Surreal.

It was on the list of SAT words posted in the hallway. Jack had been staring at it vacantly before his mother had had the good sense to pick him up from school almost before the day had begun.

Jack didn't need an SAT prep book to define surreal.

Surreal was the feeling he got as soon as he stepped into the country club stables with Blair. He was almost dizzy with the sensation of having stepped back in time, or perhaps into another dimension where everything hadn't gone to hell. The smell of hay and horses was the same. The sound of hooves shuffling through straw was the same. The soft, dusty light was the same.

"Want me to saddle Casey for you?" the groom asked.

"No, I'll saddle him myself," Jack answered automatically, then wondered why he had. Getting someone else to do things for him was one of Jack's favorite pastimes. But here in the stable, he reverted to the young boy who had heeded his mother's lessons. Blair had drummed that into his mind longer ago than he could remember: You get ready yourself. You make sure everything is safe. You remind the horse that you're a team. If you don't know the horse, you start getting the measure of him before you're on his back.

Jack didn't know Casey. He didn't know any of the horses here; it had been years since he and Blair had gone riding together. It had been before Cole got Starr pregnant and the whole Manning family had splintered around the drama of it all.

Jack scowled.

Casey obediently lifted each foot in turn so Jack could inspect them. The groom had cleaned them carefully and there was nothing Jack could do to improve upon the job. Casey's black coat, too, was smooth and spotless. There wasn't much to do but lift the saddle onto the horse's broad back and fasten the girth around his middle.

Casey held his breath in the hopes that Jack was some novice who didn't know this trick. Jack laughed and gave the horse a friendly pat. "You can't fool me with that one," Jack said as Casey gave up and let him tighten the girth. "I'm the one who fools other people."

He fooled people like his mother. Blair had once known him inside out, but she had believed him when he told her that he'd seen Scarface shoot his father—Victor. He wasn't sure whether he was disappointed in her or proud of himself. Probably it was both. He was almost grown up now; of course it was hard to realize that his mother didn't know everything. That was why he kept having stupid fantasies about telling her the truth. In his heart of hearts, he didn't want to give up the idea that if something went wrong, she would fix it.

"I can't trust her," he reminded himself. Victor-dad had told him that a thousand times, and Victor was the one who really had fixed the unfixable when Gigi Morasco…

Jack swallowed hard and mounted the horse from the ground, even though he knew the rule was that riders had to use the mounting block. He was lying to the police about two different murders; he was hardly going to be phased by some stupid rule posted on a barn door.

Blair was waiting for him astride a fidgeting white horse. Jack rolled his eyes at the universe's heavy-handed symbolism. He, the unpunished killer, rode the dark horse; his mother, naïve enough to believe his lies, rode the light.

"Where do you want to go?" Blair asked.

Jack shrugged. "Someplace empty. Where we can run and jump."

"The groom told me no one else is out today—the kids are all back in school. We should be fine on the main trail through the woods."

"Whatever."

The white horse was moving sideways on its toes, even more eager to get going than Jack. "It's all right, Boreas," Blair said in the soothing tone she usually saved for Hope or Sam. She had used it on Jack, too, eons ago. "We're going." She kicked Boreas lightly with her heels, and Jack followed suit with Casey.

"I miss doing this with you all the time," Blair said casually as they reached the mouth of the trail.

Jack grunted. He couldn't bring himself to say he missed it, too, because that would be almost the same as saying he hadn't seen Scarface at Tea's house and that he was just as responsible as Brad for the death of Shane's mother. And he couldn't say those things; that would be the ultimate betrayal of Victor-dad.

"Do you know why I started bringing you here with me?" Blair prompted.

"Because no one else would come with you and I was a kid so you could make me?"

Blair laughed, not remotely insulted. "There was no one I would rather have been with than you, not if the whole world was banging down my door." Then she turned serious. "But that wasn't why I brought you. It was when your dad—Victor—was on death row. It was such a stressful time, and I wanted to make sure you never fell through the cracks. I wanted to make sure we always spent time together, one on one. I wanted to be sure that we had something special that was just ours." She slapped her leg in frustration; Boreas' ears flipped back in suspicion. "I get angry just thinking about it. So much time you kids should have had with Victor, and he was executed for a crime he didn't commit." Her eyes bore holes into Jack's. "That was one of the reasons I had to believe you when you said you heard Todd shoot Victor. You know what that kind of false accusation does to someone, and to the people he loves. You couldn't send Todd off to his death like that, not unless you were sure."

They turned onto a flat, broad stretch of path. Jack kicked Casey into a run. If he'd had to listen to one more minute of Blair's reminiscing, he would have thrown up or burst into tears. Possibly both.

Casey was a singularly calm, obedient horse, but Jack still had to use all of his concentration to maintain his balance at a gallop and slow the pace as they approached a log lying across the trail. Without waiting for Jack's signal, Casey gathered himself for the jump. For a fraction of a second as they flew through the air, Jack couldn't tell where he ended and Casey began.

Jack laughed as they landed smoothly. "Good one, Casey," he told the horse. "It's nice to have someone on your side, isn't it? Really on your side, not…"

He trailed off as he watched Blair and Boreas jump, rush past them, and then circle back.

"You looked great," Blair told Jack. Her face was flushed with pleasure. "You haven't forgotten anything."

"Thanks," said Jack. He beamed in spite of himself. No one ever complimented him, except maybe some of the dumber kids at school who thought he'd beat them up if they didn't suck up to him.

A flock of birds, startled by something perceptible only to them, rose in the air alongside the trail. Casey didn't so much as turn his head to look at them. Boreas snorted and reared up on his hind legs.

"What'd you do? Ask for the most difficult horse?" Jack asked when Blair had Boreas under control again.

"I like Boreas," Blair said casually. "He reminds me of Araby."

"Araby?"

Blair's eyes grew wistful. "You don't remember him? Your fath—well, Todd. He gave me Araby for my first birthday after he came into his money. I'd told him once how I used to dream about having a fast, powerful horse that could fly me away from everything that hurt me. Araby wasn't completely broken when Todd bought him. He was wild and fearless and beautiful, and Todd said that that reminded him of me. It was the most wonderful compliment anyone had ever—" She choked on her next words. "I was such a fool to believe a man who would hit my child over the head and murder the only father he ever knew. Don't worry," she rushed on. "I know that you would never lie to me, that you know you can tell me anything."

A sick, hot spasm of guilt shot through Jack. He knew that he needed to get justice for Victor, but he couldn't keep listening to this. If his mother had spent her every waking moment since he'd told her Scarface had killed Victor-dad trying to decide how to get him to change his story, she couldn't have done better.

He set Casey to trotting back toward the barn. He'd tell his mother he'd changed his mind about playing hooky and wanted to go back to school for the afternoon. But before Jack was able to attempt to convince Blair of this unlikely change of heart, their phones buzzed in unison with the message that the reading of the will of Victor Lord, Junior, was to take place that afternoon.

Todd watched, mesmerized, as Starr ran her hand along the bars of his holding cell. Everything about Starr fascinated him; it always had. He wouldn't have been surprised if the bars had vanished beneath Starr's touch. It wouldn't have been the most miraculous thing Starr had ever done.

"I really don't like this plan Mom has," Starr sighed. "Pretending to believe Jack about seeing you at Victor's that night. That's not going to make him confess. It's just going to convince him that lying works." Her eyes flashed the same way Blair's did right before she went on a tear. "I'm going to tell Jack that Mom's faking."

"No, you aren't."

Starr gripped the bars with both hands and clenched her jaw. "So you're just going to stay in here forever?"

"Your mother telling Jack that she doesn't believe him won't make him change his story. I'd still be in here."

"But on principle—"

Todd laughed. "I've been gone a long time, but surely you remember that I have very few principles."

"But—"

"Nothing is more important than Jack's soul. Nothing. I would stay in here forever if that was what it took to keep Jack from following in Victor Lord's footsteps. Original recipe Victor Lord, I mean. Maybe this other one, too." Todd grimaced.

"How is it going to do Jack's soul any good to know he locked up an innocent man, who's been tortured for eight years?" Starr's voice echoed indignantly off metal and concrete.

Todd turned his head quickly to hide the tears that sprang to his eyes. Most of the time, he was angry that no one seemed to care that he had been held against his will and tortured; most of the time, he could control that anger. He hadn't had as much practice with feeling loved or missed.

Starr was still raving, and still sounding like her mother. "… letting him say awful things about me, letting him hate me, that's one thing, but letting him take you away from me right when I got you back—that's too much. I know Jack got the short end of the stick in a lot of ways for the past eight years, but the rest of us get to matter, too. You can't stay in here. Hope and I can't keep living without you. Mom can't, either, even if she thinks she can."

"She doesn't think she can," Todd said, and saying the words put him back on what passed for an even keel. He knew it was true. He'd known it when Blair kissed him. He'd known it when she asked where he'd been. He'd known it when she'd stood silently watching him tell Hope about Beauty and the Beast and getting into cars with strangers.

Starr raised her eyebrows with interest. "Why do you say that?" she drew out playfully The same old impish smile danced across her lips. Nothing distracted Starr like thought of playing matchmaker for her parents.

"Never mind. Why do you say Jack got the short end of the stick?"

"He didn't have you," Starr said simply. "He never had you. I had memories of you, I had things you taught me and even when Victor didn't care about us any more, I still had them. Jack didn't. And when I got pregnant with Hope, I know it seemed to him like that was what broke Mom and Victor up for good, like Mom chose me over him. Which is ridiculous, if Victor was willing to do that to Hope and me, who knows what he was willing to do to Jack or Sam if one of them made a mistake."

"Who knows what he did do to Jack when he made a mistake," Todd muttered. "I wish whoever killed him had gotten there a few months earlier. A few years earlier. And made him suffer more."

A mocking laugh interrupted them. "Not the thing to say when you're in jail for murdering a man, Manning." A cop bearing a tray of food gestured for Starr and Todd to step back from the bars. They obeyed, but tempered their obedience with matching disgusted stares.

Todd pushed the food away without looking at it. He'd eaten out of garbage cans in his life and probably would again, but at the moment prison food had no appeal for him.

Todd Manning, with no appetite. Even the Sun wouldn't print something so ridiculous.
"You should eat, Dad," Starr prompted. "After all that time with Irene, your body needs to get used to regular food at regular times. You're probably fighting off all kinds of colds since you haven't been exposed to germs for years, plus the stress of the emotional upheaval—"

"Are you pre-med?" Todd asked. He liked the idea. Better Starr than Dorian for the family doctor.

Starr preened. "I'm going to be a singer."

"A singing doctor?" Todd prompted.

"You know I've always wanted to be a singer."

Todd didn't know any such thing. He'd gone over every memory of Starr in his head ten thousand times. She liked to sing; she sang solo in her school concerts and of course she sang with her mother. But her passions had always run to reptiles, science, and raising hell.

Rather than challenge Starr—but promising himself to ask Blair about this—he opened his lunch. The first thing that caught his eye was a note. Starr pressed her face against the bars to read along with him:

Bring it to me by tomorrow night or I will kill them one by one. Blair, Starr, Jack, Danielle, and even little Sam and Hope.

Before Todd could draw breath to holler for the guard, the writing vanished. The note was just a napkin.

He was terrified to look at Starr. Had she seen anything? Had he hallucinated the note? Had he forgotten her singing aspirations? A few months before, he'd struggled to remember his own name.

"What're we going to do?" asked Starr frantically.

"You saw that? You saw the writing disappear?"

"Of course." Starr shrugged. "Pretty low tech for Irene, isn't it? Sodium hydroxide and thymolphthalein exposed to carbon dioxide."

"What?"

"Disappearing ink. Dad, what is it?"

"This would be a lot easier if I knew, wouldn't it?"

As odd as it sounded, Jack had expected the reading of Victor-dad's will to be less stressful than his morning ride with his mother.

That was before Irene swept in and declared herself the owner of all of Victor-dad's assets. She didn't care that Starr hadn't shown up; she announced that she was ejecting Tea and Dani from their house; she glowered at Viki, Tina, and Blair with undisguised loathing.

She was scary as hell.

The scariest thing about her was that she seemed to like Jack.

"You have so much of my Victor in you," she purred as she offered Jack a small box.

Jack's stomach gave an uncomfortable lurch. She was right and he knew it. He and Victor-dad both got people killed. They both lied to the police and made them look like fools. They both lied to Blair and made her miserable.

Unbidden, his eyes strayed to his mother, who had already put herself halfway between Jack and Irene.

"Stay away from my son," Blair growled.

Warmth flooded through Jack. He hadn't felt loved and protected for he couldn't remember how long. Victor-dad was the only one who could have saved him from the Gigi mess, and even Victor-dad had made no secret of preferring Dani to any of Blair's children.

"He's the Lord Heir before he's your son, and since I am in control of a good deal of the Lord fortune, I will do what I like with him."

Somehow, Jack had gotten to this point in his life without realizing just how good his mother's right hook was. He was beyond impressed. Part of him wanted to interrupt the fight to tell Blair that he hadn't seen Scarface outside the day Victor-dad was murdered. Maybe he'd even tell her about Gigi. She loved him. She would help him. Victor-dad might have been wrong when he'd told Jack that he couldn't trust Blair.

Irene was staggering backwards and clutching her face.

"You'll regret that," Irene told Blair.

"Stay away from Jack, or you'll be the one with regrets."

Irene straightened up, one hand still pressed to her cheek. "Jack is old enough to decide who he does and does not see. You make your own decisions, don't you, Jack?"

"Yeah," said Jack automatically, because there was only one answer you could give to that question. There was especially only one answer Jack was going to give when Dani, who was always trying to boss him around, was in the room.

"Your mother didn't like it when you showed loyalty to Victor and made certain his killer was put behind bars, did she? But you protected the man who always protected you, now that he has no one but us left."

"I supported my son in making that statement," said Blair fiercely. "If Todd is guilty, Todd has to pay. You are guilty, and you will pay."

"And if someday you decide that Jack is guilty, you'll make him pay. Throw him to the wolves?" She switched her attention, quickly, to Jack. "You see how quickly she and your sister Starr and your Aunt Viki abandoned your father when they decided they had a better offer."

Jack had. He'd seen it the night of the Vickerman premiere. As soon as Scarface showed up, Blair and Starr had reacted like they'd just been given everything they'd never known to wish for. Apparently what they wished for was their years with Scarface, before Jack. Jack's life, and Jack's father, were to be blinked away.

Blair and Viki protested that they had never abandoned Victor. Jack knew better.

He couldn't believe how close he had come to ignoring Victor-dad's advice and telling Blair everything. He inched closer to the box Irene had tried to give him, which lay abandoned under a chair. A moment before, he had been terrified to know what might be in it. Now, he was curious.

He snapped the box open. Inside lay a ring. The room fell silent; everyone was watching Jack.

"Victor Lord's ring," Irene explained. "It belongs with the Lord heir, don't you think?"

Jack nodded. He slipped the ring onto his finger. It didn't quite fit—it was loose—but it reminded him of Victor-dad.

"You'd like to help me preserve your father's legacy, wouldn't you? Work at the Sun? Stay in your room here tonight?"

"I thought you said we had to move out."

"I said they had to move out." She gestured at Tea and Dani. "I'd be thrilled if you'd stay."

She was terrifying, undoubtedly a sociopath. But Jack couldn't very well let himself get lulled into a sense of security. He had to stick with Victor-dad's plan. He couldn't betray him after his murder, which had taken place in this very room.

"I'll stay," he told Irene.