Old habits die hard, so I just chose a hotel to stay in. It was a competitor of my father's called The Liz. The Liz was a trendy, up-and-coming chain of hotels. It was designed to create exposure, so the newly rich and new stars chose it. My father's hotels were old-fashioned with modernly sleek designs. You go to the Savage Hotels for class and the Liz Hotels to be noticed.

Somehow, the Liz hotels were even uglier than my father's. Given the reviews, I was likely the only one who thought this way.

I was smart enough to not stroll up looking like I did now to make a reservation. I created an online account with The Liz to book a suite.

I said that three people were attending. I used Morgan Tuffin's information to fill out everything. Being underaged sucks, but this was probably why my father created a mule for me to slug around and get into places.

I couldn't stroll into the Liz looking like this, so I changed while the taxi took its time to pick us up at the cafe down the street.

Luckily, Clara taught me well about emergency touch-ups.

I could do a decent enough job to look like a young, sleek, stylish girl. Of course, the baby carrier and the baby strapped to me took away from that, but oh well.

We exited the home with no delay. I carried his baby car seat like a whip, ready to smack someone in the head if they approached us. I strolled down the street, eyeballing the slowly waking city around me. The decrepit-looking home behind me wasn't alone in looking like trash. It hadn't taken much for me to become a snob...

I could feel my shoulders tense as I booked it to the cafe. Expectedly, the taxi had yet to arrive, so I ordered coffee and stood outside while we waited.

It didn't take as long as I feared before it zoomed over. The driver was a stout frowning man who looked displeased at the sight of Darius. I ignored him and strapped Darius in. I didn't have time to buckle myself in before the rude driver took off down the street.

I paid him exact fare with a firm narrowing of my eyes. I might have tipped him if the man had been even a touch polite, but he was rude and late!

I held Darius close to my chest as I stared at the ugly Liz Hotel. It was popular, and people were entering, leaving, and walking by as I stared at it.

I jutted my chin out and approached one of the ladies at the front desk. She was clacking on her keyboard with all the attention of a gnat.

"Are you making a reservation or checking in?" She said. She was still typing away like she was chatting with a friend.

I made a face and attempted to wipe away my annoyance. "I'm checking in for my father. He's picking up dinner before he parks the car in the garage. I have his ID and the reservation number." I held up the ID card.

She looked up at me and then paused.

I had paid an exorbitant amount to stay in one of their suites for six months. Unsurprisingly, the front desk had been alerted to this already.

I wasn't hassled for being underaged or having my lie picked apart. The bored lady clicked, clacked, and soon handed me the keys to my room.

When the door to my new home closed behind me, I could finally collapse with a fever.

I wasn't able to rest for too long. Darius woke up in a fitful rage of hunger. He was dry-mouthed and grouchy. He couldn't be soothed no matter how I sang, rocked, or cuddled with him. I ended up crying with him at one point, and that actually stopped his fretful tears for a moment before he joined me in sorrow.

All that sleep he had gotten meant that he was wide awake to torture me. Neither one of us got much sleep the next two days. Whenever he finally crashed I joined him in a power nap.

I thought it couldn't get any worse at that moment, but it did on our third night in the suite. I'd turned on the TV because I was running on low fumes, and I wanted to put on something for Darius so I could have a moment to think and plan.

I never passed the news channel when looking for the kids.

"There are still no leads in what happened to the Savage family." The news anchor said. I could feel my hands loosen, and the remote control slipped from my fingers and into the ground.

Darius made a squeal and tossed his milk bottle to the floor. Usually, I would tell him to stop and clean it up right away, but how could I? My eyes were glued to the screen as images of a broken plane in the sea were displayed before me.

"It's been three days, but there is still hope that they could be alive and struggling for life."

They? Who was she talking about? My father and the pilots? No, before she said family. The Savage family.

If you knew this would happen…why did you go on the plane alone? I grabbed the TV with shaking hands and I squeezed the screen. Why would you do something so foolish?

It's like he sacrificed himself for us.

"Da!" Darius was still tossing food, but he was pointing with sticky fingers at the picture of our father that appeared on the screen.

This was a good picture of him. He looked in control and was slightly smiling. It was better than the last time I saw him. He had furtive eyes accompanied by dark circles. Our father's hair was barely controlled, and his customarily smoothed suit was wrinkled. This picture was how I always thought of him.

The image changed, and it was one of Graham and me. It was one of the engagement photos we took together.

It wasn't a good picture and was one I thought looked like me the least…wait. Why hadn't I realized this sooner? The pictures were slightly different from the last and didn't look like me…

"He planned this from the start," I said, stepping back and collapsing on the ground. There was a reason why there weren't any good pictures of me. Why I was so familiar with face changers as a kid. I stared at the screen as photos of the engagement party were displayed. I looked off in every single one of them, not entirely like myself. I wasn't wearing a face changer, but my father must have found another way to distort the cameras. It could be a lens or, hell, even my makeup…

"Sadly, we don't have many pictures of Dolyn Savage, but her fiance Graham Owens has provided rescuers with them."

Graham. His name was like a jolt to my chest. If I had known that my death was going to be faked, I would have told him everything my dad did from the start. I didn't delve too deeply into why my father did this before. Darius didn't give me a mental break to think casually about it. But now I know.

I pulled my new phone out of my space and punched in Graham's number. Right before I hit call, I stopped.

Should I do this? My father went through elaborate loops to ensure Darius and I escaped safely.

Why wouldn't my father have sent us to the Hub if our old home were safe? He did this for a reason, and regardless if he worked for Mordecai, there was a genuine danger to our family.

"Da!" Darius said, jamming his thumb into his applesauce. I watched it splatter, and the sight brought a small smile to my lips.

"That is Dad on the screen," I said, erasing Graham's number and getting off the floor.

Maybe I'll regret this, but this would be the final cruel thing I would do to Graham. It was better that he thought me dead like the rest of the world.

Darius took a nap after lunch, meaning I got to nap. He behaved so calmly the rest of the day that I was beginning to think he was a changeling. Then bedtime happened again, and this time, he was screaming Da repeatedly.

I pulled out a picture of our father, and he clutched it as he finally fell asleep. This suite had two bedrooms, but we shared the same bed. The fussy Darius couldn't sleep on his own yet.

Tonight, I was wide awake and anxious. I slipped out of bed and, on my tiptoes, left the room.

I couldn't risk the TV in the bedroom waking up Darius. The living room TV was also bigger, and I huddled in front of it all while pressing my face to the screen.

As I expected, my father's plane was still pasted across all the news channels.

People had endless things to say about him and all his hard work. My fingers refused to remain idle, so I pulled up web searches and some more popular social media platforms. There were fewer nice things to say about him on some of these sites. People really dug into his business practices.

My name came up, too. It was strange reading all of these stranger's thoughts on me. I wasn't a public figure and had been hidden from the world. A lot more people than I expected were curious about that. And some conspiracy sites pointed out the strange photos of me. Of course, some said I just had a face that didn't take a good photo, and I couldn't disagree. However, having so many pictures taken and none of them look like the same person was a suspicious trend.

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"How does it feel to have the whole world talking about you?"

I jumped and turned to look behind me. The living room was lit up only by the TV. This place was still unfamiliar, which had to be why I found Mordecai absolutely terrifying. He was lounging on my couch casually as if it were a throne. His face was half hidden in shadows, which only served to showcase his glowing eyes that looked like burning embers.

"My father was your agent. Why did you let him die?" I said, rubbing my chest where my heart was painfully pounding fast.

"My agent?" Mordecai said as his smile grew.

His grin was playful and menacing, but it was missing something. In the past, Mordecai seemed to enjoy being caught or praised for his actions. He always took credit with aplomb, too. I faltered for a moment. Maybe my father wasn't working for Mordecai?

"Is he alive?" I said, but I could not look at Mordecai when I asked the burning question in my gut.

Mordecai made a noncommittal sound, and I closed my eyes.

"You have the power to ensure he is alive," I said slowly as I thought of how to turn this around.

"Gwendolyn, are you attempting to make a deal with me?" Mordecai said. I could hear the humor in his voice, and I flinched in response.

I opened my mouth to say yes, but I hesitated. If I did that, there was no telling what he would want in return.

"How about this? Your father will return to you when you truly need him. In return, I will never put you in another world." Mordecai said.

I turned around to look at him. That sounded suspiciously like a handout. Why would he promise me something like that? It was too good to be true. I opened my mouth to say something, but as I looked at Mordecai lazily leaning on the couch, my mouth snapped shut. The odds of me making things worse by speaking were also impossibly high.

"Glad we came to a deal," Mordecai said as he smirked.

I turned my back to him, brought my knees to my chest, and laid my head on them. Curling into a ball was the best way to handle this. My head was throbbing, and I felt like there was something wrong with what happened, but it was impossible to focus on that.

The silence grew between us as the TV drew our attention to it. Graham was on it, and he was talking to reporters. He looked pale and haggard, and my heart twisted with guilt at the sight.

"Your lover is mourning you," Mordecai said.

I snapped my head to give him a glare. "He was my friend, and I feel awful about all this."

"Then why haven't you told him you're alive?" Mordecai said.

It shouldn't surprise me that this deity had the time on his hands to studiously watch my life like a soap drama. What did surprise me was the strange look in Mordecai's eyes. It was like he was waiting for me to pull out my phone and call Graham at this very moment.

"I'm not wasting what my father did for Darius and myself."

"Ah, so you don't trust Graham," Mordecai said.

I did trust Graham in many ways, but in this moment, there was enough doubt in my heart to still my fingers. Even if I could trust him with my life, could I entrust Darius to him? And what if someone else, the unknown problematic person, found out we were alive because I told Graham? I couldn't risk it.

"Would you have told Adam?" Mordecai said.

My heart jerked at the name, and I turned away to face the TV again.

"I'll take that response as a yes," Mordecai said around his laugh.

He was right. I would have told Adam in a heartbeat because I never kept secrets from Adam. Look where that got us. He kept all the worst ones, and everything fell apart.

"You can't compare the two like that," I said bitterly unwilling to let Mordecai get the last jab.

"Because they're not equal in your heart?" Mordecai said. He seemed content to poke me with a stick of savagery as he yet again opened up all of my wounds.

"Why did you come here in the first place?" I shot back at him.

"What a complete shift in attitude. Last time, you hugged me and was like a cute little puppy. Now you've gone rabid."

The two of us locked eyes, and as usual, I was the first to break.

"Is it possible to bring the living into either of my spaces?" I said. This was a burning question that I wish I had asked sooner and a great way to distract the conversation. It was strange how it had never really come up before. A worm once upon a time didn't count.

"You can," Mordecai said. There was a long pause as I waited for him to finish that thought. He didn't.

I could feel my teeth grind as I pushed ahead, "Would they be affected in any way?"

"Depends on what you mean by that," Mordecai said. A smile was splitting his cheeks as he stared at me.

He was toying with me on purpose. Getting anything from Mordecai without giving was impossible, but this was ridiculous. "Is it safe to take my brother into either of my spaces to hide with me?" I said.

"That's a better way to ask the question," Mordecai said. Still, the damn man avoided directly answering my question.

I could feel anger bubbling in my chest.

"You could take him in, but the duration wouldn't be sufficient to hide. You could if you were in your true form without my punishment or limitations. Your spaces are powered by your soul since they're soul-bound. You have yet to bring someone in, so building up a decent stretch of time in either space would take time. When the time wears out, you'd pop into existence precisely where you slipped away like normal but with whomever you brought in."

I blinked, shocked that he had given me a straight response. His smile grew wider, and I sighed. He was eating up my reaction as payment clearly!

"Rex entered into my space at will," I said. "He also trapped me in it."

"Well, Adam is special," Mordecai said with a shrug. "His powers defy a lot of things. Your limitless capabilities mean nothing with your zero control over them."

I couldn't argue with that. I shut my mouth. My abilities had changed and become stronger, though. So why have they failed me time after time?

"Why didn't my powers predict this? I could have stopped it." The words were out of my lips before I could stop them. I didn't want to think along these lines and had buried these thoughts as deeply as possible.

Mordecai habitually pulled out the worst and hidden parts of my soul. It was uncomfortable yet relaxing how my emotions and mind were around him.

"You can't stop fate," Mordecai said. There was bitterness in his voice.

"This can't be my father's fate." And it wouldn't be from the deal I made with the Keeper of Fates. Who knows when or how that would pan out. I was too chicken shit to ask Mordecai. He might change his mind and add more twists to it.

"How curious that you still call him father," Mordecai said.

It started as a habit, and before I knew it, I thought of him as my father. He raised me the best way he could and, so far, was the only paternal figure who had protected me.

"He raised me better than my actual family," I said, locking eyes with Mordecai.

"And yet you did nothing for him," Mordecai said with a biting smirk.

I stiffened and narrowed my eyes.

I didn't have a chance for a rebuttal because Mordecai was rolling an all too familiar coin across his knuckles as he dug into my soul. "I see from your expression you don't understand. You did nothing for him, so why do you think you could have prevented this tragic moment?" He said.

He tossed his all too familiar coin in the air, but instead of catching it, I watched as it morphed into a strange piece of fruit. I'd never seen anything like it before. It was a deep green, and I would have assumed it was unripe until he caught it and took a bite. The inner flesh was purple with bright yellow seeds dotting the inside. It was better to be distracted by this than what Mordecai was saying.

"Take your friend Clara. She is a prime example of what you should have become. I set the stage for you to blossom like her. Clara understands connections and goes out of her way to assist her family in getting and keeping them."

"She just enjoys parties," I said.

"Do you really think that's why she strives for the center?" He said.

I froze, unsure of what to say. Mordecai noisily ate his fruit as my thoughts churned nothing fruitful in my head. I couldn't be sure. Maybe I was just judging the surface and not giving Clara her just dues.

"Her family isn't as rich nor as powerful as yours, and yet socially, hers is stronger. I gave you the perfect spotlight to power, and you squandered it." Mordecai said with a comically dire shake of his head. "Women in powerful families are raised to support the men in their family through marriage and connections to build a stronger unit to protect from the outside. To control and unite, they can forge impenetrable social bonds through other women."

"That's sexist," I said without any fire. He was making too much sense. Also, he was showing his age. What's worse than all of that was that he was right. I should have done more. I was plucked and dropped into a reasonably modern world. I wouldn't have had the chance to be so selective and underground had the timeline been different. Luckily, my father hadn't forced me to be in the spotlight.

"Boys grow into men to support the family in a similar fashion. They find a partner to produce children and strengthen the family from outside attacks. These bonds of family are strong for that very reason." Mordecai said between bites of the fruit. Fleck flew out of his mouth as he noisily chewed and swallowed. "If there's anything you take from this, loyalty protects and matters more than love. Without such a concept, you're adrift in a world of enemies and unknowns."

There was a lot I couldn't argue with, but I had at least one thing I could shoot back at him. So I thinned my lips and said, "Funny you bring up gender when I never know what you'll show up as. You're proof that gender stereotypes don't matter."

Mordecai threw back his head with a sharp laugh that grated my ears. It was strangely eerie and deep. What a villain. I narrowed my eyes, using my annoyance to combat the fear the sound seemed to rip out of me.

"If only you knew how I am proof of the opposite of that." He said when he was done laughing at me.

"You're going to wake up the baby, you dolt!"

"You've gotten really comfortable calling me whatever you want, Gwendolyn," Mordecai said. His eyes started to glow brighter, and I fought the desire to gulp.

I had no defense, so I turned my back to Mordecai to stare at the screen. I knew Mordecai wouldn't harm me based on everything. I needed to be cautious, however. Mordecai wasn't ordinary, no matter how casual he acted. He was a deity of vast prowess. He could find a workaround to do great harm while leaving me intact to fulfill whatever purpose he had in mind for me.

"I have a gift for you for getting through the first part of your journey in this world. I won several bets thanks to you hiding well and keeping silent." Mordecai said.

I didn't have time to react before a warm hand was placed on my forehead. Ah! He moved way too fast. See, this was why I needed to be cautious. If he could move that fast, I could be dead before my brain had time to acknowledge it!

"Your appearance last time almost brought me to tears with shame," Mordecai said with a wolfish grin. His teeth gleamed in the dark, and my chin quivered. "Remember, I'm watching you."

Mordecai disappeared dramatically in a puff of smoke. His burning eyes made of embers was the last piece of him I saw. I waved the smoke away before I stood up to open the balcony door. The crisp cold night air was a breath of fresh air.

The slew of emotions Mordecai brought me was a welcome reprieve from the numbness I'd been feeling all day. David Savage, my father in this world, was really gone. I hadn't wanted to believe it, and I still didn't. He was a powerful man with a ton of enemies. I learned that from his teachings. I was forced to grow up with the reality of how many people wanted him dead or hurt.

Someone achieved it, and he got Darius and me out in time. He might have gotten himself out, too. Or did he really stay behind to sacrifice himself? I couldn't take what Mordecai said as facts yet. Who knows when his words would actually come into play or if they could.

Right now, Darius' fate and mine are entirely in my hands. I stared at my hands and then looked at the empty space on the balcony. I didn't have time to sit here and weep. I could mourn everything later. I have to take care of my brother and to do that, I have to become stronger.

I didn't feel any different. Mordecai said he was giving me a gift. There was no way it was going to be genuinely beneficial. He used me as a running gag to spice up his boredom. There wasn't anything wrong with my appearance last time. I was dressed to the nines. Wait, I was burned, and he healed me. Did that mean I would no longer have a weak hothouse flower body? My chest grew warm with joy, and I exited the balcony to lie in bed next to Darius.

I didn't bother taking my cough medicine. I was finally going to have a healthy average body.