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My breath caught in my throat.

It wasn't the viridian-colored Victorian waistcoat dress, nor was it the full, black, wavy hair, or the vitiligo-covered hands holding ornate silver garden shears.

It was her eyes...

My heart began to beat faster as I looked from the veridian green to the sapphire blue.

What the...

Although they were a mirror image of mine, they were my eyes.

“Your doppelganger, Bayla?”

Miles had appeared beside me, both hands in his pockets and his gaze directed upward.

I examined the woman, and at the same time, too many questions raced through my increasingly heavy head.

Her face was heart-shaped, yet more angular than mine, and she was a thousand times more beautiful than I was, her hair countless shades darker. Raven black. But those eyes...

“1802. That could be your great-great-great-grandmother,” Miles remarked in amazement, and I read the date engraved in gold in the center of the upper part of the dark wooden frame decorated with elaborate carvings.

Why was her fashion so different from what the other women were wearing? Just like the men's waistcoats. If I was right, such clothing had only become socially acceptable sixty, even eighty years later. Also, those garments, styles, and designs had not existed until a later point in history.

“Who are these people?” Larissa laughed, just as astonished as Miles.

“Probably the people responsible for this place.” We all looked around, up to the second floor, where Julie was standing at the railing, looking down, first at the oil painting, then at us. “The whole room is full of books about old town history, books about the species...” Her gaze swept across the open area where the rest of us were standing. “I have a feeling we're in a place that no one knows about, let alone should know about.”

“I don't even want to know what those people up there have to do with this place,” Emely murmured darkly, then turned away from the old painting.

Miles followed her.

“Afraid, Copeland, that your ancestors weren't as innocent and perfect as you think?”

Emely snorted morosely.

“Somehow the woman in the middle reminds me of someone, but I don't really know who...”

I turned to Miles, who was now observing the painting from the middle of the room.

I also looked back, trying to examine the painting more closely. That's when I discovered the signature in the lower right corner.

“VR... Seems to have been a well-known painter in Blairville.”

“Most likely. We have some of his paintings at home,” Emely voiced my thoughts.

“Now that you mention it...” Miles laughed softly as if he had realized something.

Emely looked at him as if this fact bothered her tremendously.

I, however, felt my alarm bells ringing louder and louder.

VR? Someone who had painted for the founding families?

“They're all holding flowers,” Julie said from the railing.

That was right. They were all holding a flower. Except for the woman in the middle.

My gaze slid down below the painting, where a golden engraving could be seen in the wood.