voice pulled me out of my own head.
Slowly, I turned and looked at him. My emotions were all over the place, and the electricity was sparking like a firecracker. Part of me was saying run, that something was off and I needed to get away. But the other part of me held me to the sofa, wanting to hear what Alex had to say.
“So are you going to listen to what I have to say,” he asked, his eyebrow arching upward. “Or do you want to try and run again.”
“I don’t know….” And yes, I understood how dumb my answer was, but it was the truth so…
Alex sighed. “Why do you always have to be so difficult?”
“How do you expect me to be?” I asked, staring incredulously at him. “You were going to let your father erase my mind.”
“No, I wasn’t.” He was losing his cool. “And if you’d just quit being stubborn and listen, you’d know what really went on.”
I crossed my arms and flopped back in the chair, debating what I should do. Keep being “stubborn” as he’d so nicely put it. Or hear him out. “Fine, then tell me what happened.”
Shock flickered across his face, just like it almost always did when I decided to cooperate. “Okay…Well, where do you want me to start?”
I shrugged. Did it really matter? It wasn’t like he was going to tell me the truth or anything. “Wherever you want.”
“Okay…” He seemed to be struggling on where to begin. “Do you remember that necklace I gave you?”
I nodded as I touched my neck, and I quickly realized that the locket was no longer there. “Wait. Where is it?”
“Relax. I have it.”
That didn’t make me relax at all. “Why do you have it?”
“I’m getting to that.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “When I gave you the necklace, I wasn’t just giving it to you because it belonged to you. I gave it to you because it has sugilite in it.”
I gave him a questioning look. “What’s sugilite?”
“It’s the purple stone in the center of the locket. It protects whoever is wearing it from certain kinds of magic.” He paused. “Like the mind erasing kind of magic.”
“But I thought you said my mother gave me the necklace when I was little?”
“She did, specifically because the stone is sugilite.” He leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. “She gave it to you because you have the stars energy in you. It was her way of trying to protect you from anyone who tried to use magic on you to get to the star’s power.”
“So why didn’t it work when I was little?” My voice bit sharp and was full of bitterness. “When Sophia detached my soul from my emotions, why didn’t it protect me? Is that not a form of magic?”
Alex shook his head. “No, it’s a form of magic. But Stephan…well, he knew what it was and took it off of you before Sophia detached your soul.”
“Stephan knows what the necklace is?” This seemed to make the possibility of it actually protecting me and the star not possible.
He nodded. “That’s why I tucked it into your shirt. So he wouldn’t see it and make you take it off.”
I remembered how, right before Alex had climbed out of the Jeep back at the cabin—back when Stephan had shown up with the Death Walkers—he had reached over and tucked the necklace into my shirt. Whatever you do, keep that hidden. Don’t let anyone know you have it, he’d said.
“But why would you do that?” I questioned. “Why give it to me at all if you knew it would stop someone from being able to detach my soul? I thought you said that my soul had to be detached to keep the stars power thriving enough so that it could save the world.”
He gave a look that made my skin go electric. “Because I wanted to stop anyone from being able to detach your soul.”
I stifled a laugh. “I highly doubt that, especially since you’ve told me a ton of times that my soul has to be detached.”
“Yeah…but I…” He drifted off.
“But you what?” I pressed.
“But,” he took a breath, “when I first gave you the necklace, I was still deciding whether or not I was going to let my father see you wearing it. If he’d seen it, then he’d have made you take it off before he tried to use the memoria extraho on you.”
As unsurprising as this