Tessa rolled out of bed, yawning, and found a text from her mom:

Walking with Pat. We should be back before you leave for school. Luv you.—M

She yawned again, then rubbed at her eyes.

Serious eye scabs today.

Last night, she’d heard Patrick and her mom talking in the other room after they thought she was asleep. She couldn’t hear everything, but something had happened at work with Patrick. Someone had died. She wasn’t sure if it was the same person that her mom had told her Patrick was riding to the hospital with or not.

Tessa had figured that she would wait and see if they brought it up with her this morning.

There was a lot weighing on her.

What was that woman at the bookstore even talking about when she said Timothy had killed her daughter? Why would anyone say something like that—unless there was some kind of proof? Unless there was some sort of evidence?

Timothy had told her that a young woman disappeared after his previous signing. It shouldn’t be that hard to verify that. It was just a matter of matching a date with a disappearance.

Last night, after ferreting Timothy out of the bookstore, Tessa had gone back in and retrieved his journal. Only after Rebekah had taken out her phone to call the cops did that frantic woman finally leave.

So now, Tessa had the journal and was waiting to hear from Timothy regarding how to get it back to him.

Then there was also the whole issue of her mom’s return.

Yeah, of course, it was good to have her back home again, but there was something serious eating away at her. Tessa knew her well enough to tell that whatever was troubling her wasn’t just the normal sort of stuff that wears on people.

She was anxious to find out what was up with her mom—anxious in both senses of the word.

Anxious in the worried sense.

And anxious in the urgent one.

After slumping into the shower to try to wake herself up, Tessa returned to her bedroom and gazed at Timothy’s journal, the one he’d read at the Mystorium.

It felt slightly intrusive to have it—like holding someone else’s phone or purse or something.

He was going to get his address to her so she could mail the journal to him, but until then . . .

You shouldn’t read it. That’s private.

But he read aloud from it last night, a voice countered. It wasn’t intrusive to hear him reading from it, was it?

That’s not the point.

Okay, too much to figure out right now. Tessa decided to decide later whether or not to read it, but she did know that she didn’t want to leave it lying around.

It was definitely better to take it along with her to school than risk letting her mom find it here.