“Alberta wants me to enroll again and graduate,” I explained.

Lissa nearly dropped her plate. “Then do it!”

My mother looked equally startled. “She’ll let you?”

“That’s what she told me,” I said.

“Then do it!” my mother exclaimed.

“You know,” mused Adrian, “I kind of liked the idea of us going on the road together.”

“Whatever,” I shot back. “You probably wouldn’t let me drive.”

“Stop this.” My mother was firmly back to her old self, no grief over her daughter’s departure or wistfulness for a lost lover. “You need to take this seriously. Your future’s at stake.” She nodded toward Lissa. “Her future’s at stake. Finishing your education here and going on to be a guardian is the-”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes?” she asked, puzzled.

I smiled. “Yes, I agree.”

“You agree… with me?” I don’t think my mom could ever recall that happening. Neither could I, for that matter.

“Yup. I’ll take the trials, graduate, and become as respectable a member of society as I can. Not that it sounds like much fun,” I teased. I kept my tone light, but inside, I knew I needed this. I needed to be back with people who loved me. I needed a new purpose, or else I would never get over Dimitri. I would never stop seeing his face or hearing his voice.

Beside me, Lissa gasped and clasped her hands together. Her joy flooded into me. Adrian didn’t wear his emotions as openly, but I could see he too was pleased at having me around. My mom still looked kind of stunned. I think she was used to me being unreasonable-which, usually, I was.

“You’ll really stay?” she asked.

“Good God.” I laughed. “How many times do I have to say it? Yes, I’ll go back to school.”

“And stay?” she prompted. “The full two and a half months?”

“Isn’t that implied?”

Her face was hard-and very mom like. “I want to know for sure you aren’t going to up and run away again. You’ll stay and finish school no matter what? Stay until you graduate? Do you promise?”

I met her eyes, surprised at her intensity. “Yes, yes. I promise.”

“Excellent,” she said. “You’ll be glad you did this down the road.” Her words were guardian-formal, but in her eyes, I saw love and joy.

We finished dinner and helped stack dishes for the building’s cleaning service. While scraping uneaten food into a trash can, I felt Adrian beside me.

“This is very domestic of you,” he said. “It’s kind of hot, really. Giving me all sorts of fantasies about you in an apron vacuuming my house.”

“Oh, Adrian, how I’ve missed you,” I said with an eye roll. “I don’t suppose you’re helping?”

“Nah. I helped when I ate everything on my plate. No mess that way.” He paused. “And yes, you’re welcome.”

I laughed. “You know, it’s a good thing you didn’t say much when I promised Mom I’d stay here. I might have decided otherwise.”

“Not sure if you could have stood up to her. Your mom seems like someone who gets her way a lot.” He cast a covert look to where Lissa and my mom stood talking across the room. He lowered his voice. “It must run in the family. In fact, maybe I should get her help on something.”

“Getting a hold of illegal cigarettes?”

“Asking her daughter out.”

I nearly dropped the plate I held. “You’ve asked me out tons of times.”

“Not really. I’ve made inappropriate suggestions and frequently pushed for nudity. But I’ve never asked you out on a real date. And, if memory serves, you did say you’d give me a fair chance once I let you clean out my trust fund.”

“I didn’t clean it out,” I scoffed.

But standing there, looking at him, I remembered that I had said that if I survived my quest for Dimitri, I’d give Adrian a shot. I would have said anything to get the money I needed then, but now, I saw Adrian through new eyes. I wasn’t ready to marry him by any stretch of the imagination, nor did I fully consider him reliable boyfriend material. I didn’t even know if I wanted a boyfriend ever. But he had been a good friend to me and everyone else throughout all of this chaos. He’d been kind and steady, and yeah, I couldn’t deny it… even with a fading black eye, he was still extraordinarily handsome.

And while it shouldn’t have mattered, Lissa had gotten it out from him that a lot of his infatuation with Avery had been compulsion-induced. He’d liked her and hadn’t been ruling out a romantic attachment, but her powers had cranked up the intensity more than he actually felt. Or so he claimed. If I were a guy and all that had happened to me, I’d probably say I’d been under the influence of magic too.

Yet from the way he looked at me now, I found it hard to believe anyone had taken my place for him in this last month or so.

“Make me an offer,” I said at last. “Write it up, and give me a point-by-point outline of why you’re a good would-be suitor.”

He started to laugh, then saw my face. “Seriously? That’s like homework. There’s a reason I’m not in college.”

I snapped my fingers. “Get to it, Ivashkov. I want to see you put in a good day’s work.”

I expected a joke or a brush-off until later, but instead, he said, “Okay.”

“Okay?” Now I felt like my mom had earlier, when I’d quickly agreed with her.

“Yep. I’m going to go back to my room right now to start drafting my assignment.”

I stared incredulously as he reached for his coat. I had never seen Adrian move that fast when any kind of labor was involved. Oh no. What had I gotten myself into?

He suddenly paused and reached into his coat pocket with an exasperated smile. “Actually, I already practically wrote you an essay. Nearly forgot.”

He produced a piece of folded paper and waved it in the air. “You have got to get your own phone. I’m not going to be your secretary anymore.”

“What is that?”

“Some foreign guy called me earlier… said my number was in his phone’s memory.” Again, Adrian eyed Lissa and my mom. They were still deep in conversation. “He said he had a message for you and didn’t want me to tell anyone else. He made me write it out and read it back to him. You’re the only person I’d do that for, you know. I think I’m going to mention it when I write up my dating proposal.”

“Will you just hand it over?”

He gave me the note with a wink, sketched me a bow, and then said goodbye to Lissa and my mom. I kind of wondered if he really was going to go write up a dating proposal. Mostly, my attention was on the note. I had no doubt who had called him. I’d used Abe’s phone to dial Adrian in Novosibirsk and had later told Abe about Adrian’s financial involvement in my trip. Apparently, my father-ugh, that was still an unreal thought-had decided that made Adrian trustworthy, though I wondered why my mom couldn’t have been used as a messenger.

I unfolded the note, and it took me a few seconds to decipher Adrian’s writing. If he did write me a dating proposal, I really hoped he would type it. The note read:

Sent a message to Robert’s brother. He told me there was nothing I could offer that would make him reveal Robert’s location-and believe me, I have much to offer. But he said as long as he had to spend the rest of his life in there, then the information would die with him. Thought you’d like to know.

It was hardly the essay Adrian had made it out to be. It was also a bit cryptic, but then, Abe wouldn’t want its contents easily understandable to Adrian. To me, the meaning was clear. Robert’s brother was Victor Dashkov. Abe had somehow gotten a message to Victor in whatever horrible, remote prison he was locked away in. (Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that Abe could pull that off.) Abe had no doubt attempted one of his trades with Victor in order to find out where Robert was, but Victor had refused. No surprise there either. Victor wasn’t the most helpful of people, and I couldn’t entirely blame him now. The guy was locked up for life “in there”-in prison. What could anyone offer a condemned man that would really make a difference in his life?