by Louisa Lo
“Yes, sweetie?”
“When I grow up, I’m going to be a vengeance demon just like Father.”
“I think he’ll like that very much.” Sophia chuckled and closed the door.
That was the end of the memory.
A long pause as Gregory and I stood against the frozen backdrop of the bedroom, his face as hard as granite. Wow, how drastically different had my mercenary partner’s life turned out to be, and how deeply disappointed he would have to be over his biological father in time.
I hesitated. What should I say to him now? If I overdosed on kindness, it would come across as pity, and that would be the last thing he wanted from me.
In the end, I fell back on pure facts and what common knowledge there was regarding memories.
“What we just saw now is a core memory, isn’t it?” I commented.
A pause, then Gregory cleared his throat. “I suspect as much, but how did you know?”
“It’s just the way this memory feels to me. Look at the details of this room. Every train on those stickers is detailed to a tee, from the tiny insignia that are painted on the engine to the complex way the set of wheels work together to take the train across the room. This memory has been visited over and over again by your mother, tended with a great deal of care.”
Core memories never fade, because they are the cornerstones in the foundation of a person’s very being.
“Did you feel any negative vibes?” he asked, looking around the room with a frown.
“No. I have been wondering about that. It didn’t feel like the memory has been tempered with at all.”
He shook his head. “No, it hasn’t been. But you chose it for a reason, right?”
Granted, I picked this one out of pure randomness, but I was choosing it out of all the places I thought Vera’s footprint had been.
I paced around the room. “Vera has been here. I’m sure of that. Yet she hadn’t done any damage. Why?”
How were we to exorcise something that couldn’t be detected?
“Let’s go to another memory,” Gregory suggested. “Maybe that’ll give us some answers.”
“You want to pick this time?” I asked.
He sighed. “No. Sorry I sounded like I was doubting you. I still think out of the two of us you’re the best person to pick.”
And so I did.
I closed my eyes, visualizing the memory nodes again. There was a corrupted memory that seemed to entangle with this one more so than any other, creating what would be a knitter’s nightmare if they were balls of yarns. Out of pure instinct, I jumped right into the other thread.
I opened my eyes and found that Gregory and I were in a very cramped apartment that had chipped plastic tiles for flooring, and a tiny kitchen with an ancient fridge and almost no counter space. There was a small area off the kitchen that served as both dining room and living room. The yellowed wallpaper was peeling, and the muffled argument from a neighboring couple could be heard. With all the curtains drawn, I had no idea whether it was day or night.
What a contrast it was from the last memory’s surrounding.
There was an oppressiveness in the air, and it had nothing to do with the closed curtains or the tight living quarters. With a sour energy signature of expired milk and unwashed socks, it was the rancid stink of hardship, disappointment, layered on with a thick coat of shame.
Gregory's mother, a decade older if not in physical appearance then in the essence of her spirit, was at a work desk squeezed between the wall and the two-seated dining table. She was designing a logo on an old computer, using enchantments to refine the image instead of Photoshop. The logo, which appeared to be for a perfume brand, was given a supernatural twist so that a burst of floral fragrance would hit the viewers every five seconds. His mom was really quite talented, as the fragrance was also accompanied by a mental image of rolling on a sun-filled meadow in a lazy afternoon, which was exactly the sentiment that the brand was trying to capitalize on.
Gregory tensed as he watched an early-teen version of himself walk out of his bedroom with his head downcast, a dirty-looking schoolbag over his gangly shoulder. This younger Gregory was beginning to resemble the one I knew, his cheekbones sculpted after the baby fat melt away, and his eyes took on the hardness of someone who’d grew up a little too fast.
“Mom, I’m going to school,” he muttered.
At the sound of her son's voice, Sophia looked up, her tired face brightening. “Don’t forget to come straight home right after, sweetie. I can’t wait to celebrate your birthday. I’m making roast pork tenderloin tonight.”
Young Gregory looked away. “Actually I think I'm just going to hang around at the Field and grab a slice of pizza on my way home. Don’t wait up. I might be late.”
The Field was basically like a basketball court in low-income human neighborhoods, except rather than basketball, the supernatural kids hang out there to practice magic. And they were known to play rough with each other.
Sophia frowned. “But…but it’s your birthday and we have to celebrate. You only turn twelve once. I already ordered a cake from the bakery. It’s strawberry mousse. You love strawberry mousse cake, remember?” Sophia tried to keep her tone enticing, but inside she had begun to panic. I didn’t have to read her face or body language to know—the atmosphere surrounding the memory took on a pulsing in both lighting and sound, like a heartbeat that sped up in urgency with every breath she took.
“That was my favorite when I was five. I'm not five anymore,” Young Gregory said with a weariness that was jarring given his age.
“But it's not safe at the Field after dark.” Sophia wrung her hands together, whispering, “I heard they have mercenaries practicing there.”
“It’s fine, Mom. They’ve been nice to me.” I got a feeling his unspoken words were, unlike everyone else.
“But you have to be home for your birthday—”
“Why, Mom? Tell me why I should be home.” Young Gregory glared at his mother, daring her to continue.
“Because your father might be here.” Sophia swallowed. “And you’re going to miss seeing him. How’s he going to feel if he shows up and you’re not here?”
“He's not going to show up.” Young Gregory’s eyes flashed, and his wings came out involuntarily.
The poor kid looked so annoyed and embarrassed by the display of his lack of control, it only made him madder.
“He's not going to show up,” he repeated to his mother. “He's not, alright? He hasn’t been here for the last three years, and I don’t want to spend another birthday waiting for him. He abandoned us a long time ago, why can't you accept that? Look around us.”
Young Gregory's hands gestured all over their humble surroundings, from the yellowed wallpaper to the crack tiles.
“He hasn’t abandoned us.” Tears started filling Sophia’s eyes. “He's just too—”
“Busy. Yeah, I know,” Young Gregory bit back. “And do you know what he’s busy with? My friends at school so helpfully informed me while they stomped me onto the ground yesterday. Dear Dad is on an official visit to the witches’ plane as a newly elected Council member, with his real family. You know, his real wife and kids? We’re nothing to him. Why can't you see that?”
“We’re not nothing to him. We are his real family. I’m his solus—”
“No, you’re not. They taught us these things in school. A soul mate is someone who’s your one and only. Once you meet that person, that is it. No one else matters. But Dad is doing just fine without you, isn’t he? He didn’t feel compelled to marry you, did he? That means his wife is his true solus iungere, not you. You’re his former mistress, and I’m his bastard.”
“No, no, that’s not true. Your father and I love each other and we’re meant to be together, I swear.” Her voice distressed, a single tear fell down Sophia’s face.
“Stop lying! Thanks to you, I’ll never belong!” Young Gregory bawled.
As he stormed off, Sophia fell to the g
round, dissolving in tears.
And that was the end of the memory.
I looked over at the Present-Day Gregory, who had tears streaking down his own cheeks. I’d never even imagined that he could cry. He was always so…collected. A part of me marveled at this new facet of his personality, while the other ached for the boy he had been. “I regret saying those cruel words to her now. She was young and trusting when she met my dad, and she fell for his lies. But that's no excuse for how I treated her. I was all she had. I should’ve been nicer to her. She tried so hard to be good to me. She could barely afford the pork tenderloin and the strawberry mousse cake, and I wouldn’t even show up to enjoy them.”
“You were, like, twelve. Give yourself a break.” I kept my voice gentle.
I stayed quiet while he wiped the tears away with his sleeve. When he looked like he was more composed, I asked, “So which part of this memory is damaged?”
Gregory shook his head. “It’s perfectly intact, just like the last one. But I think I know now what Vera is trying to do. It’s not about destroying my mother's memory—it’s about connecting and building up the bad ones, and trapping her spirit in an avalanche of pain, while taunting me about my role in it.”
“Give me some more context here,” I hated to ask that of Gregory, but I couldn't help if I didn't have all the information. “So your biological father was more or less in the picture for the first few years, then he bailed on the two of you, and then he came back after you left home for booty calls with your mom?”
“He left us around the same time he married his current wife and got the seat at the Council.” Gregory’s hands formed fists at his side. “My mother is from a middle-class family, and he belongs to one of the first families of vengeance. She was only eighteen when they met, but he was already an arch-vengeance-demon-in-training. I guess he’s taken a more political career path since then.”
“And after he left, he stopped supporting you and your mom financially?” I took it that Sophia couldn’t have afforded those pretty things from the first memory herself.
“It was far worse than that. My mother has always been an amazing graphic artist. It’s not a common career path for vengeance demons, but she’s truly talented. Both my maternal grandparents were also artists. By all rights Mom should be working for some huge advertising firm and have a bright future. But her past with my biological father made sure that no one wanted to hire her. You know how our culture is. Everyone saw her as being tainted and dishonored. So she was forced to take on low-paying freelance gigs in order to support us.”
“Dishonored, huh? I guess they never bothered to blame the guy.” I scoffed.
The double standards in polite vengeance society always drove me crazy. I swear, in this aspect they were forever stuck in the fifties. The man stood proud and still got accepted into the most elite social circles, while the woman got blackballed professionally for having the audacity to mistake lust for love and have a child out of wedlock. And the child was ganged up on in school simply for being born. No wonder Gregory dropped out eventually.
“Mom never recovered from my biological father’s leaving, and she took him right back in such a shameful capacity once he wagged his finger at her,” Gregory sighed. “All my life, she never looked at another guy with any amount of interest, insisting that she’s already met her soul mate. She allowed him to diminish and vanquish her.”
I knew I should concentrate on the matter at hand, but this glimpse into Gregory’s background was putting my personal experience and interaction with him into perspective.
No wonder he ran off after our little kiss. Even if we were true soul mates, how the hell was he supposed to have faith in that, with that term being used as a crutch for so much shame through the years?
And how the hell was I supposed to feel about it? Joy that he just might not have turned me down flat as I thought, or sad that the romance department with him would always be an uphill battle, with his parents’ entanglement lurking in the shadow of his mind?
Lots to digest.
“This is also a core memory,” I said softly. “But you already know that, don’t you?”
Gregory nodded. “This was a turning point in my relationship with Mom. It was the first time I ever spoke my mind about her and my biological father. I hurt her deeply. In a way, we were never truly the same after that argument. As an adult, I visit her every now and then. I settled her into a house and I fixed her sink. Every year, I bake her a cake for her birthday. But there was an unspoken barrier between us that we never dared to break down. And now she’s trapped here.”
He looked so mad at himself that I wanted nothing but to reach out and smooth the scowl from his brow, but I knew he would not welcome the comfort. And I had my own emotional turmoil to sort through.
So I gave him what we both needed, or rather, what he needed and as much as I could manage at this point.
I kicked his shin for the second time this morning, making him wince no less than when I did it in the physical world.
“Will you stop kicking me?” He rubbed the unfortunate spot again.
“Will you stop being so hard on your younger self?” I snorted. “That kid’s had enough shit from life without you piling more on him.”
After a long pause, Gregory smiled. He actually smiled, even if a bit ruefully. After the disastrous reliving of the second memory, it was progress. And if I had to go a bit dominatrix on him to get that out of him, then it was well worth it. He shook his head. “Oh, Megan. What am I going to do with you?”
I took a deep breath and refused to let my mind wander where it wanted to. “You can start by forgiving yourself. As I said before, you were very young."
His face turned serious again. "Old enough to have met my future business associates already. My friends at the Field are the ones who started me in the mercenary business."
Everything made sense now. How the son of a Council member ended up attending a school at a poor neighborhood and became a mercenary before the age of eighteen.
Anger at Minister Sumpsi, Gregory’s father, threatened to boil over. It didn’t matter whether or not Sophia was his true soul mate, a child was created out of that liaison and the mother and child should’ve been better cared for. If I, a hybrid who had a father who remained in the picture had had it bad, Gregory’s experience had to be even worse.
And yet, without that experience to set Gregory on the mercenary path, we would’ve never met and he wouldn’t have played such an instrumental role in the would-be changeling war. And I wouldn’t have had a job to go to, a way to stay away from the Council’s influence upon my exit from Demon U. Funny how things worked out.
“Alright.” I flexed my fingers. “Let’s just concentrate on freeing Sophia’s spirit. What’s the game plan?”
Gregory narrowed his eyes in concentration. “We have to find the pattern behind Vera’s attacks. Individually, all of these memories are not any more hurtful than they had been originally. But added together they are far more than their parts. If we could find the pattern, that would be the first step of freeing mom and finding Vera.”
I straightened. A pattern. That made me think of something.
When I was a child, I got into trouble with my parents once, and my punishment was to weed their lawn without the use of magic. I dug up a whole yard full of weeds before I figured out that every single one of them, big and small, was the offspring of a major mother lode. It was kinda freaky how far its roots extended, and how every weed was actually connected. In fact, I came to suspect that every weed in the entire neighborhood was joined to each other.
“I want to take a look at the big picture again. Come with me,” I said excitedly and closed my eyes, visualizing the memory nodes again. I could feel Gregory’s consciousness next to mine as I took everything in.
Now that I had in mind to search for the memory version of a mother lode, I could see that all of Sophia’s core memories, one way or another, tied back to one major nod
e—like, a core memory of all core memories. It formed the basis of every single one of Sophia’s decisions almost since the beginning of adulthood. It was a part of her very identity.
Before Gregory’s birth. Before Sophia mastered her graphic design skills. Before she was even a college senior.
I opened my eyes, and Gregory and I were standing outside Eumenides Hall. The student resident was one of the two at Demon U that housed mostly first years. It wasn’t the one I stayed at when I was a freshman there, but I’d attended lectures around the area and knew it well enough.
Gregory looked around us questioningly. I shrugged. “Let’s just see where this leads.”
It was a fall evening, and the pavement was wet from a recent drizzle. Leaves, which were dried and had fallen onto the ground, got re-hydrated and stuck on the concrete in a bright display of yellow and brown.
A couple was a few feet in the front with their backs to us. The girl’s laughter, as lyrical as bells, was audible even through the sound of cars traveling on wet roads.
“So how did I start out going to a party with your brother, and end up having you walking me home?” the girl teased. I almost didn’t recognize it as Sophia’s voice. She sounded young, carefree, and flirtatious.
The guy turned his head toward her and smirked. “Because I’m the superior brother, in case you’re interested in Louis.”
Once his face was visible to me, there was no question in my mind that this guy was the younger version of Gregory’s father. Macallister Sebastian Sumpsi, who appeared to be in his early thirties, was a spitting image of his future son.
The younger Macallister was cocky, with a matching power signature that reminded me of smooth brandy. He was definitely no college student. Then I remembered what Gregory had said about him being an arch-vengeance-demon-in-training. If so, that must’ve been some major career fast tracking. My own daddy wasn’t in that position until his late-thirties, and from what I heard he was considered fairly young for the job.
“It’s not like that with Louis.” Sophia shook her head, casting a drying spell on the step at the front entrance of the residence and sitting down on it. The guy followed suit. “We went to the party as friends. But do tell me, why do you think you’re the superior brother?”