Half a day later, Paz found herself wandering around the outside of a southern Italian villa, looking out on an endless rolling landscape of vineyards as the sun rose majestically in the east. She couldn’t help but think about her former Florida home, sitting in a virtual swamp, thousands of miles away. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she was living a double life, trying to keep up a relatively normal and uneventful school existence while using her special abilities to serve an uncle that thought she owed it to him.

If it hadn’t been for her friendship with Juney, Paz might have spiraled away from the normal world altogether, become involved in crime, or done whatever Uncle Emilio wanted until it cost her soul. She would have almost certainly run away at some point.

That thought nearl...

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