I nod. I’ve actually memorized the labyrinth, having studied the notes I took after going under two months ago. A part of me is worried that she doesn’t have the power to pull this off, that she’s only barely adept as an occultist. She was just joking around with one of my books the other day when she managed to pull off a simple regrow spell, shocking us both and hatching this plan in my twisted mind. But there’s no other way to do it. I can’t go down there twice. The place has got my signature in its memory now. It would stamp me out like a virus. Like it did to my mother.
“Okay, enough chatting. Let’s do it.”
I can’t help smiling as I hand over the chalice. “I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Shut up.” She raises the chalice in a toast, her voice turning serious. “To my hometown.”
“To Summer Falls,” I say, because it’s not mine. No place is.
She takes a long, deep drink. Then explodes in a fit of coughing. “Oh my god.” Her voice raspy. “When I swallowed it felt like a burning hot pinwheel spinning down my throat. And now my fingers feel numb.”
“Don’t worry.” I’m reassuring myself more than her. “It’s all part of the process.”
“Don’t leave me alone for a second while this is happening,” Elyse says, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me in for a kiss. “Stay with me. You know what, Marshall? You’re, like, the only person I know . . .” I wait for her to finish but she can’t get the rest of the words out. She’s run out of words and switched over to communicating in kisses, hungry, passionate kisses. Loss of inhibitions, also part of the process. A part of me I’m not so proud of has been curious about what Elyse without any inhibitions would be like.
Even in the height of passion, she never stops being herself. Even in the middle of a make-out session she’s likely to laugh, or get pissed off, or think of something interesting to say and say it. Our time together is always a mixture of conversation, touch, and argument. But not now.
Every minute that goes by without her speaking I know there’s less of her there.
It’s a painful thought, almost like I’m erasing the girl I love.
Did I say love?
It doesn’t matter. I’d never say it to her face.
“What’s happening to me?” Her voice sounds softer, younger. “Everything’s so hot, I can’t stand this heat anymore.” She peels off her top, then struggles with the hook of her lacy pink bra. Finally she pulls her hair out of the way and manages to undo the bra, and then I can’t help staring, and it’s not in a good way.
Even though my hands know her body by heart, she’s always insisted we keep the lights off in my bedroom. I’ve imagined—over and over—what she would look like naked. But my imagination has failed me. Finger-size bruises bloom on her shoulders under her hair. Some are purple and fresh, some greenish-yellow. Angry blood pumps through my body, but I don’t know who to attack. Who did this? Who did this to you? And how come I never knew, never imagined? The shameful memory of all the times I’d tried to impress her with some black magic spell. She could never understand the dark depths of my soul. Christ. As if she didn’t know darkness.
She fans her cheeks. “Marshall? Why do I feel so empty?”
Because your memories are disappearing, fast.
But that was the plan we agreed on, and now the plan’s set in motion. She’ll wake up an amnesiac. She’ll follow my step-by-step instructions, dive underneath the waterfall pool, and reverse the hundred-and-ten-year-old ritual that bound the town to its founders . . . freeing the ghosts and leaving the place of power ready for a new occultist’s claim. Then we’ll unseal her memory and she’ll leave town for California. Either that or we’ll fail and Preston will learn from the ghost’s memory snacks what Elyse and I were up to. He’s ruthless enough to shoot us both in the town square, to pump up the number of shocked witnesses.
“Stay with me,” she murmurs. “Don’t leave. Don’t ever leave.”
“A guy would have to be really stupid to leave you,” I say, being honest for once because she won’t remember. But she’s the one who’s leaving, not me. Disappearing now, maybe dying later, and even the best-case scenario involves her leaving town without me. There’s no way around it. I finally found someone I care about, and she’s going away.
Unless . . . my eyes dart toward the chalice, still a quarter full. It’s a really sneaky, unethical idea—even more so than my usual ones—and Elyse would never forgive me for going back on our plan. Then again, if Elyse never got her memories back she’d never even know what I’d done. And the best part? Neither would I. Because I wouldn’t be me anymore. I would get to ditch my old self, the self I’m sick of, like a snake’s skin. I wouldn’t remember my mother’s death and ghostly enslavement to the Prestons, my father’s breakdown, the fact that Elyse wears another guy’s ring. We could leave town together. Start over.
Elyse is lying on the bed with her eyes closed, so I walk over to the dresser, pick up a sweater, and then turn and behind my back pour the shot glass containing the antidote over the sweater. I grab her phone and stuff it under my mattress, the side Elyse isn’t lying on.
My heart’s pounding. Before I can change my mind again, I pick up the chalice, drink down to the dregs, savoring the way it burns from my nostrils down to my stomach. I collapse into bed.
Elyse wraps her arms around me, sighing happily. “I’m so glad you’re here.” She sounds more like she’s seven than eighteen.
I wait for unconsciousness to wash away my aching sense of remorse.
—
I sit up, groggy, and shut the music box. I blow out the candles and lie on my bed in the smoky-smelling dark, hugging my knees to my chest. I wish the ghosts could touch me, because I want to unlearn everything I just saw.
I reach over and lift the edge of the mattress. There’s a slim pink cell phone tucked between it and the box spring. I turn it on and see a background photo: Elyse and Dan in formal wear. I hid this from her so she wouldn’t find out the truth. So she wouldn’t leave.
Elyse is downstairs making omelets for the three of us. I can hear her chatting with my dad. She has no idea this whole situation is my fault. My fault we woke up with no memories, helpless, clueless. My fault Elyse is still here, losing memories and being abused. My fault my father’s in this condition. Maybe even my fault Summer Falls still exists—that my mother’s still enslaved to the founder, delivering life force from its citizens.
I don’t have to tell her. She’ll never know what I did.
But I’ll know.
It’s in the past like everything in that stupid book she’s walking away from. Anyway, I’ve changed. I’m not the same selfish, impulsive person who let her down. I can walk away from this forever, right now.
But I’ve shared everything with her. If I don’t share this, then I’m still that manipulative person I was before. She deserves to know the truth.
I hear her socked feet padding up the stairs. “Here, I think I put too many mushrooms in it.” She hands me a plate with a professional-looking rolled omelet. Of course, working at a bed-and-breakfast, she would know how to do that. But I set it down on my desk, too nervous to touch it.
“Elyse, I need to talk to you.” Before I talk myself out of it.
“What?”
“When you first woke up, you thought I drugged you. I was all insulted.”
“Don’t blame you.”
“Well, it turns out I did drug you.”
“What?”
“With your permission,” I add quickly. “I gave you a memory-seal potion. We had a plan; we were going to do a spell together—I don’t understand how, since you’re not an occultist—and you were going to be the one to go under the waterfall pool to walk the labyrinth. I guess because I can’t go twice. And to keep our plan safe and keep you safe from the ghosts in there, I sealed you. Except I . . .” It’s hard to justify my actions, especially with her staring at me. “After your memory was already gone . . . I decided not to go th
rough with it.”
“But I’d already gone through with my part.”
“I know. That’s, um, that’s what was bad. I think I knew that I was on a bad path, and I didn’t want to be that person anymore, or for you to remember me that way.”
“So you left me hanging, with no identity? You sabotaged our plan and risked killing both of us?”
“I know I let you down, but—”
“Why?” she demands.
“You were going to leave town after. Without me. You were going to leave me behind.” A lump is welling up in my throat. “You didn’t think I was worth taking with you.”
“I was right, you weren’t,” she says flatly. “I trusted you.” The disappointment in her eyes, in her voice, physically hurts me. It burns from my throat to my belly. Shame.
I want to argue that it wasn’t really me.
I want to slink away.
I want to bury my head in her lap and cry and beg for forgiveness.
“But I don’t even understand how our plan would have worked. Doesn’t matter, you’re right. The point is, I screwed up and got us into this mess. But I did change. I became a different person because I didn’t have those memories, because I had to find a new path.”
“Don’t lie to yourself, you’re not that different. You still love power. You still love magic.” She holds up the music box, dangles it open. “You’ve been spending more time with this than with—”
“Careful with that.”
“You should have been careful. With me.”
“I know.” There’s a lump in my throat. “Elyse, I was an isolated little kid. I grew up reading magic books in hotel suites in places where I didn’t speak the language. My mom’s idea of protection for her son was social invisibility. No one ever taught me right from wrong. My mom didn’t always know it herself. She always talked about changing the world, but she forgot the world has other people in it. People, not pawns. I thought the only real people were my family. And my dad thought being a good person would come naturally to me. But it didn’t. When I first got to Summer Falls I don’t know if I had the ability to empathize. Other people weren’t real to me, or they weren’t people. And then I met you.”
“Great, so it’s my fault,” she says. “You were looking for moral guidance in the wrong place.”
“No. Damnit. Stop putting yourself down. I’m not saying you don’t have problems—how could you not, after all you’ve been through?—but you’re a good person.”
She looks at me with pity in her eyes. “How would you know what a good person is?”
A lump is welling up in my throat. “Because being around you has helped me get better. And I’m still working on it, I’m still trying. I could easily have kept this from you. But I thought you deserved to know what happened to us.”
“Wow. Am I supposed to thank you?”
“No. But do you think . . . you could maybe forgive me? I mean, after everything we’ve been through you know there’s more to me than that one stupid night.”
From her body language, folded arms and stiff back, I know the answer. “Believe me, I want to,” she whispers. “I feel like I could forgive you almost anything, but not betrayal.”
“Betrayal? It wasn’t like that.” In my head. In reality, from anyone else’s perspective, what else would you call it?
“You’re not really asking forgiveness, anyway. You’re asking me to trust you again. But you crossed a line. And trusting someone is about taking a chance, until you know them. Now that I know the truth about you, every fiber in my body’s telling me to walk away. I know you could stop me,” she adds. “You could stand up and grab me and hold me back. You could follow me. Or you could stop me with magic. So I’m going to ask you not to do those things. Just sit there and let me leave.”
And that’s what she does—straps on her backpack and walks out the door, still carrying the music box. I watch her, wanting to run after her. She’s going to the bus station, then she’ll board a train, and if I ever see her again it’ll be years and years from now. She’ll be a different person. I know some spells that would hold her here, just so I could talk to her a little longer . . . but then I’d just be proving her point, that I haven’t changed. There’s no way to win.
Chapter 31
ELYSE
Preston House is dark and quiet when I enter, so I’m hoping my parents have taken the tourists for a mind-clearing hike up at the falls.
I’m in no mood to deal with Liz, let alone Jeffry. But there he is sitting like a lord at the kitchen table, reading his newspaper. Beer in hand, boots resting on the chair across from him.
“How’s my princess?” He grins at me like I’m five. Like he didn’t just days ago shake me and throw me against a wall. Seeing my backpack he automatically asks, “How was school?”
I clench my teeth. It’s Saturday, you abusive jackass. “Super,” I say, confident he can’t process sarcasm. “Most productive day of my scholastic life.”
“Good deal. Hey, since you’re here, could you rustle up some dinner for us?” I’m hyperattuned to the tiny cloud of irritation forming around his eyes. “I don’t know where your mother’s at.”
Make it yourself.
I just lost my only friend, the only person I could be myself with. The only guy I could imagine being with forever.
I’m leaving town today.
I’m not going to say any of the things I want to say to him. Thanks to my journal, I’ve learned the hardest way, time and again, the only safe way to deal with this man is indirectly. Lying to him. Avoiding him. One more lie, then he’s out of my life. “Sure, let me go upstairs and put my bag away. Then I’ll wash up and . . . roast a chicken.”
“That’s a good girl.” He doesn’t even look up from his paper.
I figure I have five to ten minutes before he’s breathing down my neck again, so I head into my room and call Joe. “I was thinking,” I say. “About that ride you offered, to the bus stop.”
“Leaving right now,” he says. I can actually hear car keys jingling in his hand. “Be waiting outside for me in fifteen minutes.”
It doesn’t take me long to pack. Two pairs of shorts, two T-shirts, extra socks and underwear. My journal and a pen, my iPod, wallet stuffed with cash. Even with the music box, there’s a lot of room in my backpack. I debate bringing my cell phone. It could be useful, but what if I were tempted to call Marshall? Or pick it up if he called? I delete the contacts, delete the video of me urging my future self to trust him. I can buy a new plan when I get to California. Or wherever.
Or just sell the phone.
It occurs to me that I don’t know how long it’s going to take for me to find a job out there. Maybe I should bring along a few more things I can sell fast for extra cash. Another phone would be nice. A laptop, even, if I can get my hands on one. I feel a quiver of shame. I’ve already lied to my mother, now I’m contemplating stealing from her. I think of Marshall’s unapologetic retort: “I did what I had to do.” I finally get it. To get out of this place before it kills me, I will do whatever I have to do. No matter how dirty it makes me feel. Stealthily I tiptoe downstairs to scout the family room for boostable electronics.
Instead I run into Liz coming out of the garage and into the laundry room, keys in hand.
“Honey, you’re back!” She beams at me, looking like a little kid in her pink jumper and crisp white blouse. “How was . . . ?” She trails off, clearly unable to remember where I’ve been the last couple days.
“I’m not back for long.” I know she’ll have to have this memory wiped, and it’ll take her one step closer to insanity, but selfishly I want this moment of honesty. I need it. “I just came to get a few things. I’m leaving town, and I might not ever see you again.”
Liz gasps and leans against the door to the garage for support. In a small voice she says, “Well. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re almost never at home as it is. . . .” She nods at my guy-jeans and oversize men’s T-shirt. “
Dan’s going with you, right? He’ll take care of you.”
Dan’s catatonic in the asylum, but thanks for trying to stay in touch with my life. “Aren’t you even going to ask where I’m going?” I snap, surprised at my own anger. “Aren’t you going to try and talk me out of it?”
“I can’t stop you, Elyse. You’re eighteen. And you’ve got your father’s iron will.”
“Don’t ever compare me to him.” I can barely recognize my own voice. Then I realize she might not be talking about Jeffry. She could be talking about my biological father. The olive-skinned man at the asylum. Maybe some part of her remembers him still. I think of their faces close to my three-year-old face in that photo I glued inside my journal’s front cover, where I’m looking up at him with total trust and adoration. He let me down; he let me fall so hard I broke in two. Those things can never be undone. I want to scream in his face like I did to Jeffry, but he’s not here. I turn to Liz. “You just let things happen, don’t you?” Though I know in my heart it’s not Liz’s fault. “You let my dad disappear.” What could she do against Preston, against the town, the whole system? “You let Jeffry hurt us.” She was a victim too—still is. But right now I don’t care. All I care about is my truth, my pain. “You let bad things happen. To me, your daughter. You’re supposed to take care of me, how could you let him do that?” I can barely speak through the lump in my throat. “Why couldn’t you stop it from happening?”
Even through my tears I can see her recoil from me, can see the person I was just talking to recede from the surface, into the backs of her blue eyes. My answer’s wrapped inside my own question. Couldn’t. She couldn’t. And she still can’t. “Why shame on you.” She sounds robotic; her gaze looks clouded. “Your father would never hurt a fly.”
I point to her sleeves. “Why are you wearing long sleeves in the heat? Your arms are covered in bruises from where he grabbed you.”
Her eyes dart to her covered arms. Slowly she raises one sleeve and frowns. “I don’t . . . remember what happened here, but I know . . .” She shakes her head. “Now what were we just talking about?”
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