“All right. Karl,” Amber activated her laptop. “I need all the information you can give me about the coven that your girlfriend used to hang with. Do you remember any books Gloria used or what deities they called on in ritual?”
Karl, reclining on the bed, coffee cup in hand, slipped further down under the blankets.
She waited hands poised over the small black keys.
Karl stared blankly at her, cup halfway to his lips.
“Gloria? I haven’t thought about her for years. Where did you hear about her?”
“You told me about her,” replied Amber, puzzled. “I spent the afternoon yesterday looking her up in the college library. They had a lot of stuff in the college newsletter that she’d written. About magic and a lot of other stuff. But it isn’t much use. She gives a lot of generalities about how useful magic is, but no substance. I have to know what she and the coven she hung around with really knew. Who were their authorities? Whose path did they follow?”
“Did I? That’s odd. I don’t like to think about her. Still it makes sense. She’s the only serious magic user I’ve ever met. I don’t know anything about what they did or why,” he said, staring into his cup. “I didn’t want to know.”
Amber frowned and tapped her fingernails on the desk before continuing.
“You might have picked up something just by being around them. Do you remember who they cursed or blessed? Things like that.”
“Haven’t you been paying attention?” snapped Karl. “I didn’t listen, didn’t talk to them about it. I didn’t want to know.”
Amber bit her lip to hold back the first three obvious retorts and drew in a deep breath.
Patience was a virtue. She would virtuously not beat him about the head.
“It’s really important, Karl. It would help if you could remember something, anything about them. I need to know what they know. What magic they can do? If I had an idea what books they’d read I could read them myself and perhaps catch up, or plan ahead.”
“How many times do I have to say it?” Karl put the cup down on the bedside table with a thud. “I didn’t pay any attention to what she was doing.”
“I can’t believe it,” cried Amber, gripping the writing desk trying to suppress the impulse to wrap her fingers around Karl’s stubborn neck. “How long were you two together? You spent, what, a year … more, living with a girl and never looked at a title of a book she was reading? Didn’t glance at any of her decorations or anything she owned? Did she have a statue or image of the gods anywhere in the house? An altar? Anything? Nothing?”
“No. No. No. I didn’t see anything. Nothing at all.”
Karl brought his fist down hard on the bedside table. The coffee cup jumped and fell to the floor splashing brown liquid across the institutional grey carpet, scattering drops over the hem of the bedspread. Amber dropped her forehead to the keyboard, groaning in frustration. The computer beeped in complaint, but she did not move. Karl rolled off the bed and lunged into the bathroom, holding the wall for support. He came back after a moment and tossed a thin towel onto the spreading stain on the floor before falling back onto the bed, shaking from the exertion.
Silence reigned in the small room for several minutes, broken only by the irregular hum of the air-conditioning unit. Amber chewed on the inside of her lip, realized what she was doing, and stopped. She was not going to let her suppressed anger at Karl cause her to hurt herself. Not even in this small way.
When Karl drew a deep breath and struggled to sit up on the bed, she tried again.
“Let’s try something else,” she said finally. “She must have had … jewelry maybe. How about I show you some pictures of magical artifacts and you tell me if you ever saw Gloria with one?”
Karl brought his attention back from the tiled ceiling and stared at her.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded.
Amber’s stomach clenched. After this session with Karl she was going to march downstairs to the hotel gym and soak in a whirlpool tub for hours. She couldn’t remember the last time her back and chest had been this tight.
“Gloria,” she said, enunciating each syllable carefully. “We’re going to start with her jewelry. To see if you can identify any of her magical influences.”
“What are you going on about? Who told you about Gloria?”
Amber pulled herself up straight in her chair so fast that a stab of pain shot down her neck to the rigid muscles of her back. Her mouth fell open and she gaped at Karl.
“You did. You told me yesterday. Today. We’ve just been talking about her.”
“No. I haven’t thought about that bitch for years.”
“But you did. You told me her name yesterday. Her name and the name of all her coveners. We talked about her the day before yesterday, too. We were talking about her just now.” Amber’s voice rose to an undignified squeak.
“No, we weren’t. I haven’t thought about her for years.”
Amber halted, her restless fingers stilled.
“You keep saying that,” she said slowly. “Every time you mention her you say that. The exact same words.”
Amber dropped her head forward again and tunneled her fingers into her hair. As she pulled her fingers free she found a hair strand that was bleached grey almost its entire length. With a sharp tug she pulled it out and contemplated it.
Karl watched her from the bed as she sat rubbing the thin silver hair between her fingers. When he’d first seen her he’d marveled at the thick caramel brown of her hair. Now the roots were almost entirely grey and streaks of white were visible when she moved her head. He levered himself up in the bed so he could see his own reflection. Only days ago his hair had been black, liberally sprinkled with grey. Now it was the reverse. Barely any dark lines in the mass of long white curls. He looked across at Amber and saw she was watching his reflection as well.
“I suppose you should be grateful that you didn’t go bald.”
Karl shuddered.
“I have a theory,” said Amber, returning her attention to her own grey hair, “and it increases the likelihood that Gloria is responsible for the spells on you. The fact that you forget her is … I dunno, diagnostic? She put a forget spell on you.”
“What are you talking about?”
Amber pushed her laptop away, dropped her head to the desk, and folded her arms over head.
“When I find that bitch,” she whispered, “I’m going to make her sincerely regret putting me through this.”
Clenching her fists Amber stood up and crossed to sit beside Karl on the bed.
“Listen, Karl. This is going to be hard. I think …” Amber laughed softly. “No. I know that Gloria put a spell on you to forget her. Every time you think about her you forget that you were doing it. I think it’s to prevent you from suspecting something magical is wrong with you and stop you from looking for help. The thing is, I have to talk to you about her and it’s going to get really, really frustrating for me to keep telling you what we’re talking about and having you deny that you know anything.” Amber gazed blankly at the wallpaper above his head. “Do you have any suggestions?”
Karl let his head fall back on the pillow.
“Let me think about it for a minute.”
“I can’t,” wailed Amber, “I don’t know how long you will remember me talking to you. There’s a limit to the number of times I will be able to patiently explain what is going on. Pretty soon I’m going to be chewing the wallpaper off the wall and … you really don’t want to see that.”
“Let me get this straight,” started Karl, his face darkening. “That bitch, Gloria …”
Karl’s body started shivering. At first Amber thought it was the tremors that had been wracking his body for the last few days. But it increased until the bed started to shake. Karl stiffened, his eyes rolled. Suddenly he froze, sighed, and relaxed. He appeared startled to see Amber sitting so close.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“What wer
e we just talking about?”
Karl sat with his mouth open and did not answer for several seconds.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”
She gritted her teeth until her jaw screamed. If she got through today without skinning him she’d be ready for enlightenment. Sainthood. Buddha-ness. Something.
“This is going to take forever,” she groaned.
“What is?”
Amber shook her head, biting her lip.
“Sorry, Karl, it’s complicated and I can’t explain right now. Let me think about it for a minute. See if I can work something out.”
“I don’t appreciate you keeping secrets from me, Amber,” Karl growled.
“Give me a break. You’ve no idea what I don’t appreciate,” she sighed. After a few minutes of thought Amber jumped up and grabbed a hotel notepad from the desk. “Let’s try it this way.” She said, handing the notebook to Karl, “You can recognize your own handwriting, can’t you? Don’t believe that I could fake it?”
Karl nodded.
“Okay. Write down what I tell you and try not to comment on it, because otherwise it’s just going to take forever and we don’t have all that much time. Okay?”
“No problem. But don’t talk too fast, okay?”
“Sure. Write down I, Karl, am writing this as a message to myself.”
“What?”
“Just write it okay? It will make sense later.”
Karl muttered a vile word and put on a long suffering look that might have impressed elderly female relatives, shop assistants, and various employees, but only amused Amber.
“I, Karl, am writing this as a message to myself,” Amber repeated, “Amber and I have been discussing Gloria.”
When Karl looked up to protest Amber simply growled and continued.
“There’s a spell on me that makes me forget talking about Gloria. Every few minutes my memory resets.”
Now it was Karl’s turn to growl, but to Amber’s astonishment he did not protest the existence of the spell. But his knuckles whitened as he waited for Amber’s next words.
“We’re trying to recall everything I can remember about Gloria,” Amber continued, “so far we have talked about …”
“About what?” Karl prompted.
“That’s just it. Every time we talk about Gloria we have a fight about whether or not we have talked about Gloria.” Amber pinched the air in front of her. “It’s getting just a tad frustrating. I’m hoping that when your memory resets you can just read over what we’ve talked about already and we can continue on instead of going over the old stuff.”
“Okay,” Karl studied what he’d written. “You want to know what I remember. I’ve got to say, there isn’t very much. I haven’t …”
“Please,” Amber held up one hand and with the other pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please don’t say you haven’t thought about her for years.”
At Karl’s puzzled look Amber just smiled.
“Believe me. I have heard it all before.”
Chapter Twelve
“Hecate, Bala Uma, and Bast. No, no, and no.” Amber clicked her way through the website and opened another photo file. “How about this one?”
She turned the computer screen toward him.
Karl examined a photo of a half-naked woman with a necklace of skulls and multiple arms who was dancing on a man’s chest.
“Surprisingly, no,” he said with considerable distaste.
Amber laughed.
“Actually, Black Kali can be a positive influence under the right circumstances. The guy she’s dancing on is her husband. And see, he’s smiling and playing a drum for her dance. If I remember correctly the legend is that they were happily married.”
“That’s more information than I need,” Karl winced, “Are we getting anywhere?”
“Yes, I think so. For one thing, I’ve found out you have about ten minutes of memory before the spell kicks in if you get upset and about half an hour if you stay calm.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
Idly, Karl started massaging Amber’s neck. They’d been working at the computer for hours, even though he couldn’t remember most of it. It was odd. The day was just flying past. It was impossibly hard to stay calm, even with Amber’s urging. She must be getting tired now. She kept stopping and stretching her back and shoulders. After all this time, after all the energy Amber had given him, and on top of that, dragging him here from the car, she had to be exhausted.
“You haven’t been in the position to keep track,” said Amber distantly, all of her attention on the pages she was scrolling through.
“I’ll have to write a message to myself to stay as calm as possible.” Karl found an area of tight muscle and pressed gently. Amber grunted and shifted under his fingers. Patiently Karl worked the area until she sighed and relaxed.
“It would be a good idea for you to write that,” she agreed, resting her arms on the desk and closing her eyes. “Only, just … not this minute.”
“How much time do I have before reset?” Karl watched her move under his hands and grinned. In a moment, he would offer good odds; she might start purring.
Amber turned her wrist slightly and checked her watch.
“Another three or four minutes.”
Karl took his hands off Amber’s soft warm skin and picked up his notepad and pen. Quickly he scratched a note warning himself to stay calm even though his first impulse when reading all the notes would be righteous anger at the absent Gloria. He tapped his pen on the page a few times before adding Amber likes back rubs. He needed to remember that as well.
He stared at the note, then at his hands as the pages trembled.
“Here it comes,” he said, surprised at the acceptance in his voice.
Amber looked over her shoulder at him. It was heartbreaking to watch, but she wouldn’t look away. She wouldn’t leave him alone to suffer through this, not while he was enduring it at her request. The reset looked so painful and took a lot of strength from him. Soon she was going to have to stop, at least for today, and let him rest. They hadn’t found out much digging through Karl’s memory. Amber couldn’t tell how much was because he hadn’t paid attention and how much was blocked by magic.
When Karl’s eyes refocused Amber quietly pointed to the pages in his hands. As he read through she watched pain and anger pass again across his expressive but tired face.
“We should think about going to sleep,” said Amber, shutting down the internet access and closing her computer. “Five o’clock will come soon enough.”
“I’m sick and tired of being drunk dry, pushed around, and made to think and feel things that aren’t me,” Karl muttered, dropping his notes on the bed.
Drunk dry? Thinking other people’s thoughts?
Amber sat bolt upright in her chair. The words shimmered in her mind with echoes like a struck gong. Karl noticed her sudden stillness and opened his mouth to speak. Amber raised her hand imperiously and he subsided. She focused on the bland wallpaper and let the words flow through her mind. Somewhere, sometime she’d seen or read something.
Drunk, drained, empty, spiritless, helpless, hopeless.
It was like a mantra thrumming through her memory. Pushed, created, guided, changed.
Where had she seen the words? Seen the concept?
Still staring at the wall she pulled a hotel notepad over and scribbled the words running through her head. Then she snatched up her phone and speed dialed home.
“May I speak now?” asked Karl.
“A few minutes, just a few more minutes.” whispered Amber, still trying to chase down the elusive image.
Somewhere deep in her the words resonated. She’d read something similar recently. But where, when? The harder she chased the memory the faster it fled.
“Hello?”
Amber relaxed at the sound of Smoke’s familiar and welcome voice. She didn’t realize until these last few days how much she depended upon her cousin’s stability and
strength.
“Smoke, hi. Listen. Do you have the list of books that Aunt Lucinda bought at the same time as the monster’s book?”
“Yeah?”
“There were three books that you brought with you to collect me in New York. What were they?”
“Well,” the distant sound of paper moving came through the phone, “I had Lassie, Come Home, First Destroy All Giant Monsters, and Psychic Self-Defense. The books she bought were. .hey. Psychic Self-Defense!”
“Right! Great! I read that years ago so I didn’t bother looking at it when you brought it with you. I can’t believe how stupid I was. As if the house or Aunt Lucinda would do anything casually!”
“So that book was supposed to be a message to you?”
“One that I completely missed. If I’d read it before going to the store maybe I wouldn’t have been caught. But might have beens aren’t helping. I have to re-read that book now. Let me see if it’s available as an e-book. Damn. No. It’s not!”
Karl slid her laptop out from under her hands and clicked his way onto the internet. He worked silently for a few minutes while Amber argued with Smoke.
“If I stay here at the hotel for a couple of days then you could ship the book to me,” she suggested.
“And if you decide to go racing off, then what? Will you ask the hotel to forward your mail?” asked Smoke.
“What got you started on this, Amber?” Karl kept most of his attention on the small screen and clicked his way to another site.
“I remember a story about a girl trying to change her boyfriend’s mind about something,” Amber turned on the phone’s speaker. “It was in the book about Psychic Self-Defense. I’m sure of it.”
First Destroy All Giant Monsters (The World Wide Witches Research Association) Page 27