Page 252 of Sinister

“Don’t you think that’s strange?”

“Petra . . .”

“And look at these.” I shuffle through old newspaper clippings. “All these murders. Don’t they mean anything to you?”

“What are you trying to say?”

I meet his gaze, my voice quiet but steady. “Tell me the truth, Sin. Is this you?”

He looks at me, eyes unreadable. There’s something there, something I can’t quite place.

“You’ve been reading too many paranormal novels,” he says lightly. “How could it be me? This photo is over a hundred years old.”

“That’s exactly why I find it weird,” I say. “This isn’t just someone who looks like you. It is you.”

“Petra, no.”

“Sin, please. Tell me.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say. It’s someone who looks like me, but I was born nineteen years ago. Not in the nineteenth century.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. I know you are.”

“Maybe you’ve been overthinking things—between the funeral, the detectives, all of it. Of course, you’re stressed. And wandering through the tunnels . . . it’s madness.”

“Is it?” I whisper. “Because I’ve dreamed of this. Of Kimaris. Of this place. Of the murders.”

He sighs. “Petra . . .”

“What?” I snap.

“I’m worried about you. Come on, you should rest.”

“You’re not listening⁠—”

“Please.”

Frustrated, I storm out of the study. I won’t get anything out of him. Not tonight. Even with the evidence—that photograph—he won’t admit anything.

So how do I find out the truth?

The answer comes to me then.

The only way to understand the past is to see it. To dream it.

Maybe, in some twisted way, Sin is right. What I need to do is sleep. Sleep, and dream. See how past-life Sin became this Sin.

He calls my name behind me, but I ignore him.

I change into clean pajamas and get into bed. Yet even as I close my eyes, a thought keeps needling at me: the journal. The nun’s habit. The silver cross.

So I pull out my phone and search for the history of St. Anselm Hall.

Founded in the nineteenth century . . . but before that?