by Bryn Donovan
“Huh.” He tried to imagine that. “Is that a little weird?”
“Not for very psychic empaths. I had a lot of very specialized things to learn.”
They’d almost reached the dock, and he stopped to take in the view. The waves rolled up, one after another, and he imagined them trying to wash away the evil of the day. “Did you see me kill him?” The question had been tormenting him since the attack. It had been such a brutal way to end a man’s life. He hadn’t had much choice. But still.
“Yes.” When he remained silent, she added, “I’ve seen you kill lots of times, when I’ve been in your head.”
“You see me do things like that, and you still like me?”
“You know I do.”
Something shimmered on the edge of his consciousness. Something strange. No—familiar. The moon hovered over the dock, and the water sliced the light into bright slivers.
She slipped off her sandals and held them in one hand. Her bare feet were adorable, with pink polish on the toes. His body and soul ached for her.
He leaned closer to kiss her. The scent of the ocean mingled with the scent of the conditioner in her wet hair and her perfume.
He’d smelled it before. That perfume, mingled with the scent of the ocean…
Reality shifted, fractured, and grew, like the bright shapes inside a kaleidoscope. He couldn’t see. But no, everything was moving.
Valentina took his arm. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I—”
Rage.
Terror.
Joy.
Contradictory emotions tore through him, making his heart pound in a shocking triple time, closing up his throat so he couldn’t breathe.
His coach crying foul from the sidelines after his opponent struck him in the back of the head—Michael was fifteen, furious, embarrassed, scared of losing.
Jonathan as a small boy, tying his shoes for him. The image twisted his heart. He and a teenaged Jonathan, yelling at each other.
Everything muddled together.
The girl in the dorm room, wearing flannel pajama pants and nothing else, taking a hit from a bong.
Crying in his room at night, silently so his brother wouldn’t hear him, because his parents hadn’t come home.
Fishing in the pond in Manila with two fellow Knights for milkfish and tilapia—the only time he’d ever been fishing.
His mother, right before the mission with the Rededji, telling him how she wanted to adopt a dog. No. Mom.
Oh, God.
The memories flooded his brain.
CHAPTER TWELVE
It was too much. He couldn’t make it stop. He fell on his knees on the shore as if someone had knocked him down.
Someone far away was screaming. Valentina? Val. Val when she had braces, sitting in the window in her parents’ apartment in Cairo, putting lavender polish on her fingernails.
He was dying. A heart couldn’t go this fast and not explode.
Something popped, and his eyes flew open.
He and Val were in his soulscape, on the city street. Countless tiny little screens filled the entire sky, overlapping. Each played a different memory, in a deafening cacophony. His father teaching him how to load a gun. Val, a tiny girl, asleep on the couch clutching a stuffed pony. Everything happening at once, the emotions destroying him. His speeding heartbeat pounded in his ears, a soundtrack of doom.
Her hand on his shoulder. Grief and regret choked him. He couldn’t even speak to tell her how sorry he was to be dying and leaving her.
He was falling in love with her. Or he had been…
It didn’t matter now.
She said, “We have to slow them down.” She closed one, and then another, the way she always did in debriefings, but now there were too many of them. If he could’ve spoken, he would’ve told her it was hopeless. She should conserve her energy. She should get out before he died. This was like using a pail to remove all the water from the sea.
The memory of Val on the couch disappeared—along with many others, at once. What?
She did it again, and again, closing huge batches of memories up. “I’m finding ones with the same emotional frequency.”
The pressure on his heart eased somewhat, though it still beat fast. “Don’t erase them all,” he begged. If he could live, he wanted a few.
They kept winking out, hundreds at a time. “I’m not erasing any of them. Just closing them so you can think.” They began disappearing faster, as though of their own accord, the din quieting.
His heart was slowing to normal, though his breath still came fast, his chest rising and falling. “It came all at once.” His face was wet. “I couldn’t stop it.” The sky was empty.
“I know, I know,” she soothed, her voice sending blessed tingles over his scalp and, in his chest, seeming to heal the damage. “Let’s see if we can pull up one at a time, like normal.”
“I don’t know. If everything comes back at once…” He shook his head. It might kill him.
Her brow creased, but she said, “I don’t think it will. Let me give it a try.”
Her instincts had been perfect so far. He nodded. “Okay. I trust you.”
She pursed her lips in thought. “We watched the Super Bowl in the cantina with Andre and Gabi, remember? Jonathan was there too.” The sky flickered, and then the memory unfolded, large and clear. Andre was telling them about the coach of the team he was rooting against, who’d beaten his Saints.
His throat tightened again. “Oh, that’s amazing,” he whispered. There was nothing special about it. She’d chosen something mundane, perhaps on purpose, to avoid putting more emotional strain on him.
But it was familiar to him and beautiful in its utter ordinariness. It was everything.
He was a real person, with a whole life inside him. His brother, his home. Val. All his friends. The places he’d been and the things he’d done. His memories were back.
Next to him, Val was shaking. This, so soon after the attack, and Reading a sociopath. She had to be drained. “I’m getting out now,” she said.
The tide had risen around them where they kneeled on the sand, sloshing up to his waist. In her rush, she probably hadn’t compressed time before going into his psyche. He scrambled to his feet and helped her do the same, and then wrapped his arms around her, overwhelmed with amazement and concern.
“Oh my God.” He was still breathing hard. “Are you all right?”
Against his chest, she nodded. “Tired.”
“I know everything. I remember everything.” His voice caught, the emotion taking him off guard. “You’re all wet,” he said to her, suddenly realizing it. “I’m sorry. I can’t thank you…” He was rambling.
“It was so much at once.” She pulled away from him. “Dr. Holst said it would take days, even weeks, for the drug to kick in. He’s going to be shocked.”
“I don’t think it was just the injection.”
“What else could it be?”
“Smells.” The moonlight was bright enough that he could see her frown. “I almost remembered something, before, from the smell of your hair. You’d just washed it.”
“The shampoo and conditioner here,” Val said. “It’s the same kind they’ve always had at Anantara. But it’s probably been years since you smelled it.”
“It was that and the smell of the ocean. And…you’re wearing that perfume you bought?”
“Yes. It was the first fragrance I ever wore when we lived here. It smells like jasmine.” She laughed. “I didn’t even think about it helping you.”
He nodded. “All those smells, and the sound of the waves, and the way the moon was over the dock… We used to walk this way when we were kids.”
“Several triggers at once. It makes sense.” She shook her head. “I thought you’d never get yourself back. I shouldn’t have given up hope.” Gratitude filled her voice.
He was the grateful one. “It was you. You gave me back to myself.” He moved clo
ser to kiss her and then stopped himself, confusion taking hold of his mind. He felt like two different people. For one of them, kissing her was the right, natural thing to do. For the other, it was unthinkable.
A shadow passed over her expression. She took his hand. “We should walk back.”
Christ help me. He’d been with Val. The one who’d been like a little sister, the one they’d sometimes treated like a pest when they’d been growing up, although even then, they would’ve defended her with their lives… And he’d gone down on her.
This was wrong, so wrong. He fought the urge to pull his hand away from hers. They walked in silence, the only sounds the slapping of the waves and the barely audible crunch of their feet in the sand.
It wasn’t as though he didn’t like her, of course. He’d always loved her…but not in that way.
Well. Now and then, when he’d been alone, he’d thought of her like that, in the most secret and illogical part of his brain. But it had never even crossed his mind when he was actually around her. They were old friends, practically family. That was how it was.
Or how he’d thought it was. The revelation that for a long time, Val had seen him in a romantic way—a sexual way—stunned him. His mind flickered back to the way she’d welcomed his touch and trembled beneath it. Her glorious body, her exquisite sensitivity, her soft cries…
No. The idea of them being a couple made no sense whatsoever. Jonathan had been right about that. Michael didn’t date people seriously. He had fun, and he tried to make sure the other person had fun too. With Val, he’d crossed a boundary he never should’ve.
Not many people could date an empath without the whole thing going down in flames. It took almost a saint to marry one. And Val was more than a strong empath. She was kind and sweet, terribly vulnerable…and terribly powerful. It would take a wise man to give her everything she needed.
Dejection weighed on his heart. Very simply, he wasn’t good enough for her.
“We’ll have to call everyone,” she said.
He’d acted so strangely with all of them. It mortified him down to the bone. “Not everyone right away. I’m uh, still adjusting.”
“Okay. But we have to at least find Jonathan.”
No. That was going to be harder than seeing anyone else.
She darted a look up at him. “Why not?”
“I…” He shook his head. “I was such an asshole.” He could imagine what his brother had been through. And when Jonathan had tried to tell him how much it meant to have him back, he’d basically told him to shut up. Even without his memories, he could’ve at least pretended to be decent. For Jonathan, Michael’s return had only brought fresh pain.
The look in her eyes was as soft as melted chocolate. “You’ve been doing the best you can. You haven’t been that bad.”
“That talk about Mom.” Shame sent a prickly heat up his back and across his skull. Vegetable, he’d said. She’d never know, but Jonathan would never forget.
“It wasn’t your fault.” She was so forgiving.
But would she be so understanding when he told her they couldn’t continue to be romantically connected? She’d be hurt. But he had no other choice. If they continued, he’d blunder and hurt her worse. It was inevitable.
She’d known all along that getting involved in that way was a bad idea. Why couldn’t they have both held back?
She let go of his hand and glanced away, but not before he saw the sparkle of tears in her eyes.
What have I done?
When she turned back to him, though, her features were composed. “That’s all right,” she said, and the compassion in her voice made him feel even more remorse. “We can talk to him in the morning.” They reached the courtyard.
Jonathan, Michael, and a few other kids had spent a few days sneak attacking each other with water balloons, dropping them out of high windows. The exhilaration and hilarity came back to him undiluted, and he laughed.
Val’s head snapped up to stare at him.
“I was just remembering something. The water balloon fights?”
“Right.” She sounded uncertain.
That had been a long time ago. The courtyard had been the site of terror and tragedy only two days before. What was wrong with him? His memories were too strong now. He followed Val inside and up to their room.
They stepped inside and found Jonathan in the kitchen.
“Hey,” his brother said, looking up from an open drawer. “You guys have a bottle opener?”
Michael froze, and Val’s eyes got bigger.
Jonathan looked from one of them to the other. “What’s wrong?”
Emotion welled up in Michael’s chest. His brother had wept to find him alive again, and he’d done his best to help him remember himself—even, impossibly, bringing him into his own psyche, a rash act of trust when Michael had been confused and borderline hostile.
Michael strode over to him and pulled him into a hard hug.
Jonathan returned the embrace reflexively, but he was stiff, and when Michael stepped back, his expression was stony. “What happened?”
“Everyone’s okay,” Val blurted out. “Cassie’s fine.”
Oh, shit. He’d thought more people had died. “I remember,” Michael said.
Jonathan stared at him. “You have some memory back? How much?”
“All of it. Everything.”
His jaw dropped. “How?” He gripped Michael’s shoulder. “You’re okay? How do you feel?”
A little unsteady. “I could use a beer.”
Val made herself tea while Michael told his brother what had happened. He mentioned the scents of Val’s shampoo and perfume, but left out the kiss, though he couldn’t help but sneak a quick glance in her direction. If she was offended by the omission, she didn’t show it. She sat down at the table as he described how she’d gathered up and quieted the memories.
Jonathan asked her, “How did you know how to do it?”
She shrugged. “I did what made sense to me. Like when his psyche was breaking up before.”
He closed his eyes briefly. “Your instincts are so good. It’s scary. You’ve kept him together.” It made Michael uncomfortable to think about how indebted he was to her.
Jonathan looked at him again and frowned. “You remember Urraca Mesa.”
The memory swallowed Michael—the stench of the place, his terror—and for a moment he couldn’t speak. It drifted to desolation, disintegration. He pushed it away, focusing on the here and now: the table underneath his hands. The presence of his brother. Val.
Jonathan looked down at his beer, apparently taking his silence for condemnation. Shit. He had to get hold of himself.
“You should’ve shot me,” Michael said. That was the protocol when someone was possessed.
“Yeah, I know. Glad I didn’t.”
“Me, too.” He cleared his throat. “It wasn’t your fault. We do our best. You more than anyone.”
Jonathan didn’t look reassured. “Do you remember—before the spell was reversed?”
“When I was dust?” Val flinched at his bluntness. “A little. I remember the feeling of not being able to be a person. Scattered, with no one who could see me or hear me—not really being able to think.” He attempted a shrug, but this memory too was too close. “Hopeless,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Val pressed her fingers to her lips.
Jonathan’s eyes filled with anguish. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea—”
“Of course you didn’t,” Michael cut him off, immediately regretting even saying it. “No one’s even heard of anything like that.”
“You know, after we sent the demon back…I told Cassie I could’ve sworn I felt you. I know that sounds crazy. I thought you were…with me in spirit or something.”
Had he still been dust then, or starting to reassemble? How had that even worked? He might’ve become a man again all at once, or more gradually, like a sandcastle building itself. “I don’t know how long I’d been
walking before you found me.”
“After everything else, you were alone and lost and freezing in the dark.” Jonathan was relentless in self-reproach.
“I know it wasn’t easy for you, either. I mean, I can imagine. I remember when you were shot…” It came back to him in flashes, obliterating his surroundings. The haunted rag doll. That was what he’d almost remembered before. Jonathan had been shot in the stomach by a freaked-out sonámbulo outside Mexico City.
Jonathan bleeding out on the ground and Michael pressing a shirt to the gunshot wound, praying, desperately hoping to keep some of his blood inside him. Sitting in the hospital room with his unconscious brother hooked up to machines after the doctor had talked to him about the possibilities of infection and organ failure. Michael’s throat closed up and his eyes burned.
“What’s wrong?” Jonathan asked, leaning forward. His question jogged Michael back into reality.
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “Everything feels like it just happened.”
Jonathan looked as though he were at a loss. “It was a long time ago. I’m fine.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“We can talk to Dr. Holst about that tomorrow,” Val said. “The emotions being so close to the surface like that. Maybe it’ll wear off.”
“I hope so,” Michael muttered. Embarrassed, he changed the subject to something lighter. “Here’s one thing I don’t get. How did you have time to start dating the hot new recruit?”
Jonathan laughed. “You stay away from her.” Michael had seduced a girlfriend of Jonathan’s back when they were teenagers, but they both knew nothing like that would ever happen now.
Val wasn’t laughing. Shit. His heart sank. She knew how freaked out he was about their entanglement, and he couldn’t think of anything he could do or say to make it better.
He focused on Jonathan’s love life, which made a hell of a lot more sense than his. “Things weren’t all bad when I was gone,” he said. “And she can make animals attack people? Where did we find her?”
Val cringed.
Jonathan said, “Uh, we thought she was doing it to people on purpose, and they sent me, but it turned out she just didn’t have control of it yet.”