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Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

She had called the heirloom her treasure chest.

One room over, Sophia’s scale shifted into a minor key. Chills swept over Kane’s skin as he remembered the chatter of crickets on the path, and Ursula’s words all over again: Check the treasure chest.

The viola’s minor scale peaked. Kane dragged the jewelry box to the floor, his hands grazing the familiar ridges until he found the pressure point, and pushed. Something clicked and he eased open the top drawer, half expecting something horrible to crawl out. A swarm of locusts, or some Pandora-style curse. Instead what he found was…

More junk.

A pair of gold-handled sewing scissors, bunches of thread, and a small pincushion shaped like a raspberry stared up at him from a worn velvet backdrop. But in the next drawer he found a photo of two people: the first was curvy and tall, with an untidy knot of red curls and sporting a goofy smile. Her arm was flung around the other person’s shoulders with chummy familiarity. Undeniably, unmistakably, it was Ursula Abernathy.

And the other person was Kane.

The flesh of Kane’s inner cheek was ragged from his grinding teeth, the bite of blood hitting his tongue a second before he could rouse himself from the shock. He glanced at the old camera on the shelf, then looked at the back of the photo and saw a date: July, just two months ago.

His eyes squeezed shut on their own, unable to see what Kane’s mind was already beginning to know. He could hear two things: his heartbeat, and Sophia reaching the height of a major scale.

He dove back into the drawers, pulling them all out and tipping the box upside down until dozens more photos fluttered to the carpet. He spread them out, his dread replaced by a white-hot exhilaration.

There was Ursula, blushing while a clown hugged her. In another, a cloud of electric blue cotton candy hid a person’s face. In yet another, Kane straddled a waxy unicorn on a carousel, mouth open wide. A fourth showed Ursula holding Kane in her arms while a mechanical dragon glowed red and exhaled steam.

And finally: Ursula with her back to a ring-toss game; one hand was on her hip and the other proudly brandished a bag toward the camera. The bag was swollen with water, a black fish fluttering in its belly.

Sophia’s scales shifted into a minor key, and with them Kane’s exhilaration ebbed into a bristling fear. He looked around his room, at the clutter of a life he did not recognize.

Ursula Abernathy was not who he thought she was.

But neither was he.

• Five •

Always Feed the Birds