Maddox lost his footing for a second but recovered quickly, pushing Josh to the ground at Mom’s feet. “Stay out of it, kid. This doesn’t concern you.”

  With static crackling between us, Maddox latched onto my arm again, dragging me toward the rocky edge of the cliff. The salty spray soaked the front of my shirt as wave after wave battered the rocks below.

  Maddox peered over the side, and I couldn’t help following his gaze toward the angry ocean. “Does this remind you of the last time you were here?”

  “Are you kidding me?” My mouth dropped open, and the salty brine settled on my tongue. “We aren’t starring in some epic romance here. You aren’t the knight in shining armor, and I’m not your princess. And if you think I’m riding off into the sunset with you, you’re sadly mistaken. You have literally turned my life into a Shakespearean tragedy.”

  Behind me, Josh growled like a rabid animal. Mom let out a cry, and I whipped my head around in time to see my brother charging toward us with his hands stretched out in front of him. All ninety-eight pounds of Josh hit Maddox square in the chest, knocking them both off balance. Maddox cursed under his breath as he struggled to regain his footing before he plunged over the side.

  “Josh!” Mom lunged forward, missing his hand by a fraction of an inch.

  Horrified, I watched as Mom crumpled to her knees, and Josh stumbled toward the jagged edge of the cliff. He teetered dangerously close to the same spot I’d tumbled over not so long ago, and I reached for him, hooking the hem of his sweatshirt in my fingers. With my pulse hammering in my ears and my mouth as dry as burnt toast, I yanked him back from the brink.

  “Thank you, Ava.” Mom heaved out a breath, pressing her palm to her chest.

  Agitated and panting, Josh wriggled out of my grasp like a greased piglet. “Let me go!”

  I’d barely recovered from the shock of almost losing him when Josh let out a primal scream. “No, Josh, don’t!” My hand shot out to stop him, but my fingertips barely brushed the edge of his sleeve as he dove straight for Maddox again.

  “Joshua David Flynn.” Mom pulled herself to her feet. “You get away from the edge before you fall!”

  “He ruins everything!” Josh screamed as he swung a fist toward Maddox’s face.

  “Give it up, kiddo. You can’t win.” He toyed with Josh, as if he enjoyed seeing my brother worked into a frenzy. “But what the hell? Give it your best shot.”

  Maddox stuck his chin out, a smirk playing with the edges of his mouth, while every swing brought Josh closer to the edge. Finally, Josh landed a punch to Maddox’s jaw, and the crack echoed through the air.

  With shock registering on his face, Maddox jerked back, and the momentum took Josh with him. “Shit!” Maddox grabbed for Josh, catching a fistful of his sweatshirt before Josh wrenched himself free.

  “No, no, no…” I stood frozen, my feet riveted to the ground as I watched my brother tumble backward over the side. “Josh!”

  “MOM!”

  His scream ripped my insides wide open, and I dove to the ground, crawling on my stomach until I could look over the edge. The icy spray left me frozen and numb. Below me, the waves battered the rocks and a single red sneaker floated to the surface.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Ava!” Mom rushed forward to grab me before I followed my brother over the side. “Where is he?”

  Gone. I opened my mouth, but the sound wouldn’t come out.

  “He’s not dead!” Mom wailed. “He’s a strong swimmer. Someone call nine-one-one!”

  “Mom…” My voice cracked as a sob broke free.

  Backing away from me, she shook her head. “No… He can’t be… Not my baby.” Mom collapsed to the ground at my feet, her sobs drowning out the roar of the ocean.

  “Ava. I…” Maddox closed the gap between us, reaching for me as if to comfort me.

  Slapping his hand away, I shrieked at him, “What have you done?” My throat went up in flames as tears choked me. Pure grief flowed through my veins, and I struggled to draw breath. First Laith and now Josh. “You killed my brother! He’s gone, Maddox, and it’s all your fault!”

  Grabbing a fistful of his hair, Maddox paced in front of me like a dog dreading a thunderstorm. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to push him!”

  “Oh, you’re just full of little accidents, aren’t you? Libby wasn’t your fault. Josh wasn’t your fault. Will it be your fault if something horrible happens to me?”

  Maddox flinched. “Nothing will happen to you!”

  “Nothing will… Can you even hear yourself? Laith wasn’t nothing. Josh wasn’t nothing!”

  Tiny jolts of electricity licked the air, and Maddox’s eyes darted back and forth between me and my mother’s huddled form near the cliff edge. He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out his stone. “Grab my hand before it pulls me in.”

  Is he crazy? I’m not going anywhere with— An idea took shape in my head, and before I had a chance to change my mind, I reared up, slamming my head into Maddox’s stomach, tackling him to the ground. The static had my hair floating around my head like a halo as if I’d just pulled on a sweater fresh from the dryer.

  Maddox dragged in a breath. “What are you doing?”

  “Fixing what you broke.” I swatted the stone from his hand, sending it tumbling over the loose gravel. It landed several feet away, and before Maddox could react, I dove on it, scarring my knees in the process. Racing against Maddox, the paradox, and my own grief, I fumbled beneath me for his stone, squeezing it in the palm of my hand.

  With his eyes stretched so wide he resembled a giant owl, Maddox reached for me. “Give me that!”

  I rolled to the side, dodging his touch like a bad rash. “Go to hell, Maddox.”

  He lunged for me again, but Mom wrapped herself around his legs, holding him back.

  “Go, Ava!” Mom cried.

  I wiped everything from my thoughts except Jane’s little cottage in the woods, concentrating on the last day I’d seen her, the day she’d fed me bread and cheese and plied me with sour wine. And I watched the horrified look in Maddox’s eyes as his stone sucked me into the vortex, leaving him to his fate.

  Numb, both inside and out, I lay flat on my back alongside Jane’s overgrown garden, staring into the gray afternoon sky. For all of two seconds, I considered succumbing to the grief—rolling into a ball and crying until I didn’t have any tears left in me. But I didn’t have time to mourn. I had to find a way to fix things. With a deep steadying breath, I jumped to my feet and ran toward the cottage.

  “Jane!” I pounded on her door until my knuckles split open, but she didn’t answer. “Jane, help me!”

  I ran around to the window and peered inside. No fire burned in the stone fireplace. The red curtain had been torn down, exposing a small bed stripped of its blankets.

  “No!” She has to be here. Had I miscalculated? The garden hadn’t been tended in a long time. Weeds had grown up around the house. I slid to the ground and put my head between my knees to cry—to cry for Josh and how I’d completely failed him, to cry for my mother’s shattered heart. Oh, God, she’d never survive this. And to cry for Laith, trapped in the folds of time where I’d never find him.

  “Ava Flynn? Is that you?”

  My head jerked toward the sound of her voice. “Jane?”

  “Amazing.” She bent down, catching a lock of my hair in her withered fingers. “You haven’t changed at all. My memory is foggy these days, but you look exactly as I remember you.”

  Jane was right. I hadn’t changed, but she had. She had to have aged at least twenty years since I’d seen her last. Her dark curls had gone almost completely silver, and the fine lines around her eyes had deepened to thick grooves. So many questions filled my head, but I pushed them all aside for another time.

  I rose to my feet and brushed myself off. “I need your help.”

  Jane rested a hand on her stomach and laughed. “Of course you do, dear. Why else would you have come?”

  I launched into a long-winded explanation of what had happened, and Jane’s expression darkened with every new revelation.

  “Ava, I’m afraid I don’t know what I can do to help you. As I understand it, you can’t travel back to a time when you already exist, and the only way to prevent this tragedy is to stop it before it happens.”

  “But you sent me back into Libby.”

  “Yes, I regressed you into a past life. I don’t have that ability here. The situation is completely different. Sending you back to your own life at a previous point would be something else entirely.”

  Like an underground well, the panic bubbled up in me. “Please, I don’t care what I have to do, but you have to help me! I need to go back before any of this happened.”

  “Ava, what you’re asking is not possible, not without using dark magic.”

  “I don’t care! I need to go back!”

  “The consequences—”

  “Are mine to worry about.”

  “Ava…”

  “Jane, please. You don’t understand. My mother won’t survive another loss. And Laith… My soul aches for him trapped out there. He can’t come back without a stone, and I can’t just sit by while the people I love are hurting. I can’t.” For the third time in less than an hour, my heart shattered into a million pieces.

  Jane heaved out a heavy breath and nodded. “Fine. I’ll help you, but after that, you’re on your own. What I am about to do cannot be undone.”

  I gave her a sharp nod. “Understood.”

  “Come.” Jane turned her back on me and headed toward the woods.

  “Wait…” I gaped at the little cottage. “Aren’t we going inside?”

  “No, Ava. For this spell, we need a clearing and a much larger fire.”

  “Are you sure this is going to work?” A shiver cut all the way through me, rattling me to the core.

  Jane glanced at me then went back to feeding the massive fire. “No.”

  “Right.” My throat closed up, making it nearly impossible to swallow the saliva pooling on my tongue. “So I’m supposed to hop into the fire and hope for the best, then?”

  Jane tossed the last bundle of sage onto the pyre and turned back to me. “As I’ve told you countless times now, Ava Flynn, this spell is high magic. Blood magic. And I’ve never attempted such a thing in all my days. Aunt Bess would have never allowed something like this.”

  I gulped down another mouthful of spit.

  “But… In theory, connecting your soul to a previous time at the precise moment your body is engulfed in flames should force the connection.”

  “Should?” No matter how many times I ran the scenario through my head, it never failed to terrify me. What the hell am I doing?

  Jane dusted her hands off on the front of her faded blue skirt. “Yes…should. I wish I could give you more definitive odds, but I’m afraid I can only hope for the best, as you said.”

  With another sharp nod, I went back to pacing the clearing. I had two options at this point. I could travel back to the lighthouse in Port Michael and help my mother plan my brother’s funeral, or I could take a massive chance on Jane and allow my body to be incinerated while she sent my soul back to reconnect with my body in a previous time. Easy peasy. Not.

  “There’s not another way, is there?”

  “No, Ava. If you insist on traveling back to a time you already occupy, this is the only way I can conceive of doing it.”

  I shook off any lingering doubt and blindly put my faith in Jane. The spell had to work. I had to believe with every fiber of my being. “Okay, then. Let’s do this.”

  “Hand me the blue stone.” Jane held out her hand.

  Another shudder wracked my body as I stared into the dancing flames. “So, just to be clear, I’ll step into the fire at the exact time you send my soul, right?”

  “I’ll do my best to minimize any discomfort, Ava, but I can’t promise it won’t be painful.”

  “I trust you.”

  “Thank you. I hope your trust is deserved.”

  Me too. I nodded and placed the stone in her outstretched hand.

  Jane grabbed me by the shoulders, and for a terrifying instant, I thought she was about to toss me into the flames. Instead, she pulled me in for an emotionally charged hug. “I shall miss you, Ava Flynn. I wish you luck and safe travels.”

  “I’ll miss you too, Jane. Thank you so much for all you’ve done for me.”

  “It is the least I could do, considering the original spell was my doing.” She patted my back then released me from the hug only to grasp my shoulders again. “Do not squander this opportunity. You are traveling back to a known time, and as such, you will have knowledge of the future in your grasp. Use it wisely.”

  “I will.”

  “Are you ready?”

  No. “Yes.”

  “Then we shall begin.” Jane raised her hands to the sky, muttering words under her breath. I could only make out a few, but it was clear she was doing a similar spell to the one that sent me back to Libby.

  Within minutes, the weather changed. Heavy clouds rolled in from the north, bringing an icy wind with them. Another shiver cut through me. The louder Jane’s chanting got, the closer the storm came to reaching us, and as flashes of memories hit me like lightning strikes, I began to realize it was no coincidence.

  Memories swirled like a hurricane in my head, making me nauseous and dizzy. “What’s happening?”

  Jane ignored my question and continued chanting, this time faster… and louder. Her voice became a storm of its own until it melded with the wind and the clouds, making the flames crackle and dance to her tune. My head spun with memory overload. My hearing was muffled as if someone had shoved a wad of cotton into my ears or plunged my head under water.