El hangs out for the rest of the day. Felix calls his parents and explains what happened, and they assure him they'll have plane tickets to somewhere far away for the first thing in the morning.

I text my boss at the radio station and let him know that something has come up, and that I won't be available for the next week or so. He doesn't seem thrilled, but he doesn't fire me on the spot either, so I'm not complaining.

Ms. Cross calls hours later to let us know that the Guards that were dispatched to the cafe found no trace of Samuel. They know he must be in the area though, so she warns us to expect the city to be crawling with Guards for a while while they do their best to track him down.

Evening comes, and darkness falls. We figure two movies ought to do the trick. El will leave after the first one is over, and then when the second one ends, Felix and I will sneak out and head to his parent's place. I hardly register the movies, but it's easier to sit there and stare at the screen than to sit around anxiously staring at the clock, watching the minutes tick by.

Finally the credits roll, and El gets up. Felix gives her a quick hug, and then I give her a huge one that leaves her gasping for air.

“Be careful,” I tell her. “Ms. Cross is right, someone might be watching your house too.”

“I'll start setting booby traps,” she replies. “I'd like to see some MRF flunkie try to get past my roller skate-on-marbles-at-the-top-of-the-stairs trick.”

“I'll walk you to your car,” Felix offers.

“I'll come too.” I go to grab my coat.

“No,” Felix says quickly. “No, you stay here.”

El cocks her head to the side. “Actually, it's probably better if he does come too. That way, if anyone really is watching the place, they'll see for sure that the both of you are still here, and that you didn't sneak out while invisible with me or Ms. Cross.”

“That's a good idea—she's right, you know she's right,” I point out to Felix. He doesn't seem happy about it, but he agrees. I don't know if he's expecting someone from the MRF to jump me in the parking lot or something, but I'm eager to get outside even for just a few minutes. There's nothing like being told you have to stay inside for your own safety to make you crave fresh air and wide, open spaces.

We walk El out, and each give her another hug before she gets in her car and reverses out of the her parking spot.

I don't bother looking around at the rows and rows of parked cars around us to see if anyone is watching us from one of them. Half of the street lights in the lot are burnt out, and it's too dark to be able to make anyone out even if someone was.

I linger in the parking lot for as long as Felix will let me, but he finally manages to drag me back inside.

We put on the second film, which we watch for all of five minutes before Felix gets up to check that our bags are properly packed again. He's done that about fifty times now. I think it's nervous tick, something he's doing to calm his own nerves about all this. He hates feeling out of control, and he must be feeling pretty helpless right now. I suppose I'm lucky that he's so shaken by this whole Samuel thing, because he seems to have forgotten to be pissed at me over the stunt I pulled with the leg-locking hex. I know I deserve the telling off he should have given me. I don't know what I was thinking; going alone like that was idiotic. I can see that now. I walked right into Samuel's hands, and if he had had different motives...

I get up and go into the bedroom after Felix. He turns when he hears me enter, and I wrap him in a tight hug.

“I'm sorry. I acted like a real dick this morning.”

I feel him stiffen just a little against me.

“You could have gotten yourself killed,” he replies, his tone sharp.

“Yeah, I know. And I shouldn't have hexed you. I'm sorry, that was really fucked up.”

Felix relaxes, and he puts his arms around me too. “It's okay. It was fucked up, but I can understand why you felt like you had to at the moment. Just don't do it again, okay? You and me, we're a team, even if we don't always agree on everything. We shouldn't be using our magic against each other.”

Christ. He's always so understanding, so forgiving. He's so damn good, and I'm such a mess. Not for the first time, I'm struggling to figure out why he's with me. He deserves so much more.

We're ready to go by ten o'clock. We grab our bags and leave, locking the apartment door behind us. There's a window at the end of the hall on the second floor, and a tree with sturdy branches grows right up against the side of the building. We climb out the window and down the tree to avoid the front of the building in case it's being watched, and then I take Felix by the hand and let the invisibility spell fall over the both of us.

One good thing about walking the twenty minutes to the grocery store is that we know we're not being followed. We're the only ones out apart from the occasional passing car, and we both feel comfortable enough to drop the spell when we reach the brightly lit store, still open for another half hour. We call a ride share and are dropped off a block away from Felix's parents' hour only another twenty minutes later. Again we walk under the cover of invisibility, and Felix leads us around the back of the house. His dad has left the gate unlocked and open just wide enough for us to slip through without having to move it ourselves, which would give our presence away if anyone was watching.

I wait until Felix is closing and locking the back door behind is in the kitchen before I drop the invisibility spell. Both his parents are still up and waiting for us, and his mom gives us both a hug of relief when we meet them in the sitting room.

“We're flying to Florida at eleven tomorrow morning,” his mom tells us. “We're going to Disney World!”

I splutter. “D-Disney World? But that's like... that costs—”

“No one can be unhappy at Disney World!” she continues blithely, as if she hadn't heard me. “It's the perfect place to get away from everything!”

“And it's so crowded this time of year, even if someone somehow manages to follow us all the way there, they'll never be able to stick with us in that crowd,” Felix adds with a slight smile. “Not a bad idea, Mom.”

“I'm so excited, I haven't been to Disney World in years! Not since you were, what, eleven, Felix?”

“This isn't a vacation, Jodie,” Mr. Roth grunts from his armchair. “The MRF is gunning for the boys.”

“Don't be melodramatic, Carl,” Mrs. Roth scolds. “Samuel Cartwright might be involved with the MRF, and they might have some reason to engage with Adam; but it all also might end up amounting to nothing. There's no need to start acting like victims when nothing has even happened yet. So let's treat it like a vacation until we have reason to do otherwise. How does that sound, Adam?” she adds, smiling warmly at me.

“It sounds fine, Jodie,” I reply, a little weakly in the face of her enthusiasm. I can't help but notice that neither of his parents bring up anything about Samuel claiming to be my father, even though I know Felix told them about it. I'm grateful for that, because I've been avoiding thinking about it as much as possible since this morning.

Felix and I head up to his room soon after, which his parents have left untouched as a shrine to their only son. I sit down on the edge of the bed as Felix starts to undress, and for a moment I can pretend like I've been taken back to senior year of high school, in those heady months after my trial with the Council, when for the first time in a very long time, everything was okay. More than okay. I try to hold onto that feeling, but it slips away through my fingers like water.

Felix falls asleep almost right away, but I stay up for a while, staring down at the newspaper clipping in the binder I took out of his bag after I was sure he was asleep.

The picture used of Sarah Connolly in her missing article is her senior portrait. She's younger in this photo than I am now, which seems strange. She's pretty, with a round face and long, straight dark hair. I can't decide whether she looks like me or not. I want to say no, but the more I look, the more uncertain I am. She could, I suppose. It's so hard to tell from one grainy photo in an old newspaper. She looks nice, at least. Kind, and gentle. Far too young to be running off with a guy like Samuel, dropping out of school and turning her life upside down only to have it all blow up in her face. But then, I suppose the Samuel Cartwright from back then was probably a very different person than the Samuel Cartwright I met today. He would have just been some teenage kid too.

Actually, I don't know Samuel Cartwright at all. I've barely interacted with him. I could probably count all the times I've seen him on one hand, and it's not like we had anything even approaching a conversation during his trial, or during the battle in the house in France. If I'm being honest with myself, I have no idea what kind of a man Samuel Cartwright it. I want to believe that, if it's true, there must have been something in him worthwhile, something that my mother saw all those years ago. Maybe it's still there. It's true that he kept Lucas Smithback and Jenessa Oliver from being rough with Felix when they took him hostage. According to what Felix told me about his time with them, Jennessa in particular had been all for using him to set an example as to how the MRF feels about Council supporters, and it was Samuel who had stepped in before things got out of hand.

I can't think about Samuel anymore, it just sends a new wave of tension and stress over me every time I do. I put him out of my head, and instead focus on the face of Sarah Connolly, staring down into her dark eyes until I fall asleep.

We trundle into the car the next morning. Felix and I, invisible, slip into the back seat while Mr. Roth pretends to fiddle with the handle on his suitcase.

“You both in?” he eventually mutters without looking up, his lips barely moving.

Felix confirms that we are, and Mr. Roth tosses in his suitcase and closes the door.

We head to the airport, fairly certain we haven't been followed, and are on the plane by ten thirty, finally able to relax in the relative safety of a huge metal tube that hurtles 30,000 feet above the earth.

I'm not prepared for the sweltering heat that hits us the moment we step out of the airport in Orlando seven hours later. I thought the hundred and ten degree summers back home were bad, but I didn't take humidity into account.

We spend the next four days at Disneyworld from the time it opens to the time it closes. I went to Disneyland in senior year at St. Bosco's for the senior class trip, but this is on a different scale all together. It's four days of pure fun, and it's one of the best vacations I've had with Felix's family so far.

Yet, there's still an undercurrent of fear submerged just beneath the surface. No one is acknowledging it, but I see it in Mrs. Roth's eyes every time her phone rings. I see it in the tense set of Mr. Roth's shoulders as he watches the magician's news on the hotel room TV in the evenings. I see it in Felix's face every time he looks at me, even though he does his best to hide it.

I ignore it all as best I can, and just pretend like this is a normal vacation. I'm determined to enjoy it, before any fateful call from Ms. Cross can put an end to it.

But the call does come, on the sixth day when we're at the beach.

Felix is laying on a beach towel under the shade of an umbrella in his swim trunks, his arms behind his head and the book he was reading over his face as he naps. I am kicking around in the shallows, searching for interesting shells and half hoping I might find a shark tooth or something.

Mrs. Roth, under a big beach umbrella of her own in a lawn chair next to a lightly napping Mr. Roth, answers her phone, and then throws her flip flop at Felix to wake him up. He sits up with a jerk, and she says something to him, pointing over at me by the water's edge.

I see all this play out, so I'm already jogging back towards them when Felix meets me halfway.

“Ms. Cross is on the phone, come on,” he says, grabbing me by the wrist and pulling me along after him.

Mrs. Roth is nodding as she listens to Ms. Cross speak, her lips pursed and her brow furrowed in exactly the same way as Felix's.

“Mm-hm... Yes... Yes, okay... Are they sure?... Nothing at all?... Okay... Okay... Yes, he's doing well. It's been a very pleasant week. He's right here, do you want to talk to him?... Okay, I understand. I won't keep you then... All right. Thank you for letting us know... You too. Buh-bye.”

She hangs up, and looks up at us from under the brim of her enormous hat. “Jennifer says that—hold on, is your father asleep? Carl? Carl!” She gives him a sharp prod in the side, and he wake up with snort and a jerk.

“What? What is it?”

“Jennifer Cross just called. She says that Samuel Cartwright hasn't been found, but the Guards do think they've discovered where he was staying. It looks as though he's on his own. Of course it's almost impossible to be sure, but that's what it's starting to look like. No one has approached the boys' apartment again, nothing has been left for them and no one has noticed any suspicious behavior. She thinks it's probably fine for us to head home now, and she's sorry she couldn’t stop to talk to you just now, Adam, but she'll call you later today when she gets the chance.”

Felix breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank Solomon. I was half convinced someone was going to try to bomb the apartment or something.”

“I still think you two should move,” Mr. Roth says gruffly. “I don't like the thought of Cartwright knowing where you live.”

“It isn't like he'd have a hard time figuring out where we moved to if he really wanted to, Dad,” Felix replies with a frown. “Like Adam said, we can't let fear uproot our lives. Besides, if Samuel was telling the truth about everything, then we're not in any danger from him. He honestly just wanted to talk to Adam.”

“And if all that was true,” I add, very quietly, “then he really is my father.”

An uncomfortable silence falls over the others.

“Jennifer didn't say anything regarding that,” Mrs. Roth finally says in a gentle tone, “so I wouldn't worry about that yet, Adam. All we know for sure at this point is that no one has attempted to contact you since he first sent that letter.”

“And even if he is, it doesn't matter,” barks Mr. Roth. “A father is someone who raises a child. He's just a sperm donor.”

“Not helping, Dad,” Felix says hastily. “Look, let's head back to the hotel. We can pack, and figure out what to do for dinner after we get tickets back home.”

“No,” I say abruptly, taking Felix by the elbow. “No, let's stay here a little longer.” I look to his parents. “Would that be okay?”

“Uh... sure,” Mrs. Roth replies with a shrug.

“Come on,” I say to Felix, dragging him away, back to the water's edge. Just one more day. Just one more day before I have to go back to it all, that's all I want.