Conjured

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “But it’s not,” Zach said. “It can be magical and—”

  “And you, shut up,” his father said. “Don’t you see you’re making it worse? You always make it worse.”

  Zach paled.

  “Zach.” I held out my hand. “You can take my breath if you want it.” He’d have to walk past his father to reach me. I saw him realize this, calculate the distance. “You don’t need to be powerless.”

  His father’s face flushed darker, and he shot a glance at me. “This isn’t what it looks like.” He knelt beside Zach’s mother and began to tend to her. He fetched a paper towel and dabbed it on her lip. Blood had welled in the middle of her bottom lip, just a drop. “She took a nasty spill. Slippery floor.”

  “I’d just mopped it,” Zach’s mother agreed.

  “And the bruises?” Zach asked. “Are you going to claim the floor made them as well?”

  Rising, his father leveled a finger at him. “No more.”

  “You’re right,” Zach said. “No more.” In three strides, he brushed past him and crossed to me. He wrapped his hand around mine, fingers laced tight. His hand was slick with sweat.

  His father slammed his hand on the counter. “You don’t—”

  Zach leaned his forehead against mine, and I exhaled, giving him whatever magic he wanted. Behind us, on the counter, the red wine caught fire.

  His parents spun toward the flames. His father shouted for a fire extinguisher. Shrieking, his mother raced from cabinet to cabinet. The fire alarm wailed. His father yanked the extinguisher off the wall next to the stove and sprayed white mist on the flames. Foam coated the counter and floor.

  Zach pulled me away, and hand in hand we walked out of the kitchen. He turned toward the front door, but I tugged his hand and drew him through the hall, past the family photographs, to the back porch. The yard looked empty. We went out onto the patio.

  “Should we walk, drive, or fly?” Zach asked, his voice grim but steady.

  “Definitely fly,” I said.

  “Oh yes, definitely.”

  We kissed and rose into the air. Spiraling upward, we reached the level of the roof. I felt Zach’s heart beat fast through his shirt. Mine was thumping too. Entwined, we soared higher.

  Quiet wrapped around us. Up here, the cars were only a distant buzz, like cicadas, and the wind smelled like freshly cut lawns. It was more peaceful than I’d imagined, to be untethered from the earth. I felt as if I could cocoon myself in clouds and drift away from all fear. Below, I saw the marshals rush toward Zach’s house, drawn by the shrieking.

  “They’re after you, aren’t they?” Zach asked.

  “Yes. I … I’m in the witness protection program. But I’m leaving. I left. And they want me back. They want to know what I can’t remember, and I think … I think when they have my memories, they plan to kill me.”

  His arms wrapped tighter around me. “I knew you were in danger.”

  “I thought they were keeping me safe, but now … I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I know I’m not … from here. And I have these visions. But I don’t know if they’re true, and I don’t know who to trust.”

  “Trust me,” Zach said automatically, and then as if he knew he’d spoken too quickly to be believed, he repeated it. “You can trust me.”

  Looking into his warm eyes, I wanted to. And then I realized that I had already decided to. By coming to his house, by soaring into the sky with him, I had involved him, and he deserved to know at least as much as I did.

  Taking a deep breath, I told him everything as we flew high above the houses and trees: about the agency, about the other worlds, about my visions, about the case. I watched his face as I talked. His cheek twitched. His lips were pressed together. His eyes were open so wide that the skin around them stretched. I didn’t know his expressions the way I knew Malcolm’s. I didn’t know if he believed me, or if he wanted to drop me from the sky now that he’d heard it all.

  “Oh,” he said.

  I didn’t think I had ever seen him truly speechless before.

  “And you want me to rescue you?” he said at last.

  “I didn’t know who else …” An idea burst into my mind. “Patti.”

  “The librarian?”

  “She has two extra eyes.”

  “Extra eyes?” he repeated.

  “She knows how to keep herself safe. She’ll know what to do.” She’d have answers! I was sure of it. “Just let’s go there. Please?”

  The wind shifted as we changed directions. We flew in silence for a while, with the wind curving and swirling around us. The sun, thin through the clouds, warmed the air.

  Lips against my ear, Zach said, “You have no idea how many dreams I’ve had about flying. Except I’m in a Superman cape or have falcon wings, instead of being in the arms of a gorgeous girl, which means this moment totally surpasses every dream I’ve ever had.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a nice dream.”

  “Ever?”

  Arms around each other, we drifted over the roof of the library. “Maybe I just don’t remember them. Given a choice, though, I’d rather remember what’s real.”

  “No, no, you need a few good dreams. Like flying, or blasting into outer space, or winning a gold medal.” Breathing in more of my magic, he lowered us down behind the library. “Or spending the afternoon with someone you lost.”

  As soon as my feet touched the ground, the feeling of peaceful floating vanished. Wind rustled the branches of the trees. Leaves slapped together. I tried the door handle. Locked.

  Zach knocked on the door, loudly. I cringed at the sound. “Zach …,” I began, intending to tell him we could walk through the wall.

  “You told me your truth; let me tell you mine. Sophie was my sister, the girl on the swing from the photo that you saw.” Zach didn’t look at me. “She … she fell in the middle of the night. She hit her head too hard, and she didn’t wake up. It was an accident. A stupid accident. The stairs were smooth wood. Her slippers had no tread. The lights were off. But she had bruises on her arms—she’d been learning to ride her bike. And she had scabs and cuts—she’d played hard at school. And so the police investigated. They claimed we were lying, that it wasn’t an accident, that one of us had … It took a court case to end it.”

  “And that’s why you don’t lie?”

  “Yep.” Zach knocked again. “And why, in a twist of irony, my mother has become the raging alcoholic that they thought she was, my father has developed a temper he can’t control, and my home is now poisonous to live in.” He knocked harder, as if he wanted to punch the door.

  I put my hand on his arm. “Zach …” I didn’t know how I was going to end the sentence, but I knew there was something that I was supposed to say, something comforting or wise.

  Before I could think of the words, the door swung open.

  I jumped backward, ready to dive into the woods. Zach reached toward me—to protect me or stop me, I wasn’t sure. But it was only one of the librarians, the one with tattoos on his neck. He scowled at us. “You know there’s a front door.”

  “Thanks.” Releasing me, Zach clasped the man on the shoulder. I hurried inside. The staff room all seemed normal: piles of books on all surfaces, labeling equipment on the floor, a half-eaten lunch on the table. The odor of tuna salad wafted across the room, overriding the smell of dust and printer toner. But my skin itched as if someone were watching me.

  The librarian plopped down at the table and shoved the uneaten half of the tuna fish sandwich in his mouth. Zach lingered as if he wanted to talk to him, but before Zach could speak, I yanked him out of the staff room and into the main library.

  “You don’t think he—” Zach began.

  Covering his mouth with my hand, I shuttled him into one of the rows. His breath felt soft, tickling my palm. “I don’t know who to trust, and marshals could be anywhere.” I lowered my hand. “We need to reach Patti’s office without being seen. Any ideas?”

  “
Oh yes, I have ideas.” Zach’s eyes were alight, and he was grinning broadly. “Kiss me.” He hooked his arm around my waist and drew me closer. I breathed magic into him through the kiss. He released me. “It might not—”

  Suddenly, I felt as if fists were pummeling me from the inside out. I fell to the floor. Zach lay writhing beside me. In a few seconds, it was over.

  The library looked gray, blue, and black. The shadows between books were crisp and layered, and the fibers in the carpet next to my cheek were in stark relief. I lifted my head. Beside me, a gray cat flicked his tail. He regarded me with narrow black pupils, and then he stood shakily. His front paws wobbled, and his tail swished behind him. Looking down at my own front paws, I placed them carefully on the rug and pushed up with all four legs. My center of gravity felt off, and the tail was an unfamiliar weight behind me. This won’t work, I thought. We’ll be seen. Hoping he’d understand, I shook my head slowly and emphatically and hissed.

  He nudged his cat nose against mine and inhaled.

  I felt my back itch.

  Falconlike wings unfolded between his shoulder blades. They stretched out on either side of his cat body. Twisting my cat head, I saw black-and-white feathers behind me. A winged cat. Stretching my wings, I glared at Zach. His cat eyes were bright, as if he were laughing. Absolutely not, I thought.

  I thumped my nose against his, exhaling into him. In less than a second, I felt myself shrink. I collapsed toward the ground. My bones squeezed, and my skin tightened as if it wanted to strangle me. As I gasped for air, the world fractured around me. It was as if I saw the library in a broken mirror, reflected over and over in a thousand shards. I could see in nearly every direction—the fibers of the carpet in front of me as thick and deep as my chest, the bookcases rising up like steel mountains beside me, the books like skyscrapers … I looked at Zach, focusing my fractured vision.

  Two teal orblike eyes dominated his tiny face. His body shimmered with metallic green, and his thin blue tail looked like a chain of precious metal. He also had four ethereal wings that stretched as wide as his body was long. Dragonfly, I thought. I’d seen dragonflies speed across a meadow of wildflowers, their wings beating so fast that they blurred. Yes, this will work.

  I flexed my back, and air swirled around me as my wings rose up and down. I felt my thin, sticklike feet lift off the carpet as I pumped faster, and then I shot upward into the air.

  My four wings swiveled in figure eights, stirring up tiny whirlwinds on either side of me. Midway up the shelves, I steadied myself. Zach rose after me, wobbling and shaking in the air, and then he shot ahead of me. Straightening my tail like an arrow, I flew after him.

  Side by side, we banked hard and careened into the center aisle. We shot through the stacks. Emerging into the reference area, we flew toward the ceiling. The glare from the lights bleached the world. It felt as if we were flying through the sun.

  Below us, I saw the brightened heads of the librarians and patrons, including the same man in a suit that I’d seen before. With my sharp dragonfly eyes, I could see the bulge of a gun under his suit coat—he was a marshal. But it didn’t matter. In an instant, we were past him.

  First Zach led, and then I led. We spiraled around each other, our wings nearly touching. If I could have laughed out loud, I would have. We swooped through the archway into the library lobby. Patti’s door was only open a crack. We aimed for it.

  As we dove into her office, the carpet rose up toward us. It was a forest, and we were airplanes. The fibers were the treetops, and we were going to hit. I tried to slow, stilling my four wings. My thin feet skimmed the floor, and then I toppled over my wings and crashed against the bookcase. Zach landed on top of me, one wing folded over my torso.

  I twisted my head and pressed my smooth dragonfly face with globelike eyes against his and breathed. Ripples spread across my torso. I felt as if I were cracking. In an instant, Zach and I were human again, splayed on the floor of Patti’s office. “Please don’t,” I gasped out as Patti opened her mouth to scream. I untangled myself from Zach. “They’re after me.”

  Patti shut her mouth so fast that I heard the snap of her teeth hitting together. She strode to her door, closed it, and then slid the lock. Her high heels clicked as she walked back to her window and pulled the shade shut. “You shouldn’t have come here. I work hard to keep this place safe.”

  I opened my mouth to reply and breathed in the wood smell of the bookshelf. Suddenly I pictured the forest; I saw a caravan of wagons disappearing into a silver wall, moving because people were coming … I shook away the memory and forced myself to focus on the present.

  “She needs help,” Zach said. “We need help.”

  “I can’t help you,” Patti said. “You need to leave. Before whoever is chasing you finds you here. I’ll call Mal—”

  “No, please!” Quickly, I explained—the memory losses, the visions, the hat, the box. “Those boxes … that’s how he held his victims, if my visions are true. They’re magician’s boxes—they shrink whatever you want to put inside. Created for magic tricks, little parlor tricks. And then … adapted. The agency left one on your desk for me to find, to jog my memory, to frighten and manipulate me …” I described how I’d woken in the hospital and how they’d manipulated me to induce other visions.

  Patti’s face paled. She lowered herself into her desk chair. “They used my office, my library …” She ran her hands over her desktop as if reassuring herself that the box was gone.

  “You hide yourself. You keep yourself safe,” I said. “Please, tell us how to do it!”

  Patti shook her head slowly, as if to deny my words or my request or me in general. “WitSec hid me. My family … I’m safe because of the marshals. I don’t know how to be safe from them.”

  Zach watched the door. “Does she need to be scared, or are we being paranoid?”

  I watched Patti’s face, trying to read her expression. Patti’s eyes flickered toward the door. Uncertain, I guessed. She doesn’t know. Or doesn’t want to tell me. Patti rose and crossed to her bookshelf. She lifted two books and pressed a button on the shelf behind them.

  The shelf slid to the side to reveal a windowless room.

  “Whoa,” Zach said.

  Crowding into the doorway, we peered in. The hidden room had a bed on one side and a bank of monitors on the other. Each monitor showed a different view of the library—the lobby, the reference area, the parking lot.

  “About an hour ago, the marshals infiltrated the library.” Patti pointed to people in several monitors—a woman in the reading room, a man in the lobby, another man in the nonfiction section. She also pointed to the black SUV under the tree in the parking lot. “As to whether they’re here to help or harm you … you have to trust yourself. In the end, that’s all you have. You.” She’d said that before, when I’d asked for her help with Aidan.

  “I don’t know who I am,” I said.

  “Then find out,” Patti said.

  She said it so matter-of-factly, as if that wouldn’t mean walking into the heart of my nightmares and confronting the very people from whom WitSec was purportedly hiding me. “But I’m the target,” I said.

  “Only if you let yourself be,” Patti said. “My only strength is in hiding and watching.” She gestured at the bed and the monitors. “But you … you aren’t powerless, especially combined with Zachary. I’ve watched you two. Together, you can make yourself safe—once you find out who you need to be safe from.”

  “She’s right!” Zach lowered his voice and repeated himself, “She’s right. Think about it: I know that dragonflies can fly at speeds up to thirty-five miles per hour, switch directions in midair, and even fly backward, and you can make it happen. You have extraordinary magic, and I have an impressive imagination fueled by a decade of dedicated bookworming. Together, we’re unstoppable.”

  My cheeks began to ache, and I realized I was smiling broadly, widely, wildly. He said “together.” Reaching out my hand, I squeezed his.
“Are you sure? It’s dangerous.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “The agency will chase us. They need the visions in my mind.”

  “I’m still coming with you.”

  “We’ll have to leave this world. And we might not come back.”

  He hesitated and then turned to Patti. “My parents … Can you tell them that I’m all right? Tell them that I’m … tell them I’m making up for not being able to help Sophie. They’ll understand that. Or at least my mother will.”

  Patti shook her head. “Your parents—”

  “Please. I … can’t go back.”

  She looked as if she wanted to object again, but she didn’t. “I won’t tell them anything that will endanger them. But I will tell them you’re safe. Even though it’s a lie.”

  Zach took my hands in his. “Eve … all my life I’ve dreamed of doing something extraordinary. With you, I have the chance. Say the word, and I’ll go with you.”

  He hadn’t seen the nightmarish visions. He hadn’t had IVs jabbed into him and new skin grafted to him. He wasn’t haunted by the faces of people who had died. He didn’t see blood, death, and pain when the world went dark around him.

  “At worst, you’ll learn who your enemy is, and who you really need to hide from,” Zach pointed out. “And then we’ll run like the wind, if the wind had legs and incredible superpowers.”

  “At worst, I’ll be killed. And sliced into pieces.” I shook my head. “No; at worst, you will.” Unless Malcolm had lied … Unless my visions were wrong … Unless the agency was the enemy, and the carnival was the sanctuary … Unless no one had really died …

  “Do you know how to find the carnival?” Zach asked.

  “It’s in another world. I don’t even know which one. It travels around.” But the idea was worming itself into my mind. As long as I had Zach, what could stand in our way? So far, I hadn’t seen a limit to my powers. If I could learn who I was and why I had these powers and why I could share them and what had been done to me and who had done it … If I could learn what my past was, then maybe I’d have a chance at a future.