Grace was right. The FBI were in our house. What she'd failed to mention was that they were there in the form of Victor Benedict.

He was a tall, imposing sort of man with long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail. At the moment, he was frowning at Grace, like she was a puzzle he couldn't quite figure out. Beside him, the eldest brother, Trace, stood with his arms folded over his chest and had the usual family resemblance that all the Benedicts seemed to possess. In the background, Yves was stood slightly in front of Zed, as if he was making an conscious effort to keep him separated from Grace, who herself was stood at the other end of the room, behind the breakfast bar with her eyes fixed on a cup of coffee and her arms still wrapped around her middle.

Cassandra, on the other hand, was pacing next to her, her makeup smudged and her hair loose around her face. "Is someone going to explain what's going on?" she snapped indignantly.

Grace looked up long enough to shoot me a warning look, the sort I'd only ever seen once or twice before. It meant we were in trouble. Serious trouble. The sort that Cassandra should be protected from before things got really messy. "Nothing to concern yourself with Cassandra," I said shortly. "Go back to bed."

"I need to speak with her," Victor interrupted with a slight scowl.

"This has nothing to do with her," Grace replied coolly, fixing him with a glare she reserved especially for troublesome cops. "If you want to get yourselves involved in this, fine, but she stays out of it. Otherwise, I have nothing to say to any of you."

There was a stony silence, in which Cassandra could do nothing but gawp. Victor's scowl had deepened a fraction, and Yves had thrown out one of his arms to stop Zed moving further into the room.

I cleared my throat. "Cassie, go upstairs," I instructed quietly.

"Alex," she started angrily.

"Go, Cassandra," Grace snapped. "Please."

She blinked in surprise, and even I had to double take. Grace never said please. Ever. Especially not to Cassandra. Pursing her lips, she frowned at Grace for one last second then nodded, turning around and hurrying up the stairs without another word.

"Your legal guardian should be present," Trace told us with a slight frown.

"Who is dead," Grace replied shortly. "So that won't be possible I'm afraid, Officer."

"Grace," I warned slowly, stepping further into the room as the Benedicts stared at her in surprise. I hadn't seen her like this for a long time, and I'd hoped and prayed I'd never see her like it again.

She flicked her eyes toward me, then back to Zed with a flinch. He was frowning, watching her carefully like he knew she was about to lose it but he still wasn't leaving. I had to admire him for that, and I couldn't help thinking that if anyone was going to save my sister, it was him. "Just get this over with," she muttered, dropping her gaze. "You shouldn't have even been asking questions. I told you I'd explain."

Zed opened his mouth to answer her, taking another step forward, but Yves held him back again with a pointed look. "You'd have told him everything?" Victor questioned.

Grace's face fell. "Alright," I scowled at him. "That's eno-"

"No," she interrupted, gulping hard. Zed stared as the rest of his siblings shuffled. "I wouldn't have."

"Why?" Zed blinked.

She scoffed weakly. "I can barely make myself stand still to listen to your brothers say it out loud," she answered with a small shrug. "There's no way I . . ."

She trailed off, dropping her gaze again, and I shifted to stand beside her, handing her the cup of coffee with a frown. She pursed her lips, taking the coffee and leaning against the counter behind her heavily. "Can we get to the point please?" I asked sharply. "What are you here for?"

Victor and Trace exchanged troubled looks, and I figured that wasn't a good sign. It meant they knew something of our past, at the very least, and since some of it is very easily misinterpreted when taken out of context, something was probably worse than everything.

"Since you arrived, with no parents and under the care of a woman who obviously isn't a Savant, we've been incredibly curious about why you were here and what exactly it was that you were running from," Victor started with a deep breath. "And while you appeared to be no threat to our family and reluctant to draw any attention to yourselves, we decided that it was perhaps best to leave you to live your lives in peace."

I scoffed. "I have a feeling that wasn't your idea," I replied, scanning the look on his face.

He ignored me, but behind him, Zed snorted darkly, earning him a sharp dig in the ribs from Yves. "The point is that since then, you've been acting strangely," Trace continued. "Your paranoia after Zed and Alex were arrested in particular seemed a little over the top."

Grace shot a half-hearted scowl in Yves's direction. "I'm sorry, Grace, but you really freaked out back there," he grimaced at her.

"So after I explicitly told you that it would be a bad idea to ask questions and draw any attention in this direction, you see me get paranoid and ignore me?" she questioned, her voice strangely calm, as though she didn't have the energy to get worked up anymore.

"We can't continue blindly," Victor pointed out sternly.

"And none of you thought to ask us?" I frowned. Yves immediately made to argue, and I sighed heavily. "Okay, ask me. I know Grace is too paranoid to get anyone else involved."

"For good reason," she pointed out sourly, sipping her coffee without looking at anyone.

"However we got our information, it's done now," Victor sighed. "And I can promise you that the people I asked are trustworthy. No one knows you're here." I glanced sideways at Grace, hoping she could at least pretend to go along with it, but she was barely listening, her fingertips drumming anxiously on the side of her coffee cup. I didn't blame her. We'd heard all this before. In the early days of our lives on the run, we'd trusted police officers and the Savant Net, only to be caught out by moles or people who'd been bought off.

"Get it over with," I sighed eventually, leaning on the counter in front of me.

"We knew you were British, and obviously in serious trouble, so it wasn't hard to find out who you were after we'd asked the right people," Victor continued. "We tracked your last movements in Edinburgh, where you lived with an elderly woman named Elise Francis, under the names Alexander and Grace Garrett."

At that, Grace shuffled and risked a glance in his direction. My gut twisted. I knew what she was thinking, and I began praying that she didn't ask what I knew was on her mind. I didn't want to hear the answer. Just thinking about it made me feel like I'd had a knife rammed through my chest.

"Who is she?" Trace asked slowly, watching my reaction.

The muscles in my hands flexed and clenched. "Our grandmother," I told him shortly.

"What happened to her?" Grace asked, and I flinched, my hands tightening around the edges of the counter. Zed shifted forward, frowning.

Victor hesitated, taking a deep breath and drawing himself to his full height. "She died of cancer three weeks ago," he told us and I realised a ragged breath I hadn't noticed I'd held back. Grace paled considerably, her fingertips white around her cup. "I'm sorry."

"Carry on," I instructed with a frown, ignoring the way my voice caught in the back of my throat. At the time, I'd known leaving was the right choice to make. Gran had people to take care of her when she needed help, and if we'd stayed, she'd have been killed and they wouldn't have made it quick. But now, realisation seemed to hit that I'd lost her completely, that I'd never see her again. She'd never give me that exasperated look she got when I'd messed up, or tell us stories about our mother. We'd lost the only decent member of our family we'd had left, and knowing that there wasn't a single thing we could do to stop it made my chest ache.

Victor nodded at me slowly, but in the background, Zed glowered irritably at the back of his brother's head. "We should come back later," he as good as growled.

"No," Grace replied quickly, flicking her eyes toward him briefly. His expression relaxed immediately, but he still didn't look comfortable. "Alex is right. Get it over with."

Trace took a deep breath, eyeing the two of us pitifully. "After we'd found your grandmother, it was relatively easy to trace it backwards," he explained softly. "There were several small charges on Alex's criminal record, which we figured was why you moved around as much as you did, and we finally traced it back to the city of Manchester in England. You were thirteen years old when you were first arrested."

The two elder brothers seemed to watch me for a reaction after that, but I barely noticed. My thoughts were still back on Edinburgh with my grandmother.

"That one was technically my fault," Grace admitted grudgingly.

Trace blinked at her. "Your record is spotless."

"That's because I never got caught." Even I looked up at that. I wouldn't pretend Grace was a perfect citizen, and when things were tough and we had no other choice but to slum it on the streets, she hadn't exactly been helpless. But normally, she did a good job of forgetting the worst parts. Now, she was bragging to a cop and an FBI agent that the only reason she hadn't got a criminal record was because she was too good at it to get caught.

Undisturbed by their shocked looks, she shrugged a shoulder and took another sip of her coffee. "I never hurt anyone," she continued. "And I'm not proud of any of it, but when you're running for your life, the law isn't generally the first thing on your mind."

Trace still appeared mildly surprised, but Victor didn't seem to care much. "We heard that you turned to the police forces in England twice for help," he said. "Once was the Greater Manchester Police, once at Scotland Yard in London. Both times, several officers were left hospitalised or worse and the two of you were nowhere to be found."

"We had no choice," I frowned.

"I didn't say you did," he pointed out calmly. "In fact, I fully understand why you ran, considering you were at most eleven years old." Grace shifted, but said nothing, her eyes once again fixed on her coffee. I couldn't blame her. The only reason Victor wasn't more suspicious was because he knew what was coming next, and neither of us were looking forward to hearing it all said aloud again, especially since the last time that we'd had this conversation was with the Manchester police force.

"The first attack on the police was in London when you were eight years old," Victor frowned, and my clutch on the edge of the counter tightened. "It took us awhile to find it, since the report is under your birth names, Jackson and Olivia. According to the report, you'd ran away from home the day before you arrived at Scotland Yard."

"If you can call a place like that home," I shrugged darkly, eyes narrowing.

He hesitated, casting his brothers a warning look before taking a deep breath. "You told officers there that you'd ran away from a man named Jacob Matthews."

My fingers were starting to hurt they were clutching the counter that hard. Grace, now looking distinctly ill, had set the coffee cup down as her hands began to shake, wrapping her arms tightly around her middle again. Just the sound of that man's name sent furious ripples through my body. For so long now, I'd been sorely tempted to find him and beat the life out of the man. I knew, logically, I'd most likely be killed before I could get close enough, but he'd single-handedly ruined our lives. The only thing that stopped me was knowing Grace would do anything to stop me. She was terrified of Matthews, and rightly so. He'd treated her so much worse than he had me.

"You claimed he was involved in criminal activities and had kept you against your will for just over two years," Trace continued quietly. "You also told the police that he'd been responsible for your mother's death . . . and that he was your father."

The atmosphere suddenly felt like it was weighing down on my shoulders. My blood seared in anger, and glancing sideways at Grace was a bad idea. She'd turned her back to the Benedicts, taking in long gulps of cold air in a vain attempt to keep calm. That was what fuelled most of my anger these days. The idea that Matthews had murdered my mother was bad enough. Knowing he could terrify my sister just by hearing his name made me sick with fury.

"Our Mum used to work at Scotland Yard," I told them through my teeth, trying desperately to calm myself down. "She was part of an operation to take down one of Matthews' criminal businesses, but they underestimated him and things went south pretty quickly. She got kidnapped. I don't know what happened, or what his thugs were planning to do, but before they could hurt her, she met Matthews himself."

"I don't understand," Yves admitted after a moments silence. "How did they end up . . .?"

Grace took a ragged breath before I could answer him, replying without turning around. "She was his soulfinder," she told them in a shaky voice, and the Benedicts all looked like she'd slapped them. "He couldn't have hurt her even if he wanted to back then."

"She stuck around, probably to try and help him," I continued, refusing to let Grace contribute to the conversation anymore. It was tearing her apart just standing there. "I couldn't tell you if she managed, but she thought that if anyone could make him see sense then it was her. But he managed to convince her she had. It wasn't until we were about five when things started getting bad. She'd always be crying, getting into constant arguments with him, there were strange men hovering around the house. Within in a year, he lost it. He didn't mean to hurt her, but that didn't matter. When he loses his temper, even he can't control what happens."

There was another heavy silence, in which the Benedicts tried to digest what I'd told them. I doubt any of them had ever heard of a situation like that before. I know I'd always believed soulfinders hurting each other wasn't possible. But then I knew what Matthews was capable of. I'd seen it, first hand.

"Whatever sanity he had left was gone after that," I continued in a dark mutter. "While Mum had tried to keep Grace and me out of his way, he knew he could use us. I kept as much of his attention on me as I could, since-" I broke off with a sharp breath, eyeing Grace's stance cautiously. "Since Grace reminded him too much of Mum. He always got . . . unstable."

Grace kept it together, but barely. I could see her eyes start to shine with tears, something she refused to do publically. It took both Yves and Trace to keep Zed on the other side of the room, but for the first time, I found myself wishing they'd let him past. Whatever she said, however independent she tried to be, she needed him. There was no way she was going to let me help her, and if Zed could, I'd be happy enough to stand back and let him.

"Which is why you left," Trace concluded with a sigh.

"He's been hunting us ever since," I warned him. "And from what we've heard, his criminal enterprise covers most of the south of England and is still growing."

Victor was back in his element. "Matthews has built up quite a reputation for himself," he frowned. "Most of the other criminal organisations in Britain, big and small, won't cross him, and if he asks for something, he generally gets it. The Savant Net over there has been working for years to control his influence and bring him down, but they aren't having much luck. The Redfields in particular are working almost constantly to keep him under surveillance."

"I've heard of the Redfields," Grace muttered distractedly, still not looking at anyone. "They're supposed to be one of the most powerful families in the Net."

"They are," he agreed. "They've managed to bring down some of the worst criminals out there. The entire family is in law enforcement. No one knows where most of them go or what they do. They're rarely ever seen in the same place as each other, and you could be talking to one of them without even realising who they really are."

Grace flicked her eyes over her shoulder at him. "Didn't Matthews take out the eldest son and his in laws?"

Victor and Trace shifted, obviously not expecting her to know that. "His attack was entirely unexpected," Trace replied.

"He apparently left four children orphaned," she continued darkly.

"We aren't saying Matthews isn't a threat," Victor told her patiently. "But the Redfields weren't aware he had any interest in them until that day. It's the main reason they're so invested in bringing him down."

"That doesn't change the fact he's still looking for us," I scowled at them, eyeing Grace's expression carefully.

"No, it doesn't," he conceded. "But the Redfields have the border locked down. Any Savant crossing the borders out of the UK is being vetted. Matthews already has too much influence in Europe, and no one wants him to move into the US as well. He's even had to let up some of his control in Scotland, since that's where the Redfields live. Short of mounting a full on assault on the borders, it's virtually impossible for him to get over here."

"Virtually," Grace repeated dryly. "Assuming he hasn't got people over here already."

"Are you that determined to stay alone?" Zed scowled, suddenly angry.

"Determined not to let anyone else die, actually," she spat back irritably, finally turning to face him properly. "I'm sorry if that offends you."

He glowered, opening his mouth to answer back, but Yves jabbed him in his side sharply. "You're safe here, Grace," Yves said carefully. She didn't answer, turning back away from them all again.

"Is that everything?" I asked abruptly, straightening out importantly. "Now that we've aired all the family's dirt secrets."

Zed snorted in disbelief, glaring between Grace and me, but Yves and Trace kept him in his place. Victor, on the other hand, seemed more curious than annoyed. "The Redfields have closed the borders, and if they say there's no chance of Matthews getting through, then they've got things under control. If there are any of his people in the US, we will find them."

Grace hesitated, scanning his expression over her shoulder. "Good luck with that."

Grimacing at her, he turned and herded his brothers out of the living room. Zed went a little unwillingly, but Grace didn't turn to look at him. Instead, she waited in complete silence until she heard the front door close behind them all.

"So," she started with a loud sniff, turning to face me with her arms folded over her chest. "You said you had another dream about that girl?"

I blinked in astonishment. Forgetting for a moment that Grace had recently been refusing to speak about the girl until I'd asked Zed about his premonitions, she completely ignored the fact we'd spent the past hour discussing the worst part of our lives with her soulfinder and his family.

But at the mention of the girl, my stomach shifted uncomfortably. The last dream was the first time I'd seen something different, and not just her running through a city of blurring lights. She was still in trouble, and I had to help her. Only now, if Victor was right, Grace and I were safe here. That meant when I found out where she was, I didn't need to worry about getting her into more trouble. Instead, I could focus on getting her out of it.

All I needed now was the right help. And I was starting to think I knew exactly how to get it.

The trouble was, trying to convince Grace to talk to Zed was as useless as talking to the dog. I was starting to think that no matter how many high-powered Savants promised her that she was safe, she wouldn't ever take the risk. A small part of me had to admire her self-restraint, but most of the time, I was criticising her for being overly paranoid. If she had her way, she wouldn't ever actually live her life. She'd keep her head down and trying to make as little impact on the world as humanly possible.

Now though, that wasn't an option. One way or another, we had to get her to see sense, before either she or Zed lost it completely and caused even more trouble.