It’s that helpless feeling that I remember now, frighteningly similar to what I felt when I watched Frankie beat up my mom and siblings. I didn’t do anything—until finally I did, and then it was the wrong thing. Remorse slams me like a wrecking ball, and I stop, unable to walk further into a place filled with such dark memories.

Bran studies my face and sees what’s going on in my head. “You’re a different person now,” he says.

I lean over and prop my hands on my knees until my head stops swimming.

Bran and I have talked about everything. My numa life and before. It was part of my therapy. “A process of absolution,” Bran called it. Talking through it meant facing the bad things I did, or at least witnessed and didn’t actively try to stop. It was supposed to help me feel forgiveness from something bigger than myself. From God, the universe, take your pick.

Bran said I had post-traumatic stress. The fact that the evil had scarred me emotionally was further proof I was never meant to be a numa. I thought all that pain and mental turmoil was over. But now, standing in the place where bad shit went down and knowing the numa were out there again...it’s hitting me all over again.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s the memories.”

Bran sits me down and waits until I’m looking him in the eyes. “Everything that happened is firmly in the past. This is a new start for you, Louis. You’re clean. Very few have gotten that chance. And I know you’ll make the most of it.”

I inhale deeply through my nose and let it escape through my lips, the technique Bran taught me to calm panic. “I’m going to make up for everything I did...and didn’t do,” I say finally.

“I know.”

“Is that you, Tonton Bran?” calls a voice from the back of the store.

I’m on my feet in an instant, knocking the chair over in my alarm. Bran lays a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay.”

I hear footsteps on the stairway leading down from Bran’s Paris apartment, and a boy emerges through the door. As he walks toward us, I see he’s my age. My height. Black curly hair cropped short. Brown skin glowing bronze under the dim light. On his forearm is a tattoo of a flaming triangle inside a circle. I recognize it. It’s the signum bardia, a symbol given to humans the bardia trust. He must be a Flame-finger like Bran.

He gives Bran a back-thumping hug, which, unlike with Ambrose, Bran accepts, probably because it’s not squeezing the life out of him. Also, if the guy called him tonton or “uncle,” he’s family. “Welcome back!” the boy says, then turns to me. “So you must be my immortal counterpart!”