“It’s more than that. What aren’t you telling me?”
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. I’m not Talya. I can’t read people. So I’m asking you, the way you should have asked me. Tell me, please. Who are you, Macie?”
Who are you? echoed Rafe’s voice inside my head.
It had been raining all day, but it started coming down hard after sunset. Buckets. Sheets of water. I was thoroughly soaked after running the short distance between my house and Rafe’s.
“Rafe!”
I threw myself through his front door, which was blessedly unlocked. He was in his room, fiddling with some engine part. He dropped it and caught me as I skidded into the room and came to a squeaky, dripping halt in front of him.
“Macie! What’s wrong? What happened?”
“She’s doing it!” I babbled. “She’s doing it now! We have to go!”
“Shhh!” He put a finger to his lips and let go of me with one hand so he could close his bedroom door. “What’s happening? Go where?”
I looked frantically around the room, and my eyes fell on the cluttered desk.
Keys.
I grabbed them and shoved them into his hand.
“We have to go. How much gas is in the bike?”
“Whoa, whoa.” He took the keys and took one of my hands in both of his, as though he could will his calmness into me. “Slow down. Tell me what happened.”
“Do you trust me?” I asked.
He looked startled. And I don’t think it was the question as much as it was the panic in my voice.
“Of course I trust you,” he said, his tone starting to match mine in urgency.
“Then please, you have to do what I tell you. We have to get on your bike and leave. Right now. This second.”
He stared down at me. Trying to read me, to gauge my seriousness. To figure out what I didn’t have time to say.
“Okay,” he said hastily. He kissed me quickly. Not the romantic kind of kiss, but the kind you do for reassurance. “Let’s go.”
He grabbed his leather jacket from the back of a chair and tossed it to me. “There’s enough gas to get us out of the Haven at least.”
“Thank you,” I murmured. It was only partially to him, but he grabbed my hand and kissed my knuckles in answer before he let go to open the door to his room.
A blaze of lightning framed him in the doorway. It blinded me but I kept moving anyway. I was startled when I walked right into him, slamming my nose between his shoulder blades.
“Ow!” I blinked back tears and cradled my aching nose in one hand, shoving him in the small of his back with the other. “Rafe, go!”
He didn’t budge; it was like trying to push a concrete wall.
“Rafe?” I ventured, squeezing myself between him and the door. He was dead-eyed and staring straight ahead . . .
My mother was standing in the hallway, directly in front of him. Had she followed me here? I wondered how long she had been standing there.
“I warned you,” she said darkly.
“Please—”
“It’s done, Macie. We have to go.”
“No!”
I could already feel her pull on me. Part of me wanted to follow her out into the rain, into the car and away from here. Part of me was already miles away.
But then I looked at Rafe. He seemed bewildered. Now he was looking in my direction, but his usually sharp eyes were staring through me, squinting, as though he was trying to make me come into focus.
“Who are you?” he asked.
No.
I didn’t know why I was surprised. This was what she did. What we did. We took what we wanted and then erased ourselves.
“I warned you,” my mother said again, in a voice so carefree and light that it made me want to rip her throat out. “You know the rules. ‘Don’t get attached.’ I thought you were old enough to know better.”
“It’s not like that,” I informed her coldly. “I love him. And he loves me.”
She laughed and motioned to Rafe, who immediately slumped against the door frame and slid down until he was sitting on the floor, still staring at me without really seeing anything.
“Loves you? He doesn’t even know you. Did you tell him why you were here? Does he know we just took everything this town has?”
Her words were damning. True, and damning. But I would not let the truth derail me. I would tell him the truth, eventually. I had promised. He would forgive me; I knew that he would. It was something I couldn’t possibly expect my mother to understand.
“I did you a favor, Macie,” she continued. “Now he’ll never know. We must go now.”
She breezed down the hallway, so sure I would follow her that she didn’t even glance over her shoulder to see if I was there. I lost her in the dark until she opened the front door. Then I could see her silhouette in the porch light.
I summoned every bit of strength I possibly could and threw it all into one word:
“No.”
She froze. I’m not sure she’d ever heard that word from me before.
I stood between her and Rafe, feeling suddenly vulnerable. All I had to face her with was a determined glare. There was no way that was going to be enough.
She walked briskly back down the hallway, toward me. Her calm demeanor fell away more and more with every step, and there was real fury in her eyes by the time she stopped in front of me.
“I am not going to jail because you let some farm hand get into your pants and you think that’s love. Stop wasting time and get in the car.”
“No,” I said again. My voice was shaking with emotion, but I forced the words out clearly so she would have no choice but to hear me. “I’m done with you. Done! Just fix him and we’ll never tell a soul. You’ll never have to see us again. Just—”
The slap came before I even saw her raise a hand. It spun me halfway around, shocking me more than it hurt.
“Ungrateful little slut,” she hissed, as I rubbed my stinging cheek. “You think you’re old enough to play games with me? With me? You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
She looked pointedly over my shoulder at Rafe. He was still sitting on the ground, watching us but too confused to see much. He certainly hadn’t seen her hit me. I could only imagine what a clearheaded Rafe would have done about that.
His eyes flickered up to mine. And for a second, I thought I saw the fog fade. There was a glimmer, a split second when I could have sworn that he knew me.
“Rafe?” I ventured.
But then his eyes widened and his hands went to his throat. He gasped for breath but found nothing.
I looked at my mother in horror.
“What are you doing?”
“Whatever it takes to get you in that car,” she replied. The breeziness was back. She smiled as she looked back and forth between me and Rafe. “I’ll release him then, and not a second before.”
“No!” I felt a tightness in my chest. As though I was the one who couldn’t breathe and not Rafe. This could not be happening.
But then Rafe started to make choking sounds, and I knew it was real.
“Stop this!” I begged her. “Please!”
Rafe fell forward onto his hands and knees. His choking grew louder and more desperate, and the fist inside my chest squeezed harder.
“You’re killing him!”
“What do I care? Leave with me and he lives. But he won’t remember you. Stay, and he dies. But you’ll be the last thing he sees. Either choice has its poetry, you’ve got to admit,” she quipped.
She meant it. She would really let him die.
Even knowing my mother as well as I did, the realization appalled me. But there it was, spelled out plainly in her eyes. She would kill to squash my disobedience. Without a thought. Without breaking a sweat.
My rebellion, such as it was, died right then and there.
Rafe fell back onto his heels and I sank down in front of him. He held me at bay with one hand and continu
ed to claw at his throat with the other. There was no recognition in his eyes now. Just panic. And a plea that I could somehow make it stop.
“I’m sorry.” I dodged his hand and got in close, caressing his cheek. I looked straight into his eyes, trying to get past the fog and into the place where my mother’s spell couldn’t touch.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
His face was turning gray. I pressed my lips to his, then used his shoulders to pull myself up. I turned and threw myself down the hallway, running for the car.
I got in and slammed the passenger door shut as hard as I could. So she would hear. I pressed my face against the window, and I saw Rafe collapse face-down on the floor.
Because she had released him? Or because he had passed out? Or worse . . .
My mother strode out of the house then, blocking my view. She didn’t look at me as she rounded the front of the car and let herself into the driver’s side.
I kept my face against the window. The engine roared to life and my mother brought her foot down on the gas, slamming me back in my seat as she sped us away from the small gray house.
But not before I saw Rafe turn onto his side.
Alive. He was alive.
Five days later, we arrived at Witchtown.
Kellen sat quietly in front of me, listening as I recounted the gist of what had happened that night. It was the only answer I had to his question.
“Say something,” I pleaded, when I had finished and he had been quiet for too long.
“What did she do to him?” Kellen asked. “What was the spell? The first one.”
“She made him forget. But she didn’t just do it to him. She cast it over the whole Haven. So they would forget we were ever there.”
He blanched, incredulous.
“She can make a whole Haven forget just like that?”
“She’s very powerful.”
“So an entire town has a giant blank spot in their memories, covering the whole time you were there?”
“No, it doesn’t make people forget entire periods of time. Just us.” I paused, trying to figure out how to explain it. I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked; we always left immediately after she cast the spell. “She makes us into ghosts. They remember everything that happened, but they don’t remember us.”
“Everything that happened . . .”
“They remember being robbed,” I said quietly. “They just don’t remember who did it.”
“So you’re thieves.”
“Yes,” I said to my feet.
“That’s what you do? You go from town to town robbing people, then bewitching them to forget?”
“Yes.”
“All your life you’ve done this?” he persisted.
“Yes.”
“So everyone you’ve ever met . . . they’ve all forgotten you?”
“Yes, everyone,” I said slowly.
“But it never really mattered to you,” he said, watching me carefully. “Not until him.”
“Until Rafe. No, it didn’t.”
“Did he know?” Kellen asked. “Did he know you were there to steal from him?”
“No,” I said quietly. “He knew I was a Void. But you’re the first person I’ve ever told about . . . the rest.”
“Then he didn’t know you. Not really.”
“Maybe not,” I said. The idea was sobering, and not one I wanted to dwell on.
“The jacket I bought you the other day. That was his, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I admitted. And for some reason, I felt more ashamed about that than I did about being a thief.
Kellen’s expression hardened.
“No wonder you get along with that ghost so well,” he muttered. Then he stood up and looked down at me with a look of total disgust. “So I’m the first one to know you’re a thief? Then I’m the first one to really know you, Macie O’Sullivan. And you know what? I don’t think I like you very much.”
He turned on his heel and walked off, then disappeared around the side of the bell tower without looking back.
I stayed where I was. Suddenly, the sunlight on my face felt accusatory instead of soothing.
Well, you didn’t want it to happen again, a voice in my head sneered. Now it won’t. You scared him off before it could get serious. Mission accomplished.
Then why did I feel like the ground had just fallen out from under me?
Chapter Eighteen
I stayed up on the Tor until it was so late in the afternoon that the sun started to disappear behind the west side of the bell tower. Kellen did not return. By the time I walked down the hill and back downtown, the sun had set almost completely.
I headed back home. As soon as I got to the square I got that nagging feeling.
The feeling that someone was following me.
I stopped dead in front of the Gaia Grill and closed my eyes. I was so not in the mood for this.
“Aimee!” I snapped.
She slunk around the side of the building. There was a guilty smile on her face, which I might have found endearing if I hadn’t been so on edge.
“Quit following me,” I snarled at her. “Why can’t you bother somebody else?”
Her face fell. And she disappeared back around the side of the restaurant.
I bit the inside of my lip. That had been uncalled for. But I just couldn’t deal with my little shadow right now.
It’s better for her if she stays away from me, I consoled myself as I continued walking.
I was hoping to have the apartment to myself. But when I let myself in, I found my mother. And Percy. They were sitting at the kitchen table, leaning close to each other and laughing about something. They were both holding forks.
Sitting on the table in front of them, right next to a bottle of wine, was the lavender cake that I had made the night before. Half of it had been eaten.
The sight of the cake made something inside me snap. I narrowed my eyes at Percy.
“Get. Out,” I said, and I barely recognized the voice that was coming from within me. It sounded dangerous. Like it belonged to someone who was capable of causing pain.
Percy dropped his fork and scrambled to his feet. He looked like he was about to bolt out the door until my mother reached up and grabbed his arm.
“Wait for me in my room, Percy. I need a quick word with Macie.”
Percy retreated into her bedroom, as ordered, and my mother turned her attention back to me. I remained standing, keeping the table between us.
“That cake was not yours,” I growled at her. “I made it. For a friend.”
“Friend?” my mother said carefully. “Since when do you have friends, Macie?”
“Since now.”
She licked her fork clean, seemingly unconcerned with my tone. She was not as easy to frighten as Percy.
“I would have thought you learned your lesson last time. With that boy. That’s what happens when you get attached. You get hurt.”
“You should talk,” I said, with a pointed glance toward her bedroom.
“That’s different. I know how to keep my emotions out of it. You don’t. It’s something you need to work on.”
“He can hear you, you know,” I pointed out. “It’s not like these walls are soundproof.”
My mother threw a carefree hand into the air.
“I’ll alter his memory later.”
She stood up, silently declaring our talk over, and headed for the kitchen door, carrying the empty wine bottle with her.
Nothing ever mattered for her. Because all she had to do was wave her hand and she could undo it.
But could she really? Would the pain that Percy must have felt at her callous words ever really go away, just because he might consciously forget them? Is Rafe walking around somewhere heartbroken, empty, and unable to figure out why?
I moved around the table and blocked her path.
“Why did you sell my jacket?”
She raised an eyebrow.
“Your jacket?�
�
“Rafe’s jacket,” I corrected myself. “Why did you sell it?”
At the mention of his name, my mother’s expression shifted from carefully constructed boredom to rage. Just like that. Like I had flipped an invisible switch.
“Why? You know why!” she thundered. “It was a weakness, Macie. I did you a favor.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“Well, that’s why you have me. To teach you how to see things properly.”
She sidestepped me and continued toward the kitchen door. As she did, she gave my shoulder a painful squeeze. Her warning was clear: Drop this now.
I chose to ignore it.
“I’m done,” I told her, without turning around. “I’m finished with all of this.”
I heard the wine bottle hit the bottom of the recycle bin, then silence.
I turned around. Her back was to me.
“We’ve always talked about how we’ll settle down one day,” I said. “Wasn’t that always the plan? Why can’t we do it here?”
“Here?” she asked, still not turning around.
“Why not?” I asked, and I felt my pulse start to race as I thought about all the possibilities this plan presented. “We have a business here. We have people here who we . . .” I trailed off. How to put this in terms she would understand? “People who we spend time with,” I finished.
I took a few steps toward her and put a hand on her arm.
“This could be our place. Our ending.”
She threw my hand off.
“No.”
That was it. No debate, no discussion. Just no.
“Why?” I asked as she skirted past me into the living room. “We’ll never find a better place than this. Why can’t we—”
I stopped. The answer had hit me like a ton of bricks.
“You don’t want to find a better place,” I said quietly. “You don’t care if we get a big score from Witchtown. That’s why you were so willing to let me take the lead on the con. You don’t want it to work. Because if it did, we’d have to settle down somewhere, like you promised. And you don’t want that. Do you?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. I could see in her eyes that I had hit a nerve.
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