ain.

Searing pain.

As if someone were holding a hot poker to her heart. It was scalding, burning. She could feel her skin turn red, then black, could smell the smoke rising from her frying flesh. This was nothing like the attack at the Repository. She would not survive this.

Bliss tore through the miasma of sleep, forced herself to wake up. Wake up! Wake up! It was like being suffocated and torn apart at the same time. But she salvaged what power she had, and gathered all of her effort, all of her strength, and successfully pushed the pain away.

There was a crash and a scream.

She blinked awake and sat up on the couch. She had taken a nap in their suite after coming back from the beach. She was still trying to make sense of what had happened when the door flew open and her parents appeared in the doorway.

In the dark she saw Jordan lying in a crumpled heap on the floor, holding something bright and glittering in her hand.

Her parents assessed the situation quickly, almost professionally, as if they had been expecting something like this to happen.

"Quick, BobiAnne, she's still stunned. Set the spell," Forsyth said as he began to bundle up his younger daughter with the hotel's comforter and blankets.

"What's going on? What are you guys doing?" Bliss asked groggily. Things were happening much too fast for her understanding.

"Look," Forsyth said, removing a small blade from Jordan's hand and tossing it to his wife. "She picked the vault."

Bliss tried to make sense of everything, but logical thinking eluded her in her dizzy and disoriented state. Was she going insane, or did Jordan just try to kill her?

She flinched as her stepmother put a hand on her brow. "She's warm," she told her husband. Then she lifted Bliss's shirt and examined her chest. "But I think she's okay."

Forsyth nodded, kneeling to rip Bliss's sheets into strips so that he could tie the comforter holding Jordan closed.

Thinking the pain had come from the emerald stone, Bliss looked down at her chest. It felt as if the stone had burned itself on her skin, branding her. But when she touched it, it was as cool as ever. Her skin underneath was smooth and unharmed. Then she understood. The emerald had saved her from whatever weapon had just tried to pierce her heart.

"She's fine," BobiAnne announced after checking Bliss's pupils and pulse. "Good girl. You gave us quite a scare," she said, tapping her pockets for her Marlboro Lights.

BobiAnne lit a cigarette and sucked on it deeply until it formed a long column of ash. Bliss noticed that her stepmother's face was perfectly made up for a party, and both her parents were dressed in formal dinner clothes.

"What's going on? Why did Jordan attack me?" Bliss asked, finally finding her voice and turning to face her father.

It took a few minutes for him to answer. Forsyth Llwellyn's reputation in the Senate was as of a moderate facilitator, someone who was willing to negotiate with the other side, to bring consensus to warring parties. His smooth Texan charm came in handy during partisan battles in the legislature.

Bliss could see he was turning this charm on her now. "Sweetie, you have to realize that Jordan is different from us," Forsyth said, securing the bundle that held his younger daughter. "She's not one of us."

"One of us? What do you mean?"

"You'll understand in time," he assured her.

"We were forced to take her. We had no choice!" BobiAnne burst out, a bitterness creeping into her voice. "Cordelia Van Alen made us. That meddlesome old witch."

"Jordan is not of this family," Bliss's father added.

"What are you talking about?" she cried. It was getting to be too much. All these secrets and lies, she was sick of it. She was sick of being kept in the dark about everything. "I know all about Allegra!" she declared suddenly, with a look of defiance.

BobiAnne gave her husband a look that said, "I told you so."

"Know what about Allegra?" Forsyth inquired, a look of innocence on his face.

"I found this ..." Bliss reached into her pocket and showed them the photograph with the inscription, which she kept close by at all times. "You lied to me. You told me my mother's name was Charlotte Potter. But there never was a Charlotte Potter, was there?"

Forsyth hesitated. "No - but it's not what you think."

"Then tell me."

"It's complicated," he sighed. His eyes wandered over to the panoramic view of the beach, not wanting to meet her gaze. "One day when you're ready, I will tell you. But not yet."

It was maddening. Her father was doing it again: sidestepping her questions, stonewalling her. Shielding her from the truth.

"What about Jordan?" she asked.

"Don't worry. She won't hurt you again," Forsyth said soothingly. "We're going to send her someplace safe."

"You're sending her to Transitions?"

"Something like that," her father said.

"But why?"

"Bliss, honey, she'll be better off," BobiAnne said.

"But ..." Bliss was completely confused. Her parents were talking about Jordan as if she were a dog being sent off to the country. They talked about her like she didn't matter.

But Bliss had to admit to herself that the strange family dynamics weren't entirely new. She thought about how BobiAnne never spoke lovingly of Jordan, had always made it clear that she preferred Bliss, who wasn't even her real child. How her father had always kept an arm's-length distance from his odd younger daughter.

When Bliss was younger she'd relished her parents' indifference to her younger sister. Now she realized it was pathological.

Her parents hated Jordan.

They always had.