So I tried to decide how I felt about Sera being interested in the number of Noelle’s night-mumblings I’d recorded. And maybe the frequency. Fortunately, she couldn’t judge duration or skill unless she really could read between the lines.

“Why would you take notes?” She looked up from the notebook with her hand spread across the open page.

“Why wouldn’t I take notes? It was like looking into the future through a telescope, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity, even if the lens was out of focus and I couldn’t actually aim it at anything.” I fingered the sharp end of the spiral notebook binding. “Since then, I’ve tried to figure some of them out, but...”

“But it reads like nonsense?” And this time she really was reading. Skimming, at least.

“Yeah. Until something happens, and suddenly one or two of those will make sense. In retrospect, they seem so obvious, but on the front end, it’s like reading a foreign language, without a Noelle-to-Kristopher dictionary.”

She didn’t look up from the page. “Sounds frustrating.”

“You have no idea.” I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to say what needed to be said without freaking her out any more than necessary. “You’re in there, Sera.”

“What?” She looked up from the passage she’d been reading to frown at me.

“You’re in there.” I took the notebook from her and flipped through the pages, looking for one specific line among hundreds. It was one I knew well, because it was one of few that seemed to give me instructions, rather than random snatches from a conversation I’d never actually been a part of. And finally I found it.

I spun the notebook around on the table, my finger over the date on the entry in question. “See?”

“‘Take the girl in the yellow scarf,’” she read. Then she looked up at me with wide, frightened eyes, her fingers hovering around her collarbone, as if she still wore that scarf. “That’s me? That’s why you kidnapped me? Because of my scarf?”

“I didn’t kidnap you,” I insisted, and she started to argue, but I spoke over her. “Okay, technically, maybe I kidnapped you, but that’s not the point. I didn’t take you because of the scarf—that’s just how I knew who you were. I took you because you’re important.”

“Important how?” Her voice sounded hollow. Skeptical. “Important to what? To whom?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, and she looked so disappointed I wanted to take it back. But I couldn’t claim to have all the answers. “I hope you’re supposed to help us get Kenley back, or hide us while we get her back, but I doubt even Noelle knew for sure. Either way, though, you’re important enough to have been in one of her predictions years ago. Important enough for her to tell me to take you.” And that was the crux of the matter. The part I hadn’t been able to truly vocalize until that moment.

Until I’d found Sera—until I’d seen her scarf and known exactly what to do—I’d never been truly sure that Noelle’s messages were meant for me. I’d always kind of thought, in the back of my mind, that I was just the random bastard lucky enough to be in bed with her when she started talking in her sleep. But Sera was proof to the contrary.

Noelle had told me to take her—the girl with the yellow scarf. That prophesy was meant for me. Only for me. None of her other potential bed partners—and I wasn’t naive enough to think there hadn’t been several—was anywhere near Sera the day she had her yellow scarf on and needed to be removed from a dangerous situation.

Those predictions were intended for my ears. I was meant to act on them.

Yet I’d been failing in that respect for years. How many people had been hurt or killed because I was too stupid to interpret the prophesies?

Suddenly the guilt I’d been living with for years, on the theoretical assumption that I could do some good with Noelle’s prophesies, felt like the weight of the world. Now that I knew for sure that I’d failed.

“Why would she tell you to take me?” Sera asked. “It’s not like you were truly rescuing me—no one was shooting at me until you showed up. This doesn’t make any sense.”

“Neither does you being in my...Noelle’s journal, yet there you are.” I pointed to the passage again. “And now here you are. Maybe we were meant to meet, exactly like this. Maybe you’re supposed to help us get Kenley back, then hide us while she finishes her work. Maybe I’m supposed to help you avenge your family’s murder. Hell, maybe we’re supposed to adopt a pair of spotted dogs and raise a hundred and one of them, then save them from a homicidal fur lover. I have no idea what Noelle wanted us to do, but I know that I’m going to do it, whatever it is. And I’m going to kill the bastard who killed your family. I swear on my favorite gun.” I pushed the .45 toward her in demonstration, but she only frowned at it.

“So, I was never a hostage? You weren’t going to trade me for Kenley?”

“Of course not. I’m not a bad guy, Sera. I don’t hurt innocent people, I don’t find civilian casualties acceptable, and I’m much less reluctant than my sister is to deliver a mercy killing. Which, for the record, I never even considered for you. I didn’t bring you here to scare you, or lock you up, or hurt you in any way.”

“No. You took me because some ex-lover told you to.” Her words felt like a warning. Like a siren spinning up in preparation to blast at full volume. But I couldn’t quite see the danger through the fog.