All In: (The Naturals #3)

I was ready to go home. To do whatever it took to find the Masters. To protect Laurel. Forever and ever. To find my mother. Find the Pythia. Find the room.

They needed to believe that the FBI had put Laurel into protective custody because of her connection to Nightshade, not her connection to me.

For Laurel’s sake, the cult needed to think we hadn’t put the pieces together. They needed to think that I believed I’d buried my mother. They needed to think that we hadn’t read much into the fact that the woman I’d mistaken for Laurel’s mother was actually a nanny, a disposable Las Vegas native Nightshade had hired earlier that week.

All are tested. All must be found worthy.

What I did know was that my mother was alive.

My father didn’t know that the remains weren’t my mother’s. He didn’t know that she was alive.

“In the room.” Laurel stared at me and into me. “Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room.”

“Forever and ever,” Laurel whispered, each word a knife in my gut. “No matter what.”

I always knew—I always thought—that if she’d survived, she would have come back to me. Somehow, some way, if she’d survived—

That’s my mommy, Laurel had said. But the woman in the picture was my mother, too.

“That’s my mommy,” Laurel said.

Not possible. The necklace. The bones. The blood—it was her blood. The tests said it was her blood.