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Australia. Their real home is this one.” I cocked my head towards the castle. “And Aiden has pretty much been living on the Coast by himself for the last year while his parents stayed here.”
    Chelsea leaned against the table in the middle of the gazebo. “I can’t believe they’re your parents!” Her thoughts trailed off as she tried to remember any clues she’d missed that would have given any of us away as different.
    “So, is Mum with the others?” I asked Aiden.
    “Ahh…” He hesitated, making me think I wasn’t going to like what he was about to say.
    “Promise you won’t flip.”
    I glared at him.
    “Fine,” he conceded. “Your mum said she had to go somewhere, but she would see you later this afternoon.”
    “What?” I spat the words from my mouth, bringing Chelsea out of her thoughts.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked with a concerned look on her face.
    I stood up. “I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I’ve only just got my mother back from that asshole, and once again, she disappears without any explanations. Well, I’ll be damned if she thinks she’s going to get away from me that easily now.”
    Without saying anything more, I thought about my mother, and I phased out as I heard both Aiden and Chelsea call my name.

Chapter 3
    “What the hell is with you?” I shouted at my mother the second I appeared by her side. She was leaning over a desk, with a guy I’d never seen before sitting in a chair to her right.
    “Ahh… Jade…” She adjusted herself so she was blocking my view of whatever was on the desk that the two of them had been discussing.
    “I’ll leave you to it,” the guy said. He gathered up something from the desk, then disappeared into thin air before I could get a good look at him.
    “Why can’t you ever tell me before you leave?” Aiden asked.
    “What is so important about this place that you had to disappear hours after I got you back?” I asked Mum, ignoring Aiden’s question. I looked around at my surroundings. We were in a stark-white room with no windows. Two stainless steel benches sat one in front of the other in the middle of the room, and white benches lined all four walls. The line of benches was broken up by two desks and some sort of equipment I’d never seen before. The room had a clinical feel to it, and I wondered why my mother would want to go back to somewhere so similar to where she’d been held captive.
    She grabbed me by the arm. “Can we talk about this back at the Scotts’?”
    “Can you at least tell me you’re okay?” Aiden asked.
    “I’m fine. I’m with my mum, and I’m kinda in the middle of something,” I told him as I shook my arm loose from her grip. “What is it you’re hiding here that you don’t want me to see?”
    “Nothing.” She put her hands on her hips and sighed. “I wanted to talk to you about all this before, but you disappeared.”
    “You’re trying to blame me for you not telling me about this?” I waved my hands around the room.
    “That’s not what I’m saying, Jade.” She buried her face in her hands, then took a few breaths, probably trying to calm down before she dropped her hands to her side and raised her head to look at me. She opened her mouth, but shut it again without saying a word.
    “Is this where you’ve been coming when you were supposed to be at ‘work’?” I asked, doing air quotes with my fingers.
    “Can we please discuss this later?” she pleaded. “Go back to England, and I promise, I’ll be back over there soon.”
    “I don’t think so,” I said, turning around in the direction I thought the door would’ve been. But there was none. I did a double take, looking around the room. “Why the hell aren’t there any doors or windows in this room?”
    A wave of relief washed over her face, but she was forgetting that I didn’t need a door or to be able to picture what was on the other side of the walls. All I needed to get outside the room had been with us only moments