Sinister_ _Morgan_ —and he didn't even _know_ it. It was like a door was opening, and I could sense darkness behind it. And something moving from far away. Something dangerous. But I couldn't seem to run away. As the door slowly creaked open, the sound of my heartbeat drowned out everything else, drowning out the voices, the people, and the night. And there in the darkness, my heart pounded. " _Aurora!_ " I jumped as Jeb's voice called out to me from a distance. " _Aurora!_ " He was coming toward me. " _Aurora!_ " With a sob, I fell to my knees. I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't run from the blackness. The only thing I could do was stand right in its path. I couldn't let Jeb help me. I was too far gone. Now, it was my turn to save him. But that wasn't the worst of it. As my tears fell, my heart pounded, and my legs grew weak, my head started to swim. I felt myself spinning as I took a step. Then another. It was like my whole body was melting. Like there was a fire in my head that kept growing. "Aurora!" I heard Jeb call out, " _Aurora!_ " Jeb kept coming toward me, but I didn't know if I could stand up anymore. I didn't know if I could keep my eyes open. If I could keep from falling into the darkness. I couldn't keep fighting the darkness, and all I wanted was to turn into nothing more than an ordinary girl. As Jeb's footsteps sounded close and then grew farther away, I took one last, unsteady step and took a wobbly fall. Then I was no longer on the grass. I didn't know how I ended up on the stone steps. I felt the cold, hard stone against my cheek, and as I lay there, I felt someone grab my wrist. "Are you okay?" I heard Jeb ask me as he looked at me. I couldn't answer him. I couldn't even open my eyes. All I knew was that I was alone in the darkness. There was only the darkness. Then I heard something wet against my cheek. "There's water," Jeb said. "Give me your hand." I felt his arm around my shoulders as he helped me sit up. "Aurora, you're going to be okay," Jeb told me as he wiped away some of the water from my cheek with his hand. I couldn't say anything. It wasn't just the darkness, but something else that felt so familiar. It was like I'd fallen into the past, and my head was filled with images from my dreams. Dark, shadowed scenes of the house in Black Water Bay, of being trapped in the water on the rocks. But this was even worse. Much worse than those nightmares. _This_ was the truth. I could no longer escape it. There was no Jasper. No one who'd done it to me. "We can't tell anyone," Aunt Jackie warned, standing behind me with her hands on my shoulders. "We can't let people know." "You've been talking to Jasper," Jeb said as he turned me toward him. "You've been talking to the demon." "No!" I looked up at my aunt. "He's the only one who can help me." Aunt Jackie glanced down at me with a look of disbelief. "Are you _nuts_?" # Chapter 26 "We have to get you back to the house." Aunt Jackie started dragging me away from the stone steps and back down the path. I couldn't look away. I couldn't stop watching the darkness that surrounded me. Then I heard Jeb's voice. "We have to leave it alone." Aunt Jackie stopped, looked down at me, and then started shaking her head. "I can't let you be this crazy. We're leaving. _Now._ " I finally turned away from the darkness and followed my aunt as we ran toward the house. "Aunt Jackie," I whispered, "I _have_ to see him again." "No, you don't!" Aunt Jackie shot back, pulling me inside the house and up the stairs toward my room. "We need to get you to bed and get you to sleep!" "I'll leave if you want me to, but this isn't going to work." Jeb's voice followed me up the stairs. "She can't be helped. None of them can. But you have to let them go." "You said yourself that they're dangerous," Aunt Jackie said. "You said yourself that he was dangerous!" "It wasn't his fault," Jeb told me, following me up the stairs to my room. "None of it was his fault." I looked into his face. "You know about all of this?" "I don't understand it either, but yes, I know," Jeb answered. "I just don't understand why." I dropped down onto my bed and covered my face with my hands. "It's because I'm . . . because I'm . . ." Jeb sat down beside me and pulled me against his shoulder. "What is it?" he asked me. "It's because . . . because . . ." I whispered. "It's because of what happened to my sisters." "You mean, what _they_ did?" Aunt Jackie asked from the doorway. I looked over at her as Jeb pulled away from me and stood up from the bed. "It's not just a dream," I said. "He's alive. He's here. In my head." "In _yours,_ " Aunt Jackie clarified, as if Jeb had gotten it wrong. "I'm sure you're right, but that doesn't mean that you're right. For heaven's sake, there are so many things we just don't know anymore. This is just your own . . . imagination. This is just what your mind wants to think happened. This isn't what's _really_ happening here. And when we find out, I'm sure it'll all be very clear." Jeb sat back down beside me and tucked the blankets around me. "I guess . . ." he said, "maybe you _are_ crazy." I pulled the blankets even tighter around me. "What's the last thing you remember?" Jeb asked. "I was falling," I said. "And then I was standing on the stairs." Jeb's eyes grew soft. "Okay," he said, "let's think back to when you were in the water . . ." As Jeb spoke, I saw a flash of Jasper's black eyes through my mind. But his words were different. He'd said it wasn't his fault. He'd said that there was nothing he could do about it. I had no choice but to listen to him. After all, I still felt it. I could feel him. It wasn't the same as when I felt the darkness, but it was familiar. I felt . . . hopeful. Then Aunt Jackie stood there with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to one side. "I'm not buying this, Aurora. You're letting your mind run away with you. It'll get you in trouble. You can't keep doing this to yourself. You can't keep talking about this . . . demon." Aunt Jackie's voice was shaking, but she didn't look like she was going to give up. "Tell us what you saw that night, Aurora. Just tell us what you remember. What you _saw_." Jeb sighed and sat back against the headboard, but I couldn't. Aunt Jackie stood in the doorway, trying to convince me to tell her about the night Jasper tried to kill me. It was the night I saw Jasper for the first time. I remembered it so clearly. I remembered how the dark was closing in on me. But more than that, I remembered him. That night Jasper took my sister and I to the beach and led us into the sea. I remembered it all so clearly. _He_ was the darkness in the sea. The one who'd led me to safety when I got too close to the shore. The one who'd brought me to a cave to sleep after I got too cold. I remembered that cave so clearly, just as I remembered the night he tried to kill me. I remembered it all so clearly. But it wasn't Jasper. "Tell us what you saw that night, Aurora." Aunt Jackie's voice was getting louder, and it made me wish I hadn't heard her question at all. "What happened?" she pressed. "What did you do?" As my mother's words came back to me, I saw a flash of Jasper