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knew it wasn’t exactly fair, but the truth remained that my life was a whole lot simpler before he came knocking on my door.
    “You really want me to leave?”
    “Yes. You’ve done what you came here to do. I’m releasing you from any further obligation you may feel. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. I’m certainly not running off with you tonight.”
    “I can’t stick around here and wait for you to change your mind.”
    “Good. I don’t want you to. I’ll figure out how to get the necklace off myself.”
    “What if the person who killed your mother comes looking for you?”
    “And how do I know you’re not the one who killed her?” It sounded obstinate and petty even to me. I hadn’t even decided what I was doing after graduation—I wasn’t about to take on a whole new world at a moment’s notice. Magic? A fantasy world? That wasn’t for me. I was just an ordinary girl trying to get through life on my own as best I could. I finally had a little bit of normalcy in my life; I couldn’t give that up now.
    “I see. Obviously, if you still think I’m the type of person capable of doing something like that, then clearly we would not make good traveling companions. I wish you the best of luck, Kat, and even though you didn’t know her, you have my condolences for your mother’s death. I can see myself out.”
    True to his word, he nodded and left the apartment. I secured the deadbolt as soon as the door closed. I didn’t trust him not to try to come back in after I’d gone to bed. When I turned back around to face my living room, the furniture still sat askew with an empty space where the panther had taken everything I thought I knew about myself and obliterated it. Yeah, that was one man I could do with never seeing again.
    I lifted the pendant from my chest. It appeared innocuous, peaceful even. The amber gave no hint to the trouble it had caused. If what Alex said was true, this was the last relic of the woman who had given birth to me and abandoned me. Had she really done it for my safety? The overwhelming comfort of the possibility that I hadn’t been abandoned after all, that a woman existed who had simply loved me enough to do what was best for me, brought a light mist to my eyes.
    I closed my fist around the stone and brought it to my lips. Power seemed to suffuse me, radiating out from the stone, and filling every cell in my body. Not so ordinary after all.

Chapter 4
    T he next morning , I decided to skip class to take a three-day weekend. Lectures wouldn’t be enough to distract me from this new reality I found myself in, and it would do no good to attend. After Alex had left, I logged into the game and told GreyMist that the date had gone well but I was too tired to stay up and promptly logged out. Farming pixie wings had actually sounded like a good distraction, but I knew if I stayed online with her, there was a good chance I’d tell her everything that had happened. After hearing such a wild tale, she’d probably have me committed. I knew I would.
    By that time, it really had been late, so I changed my top into a tank and hung up the outfit I’d worn to the interview. It was the one nice bit of clothing I had, and more than that, it had been a present from my mom. My usual clothes got swept off the bed into the pile on the floor, but not that outfit.
    When I had settled into bed, in the stillness of night, I noticed a slight hum of energy from the pendant. The whole story sounded so remarkable, so separate from me and my life, yet there was the one tangible item connecting me to the story Alex had told.
    My dreams had been filled with distortions of Alex, mages, a magical world, and my mother’s talisman. I didn’t even know how to begin to make sense of it all. This early on a Friday, GreyMist wouldn’t be online yet. That meant I could immerse myself in the game, get lost in it without worry of accidentally revealing that I was most probably going crazy. If I left my