“You’re kidding me right now,” I say, and practically trip over myself getting inside. “It looks like we just entered a Gothic queen’s private apartment.” There are black velvet couches, tall arched windows and vaulted ceilings, chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

“Like it?” he asks with an amused expression.

“Like it? I want to move in,” I say, circling the sitting room, running my fingers over ornate furniture that makes me feel like I’ve stepped back into a fantasy kingdom. “This is really your life….You just keep planes and cars in other countries, and stay in places like this as though it were normal?” There is some amount of awe in my voice.

Ash laughs and gives me a full smile, indicating that whatever tension was there before is now gone. And I smile back.

“We need to get ready to go to the pub. We can eat dinner there while feeling out who might have information about your father,” he says, and I look down at my worn jeans.

“Judging by the elegance of the serving staff and that foyer, I’m guessing these jeans aren’t going to cut it,” I say, but he’s already disappearing with my duffel bag into one of the adjacent rooms.

I follow him into a bedroom with a four-poster wooden bed that has a canopy of sheer black fabric.

“You can stay in Layla’s room,” he says, and I nod with an open mouth, promising myself despite the imminent danger that I’ll enjoy every last detail of this.

He rifles through an armoire and pulls out a floor-length sapphire-blue dress that looks like it belongs to a princess.

“You and Layla are about the same size; this should do,” he says, and hands it to me.

Emily would be losing her mind right now, I think. And just like that my moment shatters. Emily is back in Pembrook, worried and scared, my dad is being hunted, and I just inadvertently killed someone in the woods behind my house. Nothing is ever going to be the same. I’m never going to be the same.

Chapter Eleven

I SIT AT Layla’s vanity, applying smoky eye shadow. I haven’t worn makeup since before I left for the Academy, and even though it was never a big thing for me the way it was for Em, I’ve always enjoyed going through the motions of dressing up. I put on a final touch of cherry-flavored lip gloss, rubbing my lips together, and stand, smoothing my hands over the silky fabric of Layla’s blue dress. I smile at myself in the mirror, but my good mood deflates when I catch sight of the tin on the bed behind me in the reflection.