The Naturals: All In Part 31

"Nine," she whispered. "My name is Nine."

A chill ran down my spine, leaving nothing but fury in its wake. You're not a part of them, I thought, fiercely protective. She was just a baby-just a little, little girl.

"Your mommy called you something else," I said, trying to remember the name the woman had used that day at the fountain.

"Laurel. Mommy calls me Laurel." She turned to look at the woman on the ground. Her face held no hint of emotion. She didn't flinch at the blood.

"Don't look at Mommy, Laurel." I moved to block her view. "Look at me."

"That's not my mommy." The little girl's tone was dispa.s.sionate.

My heart thudded in my chest. "It's not?"

"The Master hired her. To watch me when we came here."

Laurel's chubby baby hands went to an old-fashioned locket around her neck. She let me open it. Inside, there was a picture.

"That's my mommy," Laurel said.

Not possible. The necklace. The bones. The blood-it was her blood. The tests said it was her blood.

I felt the world closing in on me. Because there were two people in the photo, and Laurel looked exactly the same in the picture as she did today.

It was recent.

That's my mommy, Laurel had said. But the woman in the picture was my mother, too.

I always knew-I always thought-that if she'd survived, she would have come back to me. Somehow, some way, if she'd survived- "Forever and ever," Laurel whispered, each word a knife in my gut. "No matter what."

"Laurel," I said, my voice hoa.r.s.e. "Where is Mommy?"

"In the room." Laurel stared at me and into me. "Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room."

I stood in front of the tombstone. Dean stood beside me, his body lightly brushing mine. The others stood behind us in a semicircle. Michael and Lia and Sloane. Sterling and Briggs and Judd.

The remains the police had recovered from that dirt road had been released to the family. To my dad. To me. My father didn't know that the remains weren't my mother's. He didn't know that she was alive.

Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room.

We had no idea who the woman we'd just buried in my mom's grave was. The necklace she'd been buried with, the blood on the shawl-those had been my mother's.

The Pythia chooses to live, Nightshade had told me, knowing quite well that my mother was the one who'd made that choice.

I didn't know how long it was after my mother had been taken that she had been forced to fight for her life-again. I didn't know if it was standard operating procedure for these men to stage a woman's death before they took her.

All are tested. All must be found worthy.

What I did know was that my mother was alive.

Masters come, and Masters go, but the Pythia lives in the room.

My mother hadn't been killed. She hadn't been buried at the crossroads with care. She'd buried her predecessor. My mom's favorite color. Her necklace. Traces of her blood. From the beginning, Dean and I had seen the funeral rites as rife with remorse. My mother's.

"Are you ready?" Dean asked, his hand on my shoulder.

I stared at the tombstone marked with my mother's name a moment longer. For Laurel's sake, the cult needed to think we hadn't put the pieces together. They needed to think that I believed I'd buried my mother. They needed to think that we hadn't read much into the fact that the woman I'd mistaken for Laurel's mother was actually a nanny, a disposable Las Vegas native Nightshade had hired earlier that week.

They needed to believe that the FBI had put Laurel into protective custody because of her connection to Nightshade, not her connection to me.

We don't kill children.

I thought of Beau, wandering the desert, and pushed back the bitter taste in my mouth. "I'm ready," I told Dean. I turned, meeting each of the others' eyes, one by one. Home is the people who love you.

I was ready to go home. To do whatever it took to find the Masters. To protect Laurel. Forever and ever. To find my mother. Find the Pythia. Find the room.

No matter what.

Over the course of the Naturals series, I've been lucky enough to work with multiple incredible editors who are experts at asking the right questions and are just as invested in these characters and this story as I am. In particular, All In owes a great debt to Lisa Yoskowitz, who was so pa.s.sionate about this book that I couldn't wait to sit down and write it for her, and Kieran Viola, who knows exactly what a writer needs to hear. I am also incredibly grateful to the fabulous Julie Moody, who has been with this series since the very first book, and to Emily Meehan, Dina Sherman, Jamie Baker, Seale Ballenger, Mary Ann Zissimos, and the rest of the folks at Hyperion for all of their support!

As always, I'd also like to thank my amazing team at Curtis Brown: Elizabeth Harding, Ginger Clark, Holly Frederick, and Jonathan Lyons, as well as Sarah Perillo and Kerry Cullen. I am incredibly blessed to work with people who are not only good at their jobs, but also exceptionally lovely people, and I am extremely thankful for you all!

With the Naturals series, I've also gotten the chance to meet readers all over the country, and I'd like to give a shout-out to the hardworking folks behind the North Texas Teen Book Festival, the Rochester Teen Book Festival, the Texas Teen Book Festival, the Southwest Florida Reading Festival, and the Miami Book Fair for hosting me in the past year. The amount of work you all put into bringing readers and authors together is astounding, and I am profoundly grateful for it.

I could not survive as a writer-let alone thrive-without the support of some of the most wonderful and brilliant women I know. Thanks go to Ally Carter, Elizabeth Eulberg, Carrie Ryan, Rachel Vincent, Rose Brock, and Sarah Rees Brennan, for Rose Fest in all of its incarnations, and special thanks go to Rachel Vincent for Panera Thursdays, Ally Carter, who knows exactly how hard thrillers (and series!) can be to write, and Sarah Rees Brennan, for reading an earlier draft of this book on very short notice. Thanks also to my colleagues and students at the University of Oklahoma, Ti30, NLPT, and everyone else who kept me sane during the writing of this book.

Finally, I owe my family more than I could ever say. My mom and dad are among the very first readers of all of my books, and I would not be where I am today without them. I am also extremely grateful to my husband, Anthony, for being my best friend, support system, sounding board, and the love of my life. And thank you also, Anthony, for keeping me from stressing too much when I was doing some final tweaks on this book while preparing for our wedding! Finally, thank you to my wonderful siblings, nephews, and niece: Justin, Allison, Connor, Jeana, Russ, Daniel, Gianna, Matthew, Joseph, Michael, Lindsey, Dominic, and Julian. You guys are the best!

JENNIFER LYNN BARNES has written over a dozen acclaimed young adult novels, including the first two books in this series, The Naturals and Killer Instinct. She has advanced degrees in psychology, psychiatry, and cognitive science. She received her PhD from Yale University and is now a professor of psychology. You can find her online at www.jenniferlynnbarnes.com or follow her on Twitter @jenlynnbarnes.

ALSO BY JENNIFER LYNN BARNES.

The Naturals.

Killer Instinct.