Topher leaned forward. “You can’t trust the agency.”
“Funny,” Eve said. “They said the same thing about you.”
“Of course they did,” Victoria said. “They aren’t stupid.”
“Just short-sighted,” Aidan added.
“It’s their nature.” Topher tipped his chair back again. “They’re sheep. They can’t understand or appreciate the power and beauty of wolves. They try to tame us, of course, to use us, but in the end, they fear us.”
Sitting next to her, Aidan smiled, a tender, encompassing smile. He stretched his arm against the back of her chair. She sat ramrod straight, not touching his arm. “We see your power and beauty, Eve, and we admire it. We treasure it.”
“You will be our treasure, my dear sweet Eve,” Victoria cooed. Aidan had called her a treasure before—a treasure that he’d been seeking, a prize to win. Eve didn’t like the sound of that. She wasn’t a thing. Eve glanced at the door and wondered how quickly she could reach it. Not quickly enough, she thought. Aidan could stop her in an instant.
“She doesn’t look convinced,” Topher observed. “In fact, she looks confused. We need to be clearer.” He leaned forward again. “Once this is all over, once the ‘case’ is closed, you will be killed.”
Eve stared at him.
“Your big, strong protector agent man will kill you himself,” Victoria said. “Or perhaps it will be more anonymous. A little poison. An injection. An IV in the hospital. Oh, how easy it will be for them, especially once you fall into one of your oh-so-precious fainting fits, which, by the way, are ever so charming—the wilting heroine.”
Eve felt as if the ground were falling away beneath her feet. They had to be lying. The marshals were keeping her safe. Malcolm was devoted to her safety.
“Or perhaps it will be that aunt of yours,” Victoria continued. “She’s always despised you. If that big mush is too soft to do it himself, perhaps beloved ‘Aunt’ Nicki will smother you with a pillow as you sleep.”
“Or use a gun,” Topher said. “You always think of such elaborate death scenes, Victoria. Really, it isn’t as though they’ll tie her above a pool of sharks. They’re much more practical than that. When they’re done using her, bam. Dead.”
They’d given her a home, a job, food, even a name. They’d made it clear that they needed her and her memory … but what about after she remembered? What would happen after they had all they needed from her? Eve shook her head. She shouldn’t listen to this. It was lies. Poisonous lies. “Why are you saying this?”
“You’re special.” Victoria smiled again. “We saw it when we first met, and our observation of you has only confirmed it.” Eve thought of the snake on the rock in the woods. She thought of the times she’d felt watched in the library and elsewhere.
“You’ve been watching me?” Eve asked.
Topher popped a garlic knot in his mouth. His cheeks bulged as he chewed. “We’d like to offer you a choice. You could be a good little sheep, play along with your herders, let them fleece you, and then let them kill you like so much mutton. Or you could join with us, pledge to our world, and let us save you when the time is right.”
Eve sank into the chair. “How can I trust you? You tried to kill me when we met.”
“Only in jest!” Victoria said. Then she shrugged. “Okay, no, it was real. We did try to kill you. Lou promised that if we tested you, we could stay together. Believe me, until that afternoon, we had no idea who you were.”
Her heart beat faster. “Who am I?”
“You’re the one with the power!”
“You have power too,” Eve pointed out.
“Obviously.” Victoria rolled her eyes. “We all fit the killer’s favorite profile. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. But you … you are unique!”
“A freak among freaks,” Topher drawled.
Victoria swatted him. “Amusingly, you don’t even know how special you are. You don’t know how rare it is to have even one power. To have more … No one has more! We are the best of the best, yet we have limits. Topher, for instance, only controls electricity. Aidan only teleports himself to places he’s been. Me … you’ve seen me. But you—you defy every theory of magic ever written! You possess multiple powers. And even more, you can share them. That’s unheard of! No one can do that. You have such incredible potential! You can’t even imagine the wonderful future that lies ahead of you!”
“If they don’t kill you first,” Topher said, eating another garlic knot.
“But … but why …” Eve swallowed and tried again. “Why am I unique?” That was the core question, she thought, the key to everything trapped inside her mixed-up, broken brain.
Aidan patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. You don’t need to remember why. It’s the future that matters, not the past, as far as we’re concerned.”
They all knew about her memory? Eve felt cold inside. Malcolm had cautioned her to lie—ordered her, even—yet they knew. “How …,” Eve began.
“How do we know you don’t remember? Aside from it being blatantly obvious every time you show up here with another memory lapse?” Victoria said. “Aside from that … well, snakes do have ears, despite common misconceptions.”
“Victoria makes an excellent spy,” Topher said proudly.
“Which is also how we know what they plan,” Victoria said. “Destroy you, and let my sister’s killer live. They fear you, and they think they can use him. They have it backward.”
Topher rolled his eyes at her. “This shouldn’t be a tough call. They plan to kill you, Eve. We don’t. Align yourself with us.”
“You don’t need to decide now,” Aidan said. “Consider it. Watch your keepers. Decide for yourself.” She noticed he was speaking faster. “If you decide you want to live a life of safety, grandeur, and purpose, then your choice is simple. When the time is right, come with us back to my world.”
“But …,” Eve began.
“Enough,” Topher said. “It’s time for our ‘treasure’ to leave us.”
“You’re … letting me go?” Eve asked.
Topher nodded at the door. “So to speak.”
Malcolm charged through the front door. He had three agents flanking him. He held his badge in one hand—he flashed it at the employees—and a gun in the other. The other three agents wore bulletproof vests and had their guns raised.
Victoria, Topher, and Aidan all raised their hands in surrender.
“Garlic knot?” Topher offered Malcolm.
Chapter Fourteen
Eve had spent a lot of time in Malcolm’s car, studying his expressions. She was more familiar with his face than any other in her spotty memory. She was an expert on the way his cheek muscle twitched before he laughed or the way his eyebrows lowered when he was upset or the way his lips moved ever so slightly when he was deep in thought. But she still didn’t know if he intended to kill her.
As he drove out of the restaurant parking lot, Eve studied him anew. He had a scar in the shape of a crescent moon on his chin that seemed to darken when he was angry—and it was dark now. His jaw was tense, and that tension rippled to his neck, thickening it, and down his arms to his clenched hands on the steering wheel. He glared at the road as if it had insulted him.
“After the case is over, what happens to me?” Eve asked.
“You live your life,” Malcolm said. “But you live it without fear.”
Such a nebulous concept. Her life. “What’s my life like?” She tried to picture her home, but all that came to mind was the little room with the quilt on the bed, the painted dresser, and the birds-and-branches wallpaper.
“You know I can’t talk about your past.”
“Can you talk about yours?”
She noted the way his eyes widened to smooth the creases by the corners of his eyes—he was startled. His face was easy to read. She wanted to believe that his was a face that would never lie to her, but she knew he’d already lied to her at least once. “Mine?”
&nb
sp; “Yes.”
He braked at a traffic light and watched a pack of joggers cross the street. Chests heaving, they glistened with sweat. One of them drooped more than the others, arms sagging by his side as if they pulled at his arm sockets. Still, Malcolm scanned the joggers, his eyes flickering as if calculating the distance between them and the car, in case they proved dangerous. It occurred to Eve that his job was full of lies—both telling lies and watching for lies in order to protect his witnesses. “I … um … what do you want to know?”
“Everything! I want to know about you—who you are, what made you who you are. I want to know what it’s like to have memories inside you that make sense!” She realized she was shouting, and she clamped her mouth shut. She didn’t think she’d ever shouted at him before—at least not that she remembered.
Malcolm was studying her with the same attention that he’d given the joggers. He then faced the road and eased off the brake. The car rolled through the intersection. “All right. If it will help, ask me questions.”
She wanted to release an avalanche of questions—all the things she wanted to know about herself but aimed at him. She settled on one. “Do you have parents?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it like to have parents?”
He drove slowly, as if the car were also thinking while he deliberated. “Your parents define the world for you at first. Right, wrong, normal, not normal. You know, you should have this discussion with Lou. He’s far better suited for the philosophical stuff. Joint major in psychology and biology. Smarter than he seems.”
“Tell me about them. Your parents.”
“My parents were fine. Mom stayed home; Dad worked. He was a cop. And he was my hero. He was the one I looked up to and emulated. He was always trying to protect everybody. While Mom … she was the one who protected me.”
“What did she protect you from?” Eve tried to picture a mother protecting her like a mama bird. She tried to remember what it must have felt like to have her say good night or greet her in the morning or ask about her day or comfort her … or whatever mothers did.
“Anything and everything. She was fierce. Also, she sang all the time. Had a terrible voice. Could not hold a tune. I inherited that from her. Birds take flight when I sing. Small children cower in fear. Once, I joined in singing with the congregation during a wedding ceremony and the woman in the pew in front of me turned around and said in a prim voice, ‘You know, singing is not required.’”
Eve searched her memory for music … A cello, always at night. A fiddle and a flute and bells. She’d heard a soprano sing once in a voice that rose so high it became silent … The memories floated in the murk of her mind without time, place, or context. She couldn’t tell if they were real memories or not.
“She’d sing on holidays. On birthdays. In the kitchen. In the shower. My father liked to tease her about it, but she kept on singing.”
“Are they dead?” Eve asked.
“Yes.”
“Are mine?”
He hesitated. “I can’t tell you that. You have to remember your past on your own.”
“Why?” Eve asked.
“Because it has to be from you.”
“Why?” Eve asked again.
“Because you need …” Malcolm stopped and then said, “Because the case needs your uninfluenced memories.” She was certain that wasn’t what he had intended to say.
“What if I can’t solve your case? What if I never remember? What if you never catch him? What if no one is ever safe? What happens then?”
He gripped the steering wheel. Eve noticed they were heading toward the agency garage. “That won’t happen,” he said.
“How do you know?”
“Because I … because you … won’t let it.” Malcolm drove into the garage, and the door slid shut behind them. Twisting in her seat, she watched it lower, watched daylight disappear.
The elevator doors opened on level three.
Eve saw Lou.
I can’t face him, she thought.
She pushed the elevator door button, and the doors started to close again. Malcolm’s arm shot out, blocking the sensor, and the doors slid back open.
Lou grunted, pivoted, and stalked away, and Malcolm prodded Eve forward out of the elevator. “He hates me,” Eve muttered to Malcolm. He might want to kill me, she wanted to say.
“He doesn’t hate you,” Malcolm said.
Lou called, “Actually, I do.” His voice drifted over the cubicles. “I hate everyone universally. It saves time. You have any idea how much time is wasted on polite pleasantries?” He was waiting for them when they rounded the corner. He wore a tie, but it was loose and the top button of his shirt was undone. Eve glimpsed a corner of a tattoo on his collarbone. “Don’t start thinking you’re special because of me.” He walked into Malcolm’s office.
No, Eve thought, I’m special because I’m a freak. A freak among freaks, as Topher had said.
Malcolm steered Eve inside and then shut the door.
Eve checked Malcolm’s expression. It was guarded, as if he were thinking thoughts that he’d decided should not be said out loud. She wondered if those thoughts were directed at her or at Lou.
The bulletin board had changed since the last time she remembered being here. Instead of the one photo of the antlered girl, the board was covered in multiple photographs. All of the photos were of teenagers. They were arranged in a spiral, with lines and arrows drawn between them, and were labeled with numbers and dates.
She halted in front of the board. There was a circle around the number one next to the antlered girl. Beside her was a boy with tattoos on his cheek. He was labeled number two. Beside him was another boy … She recognized their faces from the photos on the tablet. But why had they been added to the board? She reached to touch one photo, the boy with the tattoos. There was something familiar …
“You remembered them,” Malcolm said quietly behind her.
She hadn’t.
She didn’t.
It was hard to breathe. Her rib cage felt as if it had knitted together, squeezing her lungs until they were shriveled raisins. She heard her breath loud in her ears, ragged and harsh. Her feet retreated until her back hit the door.
“We’re close! Very close. There’s almost a pattern.” Lou swept his arm over the bulletin board. “A few more, and it will fall into place. We have the suspects narrowed down to a mere handful. All we need are the final pieces … and then we’ll have him.” He closed his fist. “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” Eve asked. Her voice felt dry.
“To remember more,” Lou said.
Malcolm tilted her chin up so she had to look in his eyes. He stared at her as if he could access her thoughts through her eyes. “What’s your last memory?”
“I saw the box in Patti’s office. And then the hospital … and that’s it until today in the library. I was shelving books. Malcolm, the box. How did it get there? What …”
Malcolm released her chin and said to Lou, “I told you, the harder we push—”
“Your objection was noted, but we have no choice. He will start again. My sources have confirmed it. It’s a matter of when and who and where, not if.” Lou pointed a finger at Eve and then at the leather couch. “Lie down. Use your magic. Have a vision. Tell us what you see.”
Eve didn’t move. She must have heard him wrong. He couldn’t be asking her to … No, she thought. She couldn’t have done this before. She couldn’t have seen all those people!
She turned back to the bulletin board and tried to remember them again—but looking at them was looking at strangers. Except for the antlered girl and the boy with the tattoos. Eve wished she could run. She wanted to be as far from this place, these people, this case, as possible. But the photos stared at her. He won’t stop, Malcolm had said to her once. He’ll find another way. If we don’t catch him, it will begin again.
The antlered girl, Victoria’s sister, had worn silks and velvets, Eve
remembered. But she never wore shoes. She’d run through the forest at dawn while the undergrowth was still damp with dew and the air filled with birdsong. Eve had watched her, her bare feet pounding down the same path every morning. She’d skip over a brook, and it would burble and babble at her feet. Her footfalls were soft on the needles, but she was still loud enough to startle birds out of the underbrush and cause the squirrels to scurry to the tops of the trees. She had run alone.
Eve moved to the photo marked number two, the boy with tattoos. She leaned close until her nose almost touched the bulletin board. The tattoos looked like serpents that were woven so tightly together it was impossible to tell where one snake began and another ended. The scales bled into one another. She could picture a box with a clasp encrusted in silver serpents, a replica of those tattoos.
There’s truth in my visions, she thought, and she felt her stomach churn. She tasted bile. If her visions were memories, or even twisted versions of real memories …
She realized both Lou and Malcolm were watching her. Arms crossed, Lou was drumming his fingers on his bicep. She wondered how many visions she’d already had and what she’d seen, and realized she was shaking.
Lou exhaled in a puff. “Just do it. Every moment you waste—”
“But I’ll lose days!” For every memory she gave them, she lost dozens more. “How many times have we had this conversation? How many times have I forgotten everything I’ve done?” She waved her hand at all the photos on the bulletin board. “How many times have I forgotten everything I thought, felt, decided, believed? Everything I cared about? Everything I am?”
Malcolm was silent. He looked at Lou.
“We have had this conversation three times,” Lou said. “And we will have it again. And you will remember because otherwise people will die.”
Eve felt herself deflate.
“You will be here the entire time.” Malcolm’s voice was soothing, and he steered her gently to the couch. “You will be safe. You don’t have to be afraid.”
Conjured Page 15