Conjured

Chapter Thirteen

Eve placed a book on the shelf.

She stared at her hands, at the book, at the shelf.

She wasn’t in the hospital. She wasn’t strapped down. She wasn’t in a wagon or a box or a carnival tent. Eve pushed the book into its slot and looked down. She stood on a step stool. A book cart was next to her. It was half-full of books.

She didn’t want to turn around. She didn’t know what she’d see, what had changed, what she’d forgotten this time. Softly, she called, “Zach?”

He might not be here. She might have lost him; he might be only a memory. Or maybe he was never real at all. Maybe none of this was. Maybe she was still strapped to the hospital bed, and this library, this city, this world was only a vision. She’d never left the hospital, and Malcolm, Aunt Nicki, Aidan, and Zach were all a trick of her mind. Or she was trapped in a box on a string in a wagon, and even the hospital was false. Or she was Victoria’s sister—the antlered girl, as the mirror had shown—and she was dead.

Eve didn’t realize she’d crouched down, but she was hugging her knees and rocking back and forth on the library stool like a demented bird on a perch.

“Eve?” a voice asked.

Zach.

She heard his footsteps and then felt his hand on her arm. He knelt beside her. She leaned against him and breathed in the smell of him. He cradled her against his shoulder and stroked her hair with one hand. His fingers twisted in her hair, and she thought of the Storyteller. She shuddered. “Eve, are you okay?” he asked.

She turned and touched his face. He’s real, she thought. Or at least he was real enough that it didn’t matter. She let her fingers rove over his face and neck. She felt his breath rise and fall in his chest.

“Eve, you’re freaking me out. Talk to me.”

“I went to your house, and we made it rain.” Eve thought of rain pummeling the manicured lawn and patio stones, and then she thought of rain seeping through a carnival tent at night and of rain breaking through a canopy of leaves and making a campfire hiss and spit. “It rained on your lawn and on the street. I saw a black car through the rain, and a man went to your door. What happened next?”

She felt him tense through his shirt. “Eve … I told you everything. I swear. I didn’t keep anything from you. And you know I wouldn’t lie.”

“Please … Just humor me.” She looked at him and put every ounce of pleading in her eyes. Don’t ask me why, she thought. Just tell me.

Zach studied her for an instant and then adopted his usual light tone. “In retrospect, and only in retrospect, it was kind of cool. Stark interrogation room. One-way mirror. Hostile balding guy in suspenders, straight out of a cable-TV cop show …”

“Lou,” she whispered. Malcolm had lied. She felt herself start to tremble. Her insides were a jumbled knot. She’d let herself trust Malcolm. She wasn’t sure when she’d decided to trust him. It must have crept up gradually, but she’d believed him, and now … It was hard to breathe. Her mind kept repeating: He lied to me.

“Lou,” Zach echoed. Gently, as if he were talking to a feral cat, he said, “And then you know what happened. You were the cause.”

“I was?” She couldn’t seem to do more than whisper. Her throat felt locked.

“Your aunt called, said she’d talked to you, and boom, the interrogation ended. I was led to a room with a bed and a bathroom and left alone. Next morning, I was briefed on the fact that your safety depended on my secrecy, which was all very cryptically worded. I don’t know what they told my parents, but I was brought home, and everyone acted like nothing had ever happened.”

“And then?” Eve asked.

“And then …” Zach stroked her hair again. “You were missing for two days. The others said you fainted in Patti’s office during the earthquake.”

“Patti! Is she okay?”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t she be?”

Eve sagged against him. “What happened next?”

“You showed up at normal work time with more cryptic comments. Have you changed your mind about explaining? Because an explanation would be rather awesome.”

Lie, Malcolm had told her before he’d lied to her. She opened her mouth to deflect Zach’s questions, but no words came out. She slumped on the stool, against Zach. She couldn’t keep doing this, lying to everyone, pretending she was okay when she was in fact splintering so badly that she was only shards of a person. “I don’t remember,” she said, barely a whisper.

“Hey, if you don’t want to tell me, that’s okay—”

She twisted to look him full in the face and enunciated clearly and loudly, “I don’t remember anything since that day.” At least she didn’t remember anything except for lying strapped to a hospital bed with tubes and machines and lights … or lying strapped to a bench in a wagon with wind chimes of magic boxes and old bones.

He tried to grin, as if wanting to believe she was joking. “Even the day in the basement stacks with the plants …” His smile faded. “You’re serious. Whoa. Really? Eve, that was two weeks ago. Two weeks.” His arms tightened around her. “You need a doctor. A hospital.”

Her fingers dug into his arm. “No!” She fought to control her breathing. “No hospital. No doctors. Doctors already know. I … I had surgery, and I woke with no memory of who I was or where I was from or why I was there.” She thought of the thick forest, of the wagon, of the meadow by a lake. “Since then, I’ve had these memory losses. In the middle of shelving a book or drinking a glass of juice … I lose hours, sometimes days, even weeks. Maybe months. I don’t know.”

Zach’s eyes were wide. “Do the doctors have an explanation?”

“I think … I think maybe the doctors caused it. Something went wrong in the surgery. I came out … wrong. When other people use magic, they’re fine. When you use my magic, you’re fine. But when I use my magic, I black out and have these nightmares—visions, I call them—and sometimes I wake from them and I talk and walk and live, and then it’s suddenly all erased, everything I did or saw or thought since the vision.”

He continued to stare at her, blinked twice as if he were processing her words, and then said, “Like a computer crash?”

“I don’t—”

“Your brain resets to the last restore point.”

Eve didn’t know what that meant.

“You’re not saving properly.”

She shook her head. “What—?”

“Your magic is screwing up the way your brain transfers short-term memories to long-term memory.” He leaned toward her, his voice eager as he explained his theory. “They’re stored in different ways in different parts of the brain, and all this … stuff has to happen for a memory to move from the hippocampus to the temporal lobe. Or maybe it’s lobe to hippocampus. Anyway, your magic must be messing that up.”

He understood! Impossibly, amazingly, he believed her and understood, even if she didn’t understand his explanation. “Malcolm said my magic makes my mind unstable.”

“So when your brain finally glitches, you lose everything back to before the memory transfer was messed up. Am I right?”

“I guess … Yes.”

He rocked back on his heels and stared at her again. “Shit. That sucks.”

Despite herself, despite it all, Eve laughed. It was a hysterical laugh that shook her so hard that she had to clutch Zach to keep from feeling that she was going to shake apart. Tears pricked her eyes. “Yes, exactly.”

He waited while she shook and laughed. Gulping in air, she settled again in his arms. He resumed stroking her hair. She lay against his shoulder. “You never talk about your past,” Zach said. “Ever. I thought … There are reasons not to talk about the past. I thought you had those kinds of reasons. How far back do you remember?”

“Living with my aunt. Starting work here. But then … it’s patches.”

“There has to be an explanation for what you’re experiencing. Long-term amnesia plus problems with short-term memory. Sounds like a side effect of a stroke. Or you could have been injured. You were hurt in a car accident or mountain climbing or skydiving or … Wow, Eve.” Releasing her, he rocked backward on his heels and ran his hands through his hair. “All this time … you’ve been hiding this from me, from everyone?”

She felt a lump in her throat, and she had to look away from him. Without his arms around her, her skin prickled, cold. She wrapped her own arms around herself.

“You’re really brave,” Zach said.

Another laugh burst out of her lips, still shrill.

“I’m serious. I can’t imagine …”

She heard footsteps. Both of them froze. A patron wandered into the aisle. He browsed through two shelves, selected a book, and then left. Eve listened to his footsteps recede, soft on the carpet.

Zach drew Eve close again and resumed stroking her hair, a little faster and harder than was soothing. “Listen, it will be okay.”

“You don’t know that.” Eve wanted to tell him what Malcolm had said—about how the unnamed “he” cut his victims into pieces. And how each piece was kept in a box. And how she saw those boxes in her visions. And how, in her visions, she’d been inside one, shrunken and trapped, in a box that stank of the old urine of other victims. And how she’d seen one of the boxes on Patti’s desk in this very library … How had it gotten here? Was the Magician here? Am I safe? She pushed down a burst of panic. The WitSec agents wouldn’t have brought her back to the library if it wasn’t safe, she told herself. She’d still be in the agency or the hospital.

“Well, no, I don’t know, but I think that’s what you’re supposed to say in situations like these. Not that I’ve ever been in a situation like this.” He was trying to sound light, Eve could tell, but his voice sounded strained instead.

Another patron poked his head into their aisle. He retreated with apologies when he saw Eve and Zach intertwined. Eve listened for more footsteps.

Zach stood up and pulled Eve to her feet. “It will be okay. Because I said so. And I don’t lie.” He placed his hands on her shoulders so she’d look directly into his eyes. “You know, the moment I saw you, I said to myself—because all the great people talk to themselves, of course—I said, ‘Zach, you have to meet that lovely lady, because she will make your life extraordinary.’ I was not wrong.” He took a deep breath and tried to smile. “I’m going to help you remember.”

“You are?” Eve asked.

“You remember that you like to kiss me?” His eyes looked puppy-dog hopeful. “And what happened when you first kissed me?”

“We floated. And then the books in the reading room flew.” She could count the number of good memories that she had on one hand—those were two of them.

“And after that?”

She shook her head.

“We experimented. We learned. We … had our first real date.”

“I don’t remember.” Saying it out loud made her feel as if someone had reached inside and ripped away pieces of her. Those memories were supposed to be hers! She wanted them back.

“Then I will show you.”

He sounded so confident that she nearly smiled in spite of everything.

Taking her hand, he led her deeper into the stacks to a corner where the books were matching yellow and the fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed.

“Relax. All you have to do is give me the magic, and I’ll shape it.” He leaned toward her. “You don’t even have to kiss me. The magic is in your breath. I only have to breathe it in.”

She kissed him anyway, eyes open.

Behind him, she saw books sail off the shelves and then stack themselves around them, interlaced like stones in a wall, closing off their row from the rest of the library. He breathed in her magic again, and green tips of plants burst through the worn carpet. They grew, thickening and sprouting. Curling, they wrapped around the bookshelves and spread across the ceiling tile. Leaves unfurled, and soon the bookshelves and walls were draped in lush summer green. Red buds popped from the bends in the green. And then the buds opened all around them, a riot of burgundy roses.

He picked one and handed it to her. She took it. It still smelled like dusty paper, but when he touched the petals, they changed color, shifting from red to purple to blue to pale yellow. “Lovely,” she said.

“Not done yet,” Zach said. “I can use the magic in multiple ways. I can even hold the magic for a little while before it dissipates. Watch this.”

Again he kissed her, taking her magic through the kiss and then pouring it into the library shelves around them. She saw the painting at the end of the row shimmer. Ripples spread through the paint, and water spilled over the lip of the frame. It soaked into the carpet below, and water lilies sprouted in the dusty fibers. Painted geese swam in circles. “And now,” Zach said, “we dance.” He placed one hand on her back and held the other. She scooted her feet out of the way as he danced forward and backward, and then slowly she began to follow the rhythm. “You taught me this dance, and you described this bower. You said you’d seen it once and had wished you were the one dancing.”

She had? She didn’t remember that. She didn’t remember this!

Backward and forward. Their lips were almost touching, and she breathed with him as their feet danced. They rose into the air, spiraling up as they danced, and they swirled between the books and the roses and the pond on the wall.

She tried to remember … Maybe, yes, maybe I know this … The touch of his hand on her back. The feel of air beneath her shoes. This was familiar. Yes!

She could smell roses in her memory … But they were strewn on a stage. A woman in black and white scooped them into her arms and then waved to the audience. In Eve’s memory, the woman had no face. Eve’s feet faltered.

“What is it?” Zach asked. “What’s wrong? You liked this before. Said you never expected to have made a memory as nice as this. You said that. Remember?”

“I can’t.” She shook her head, as if she could shake the faceless woman out of her memory. “Stop. It’s not helping. Let’s just … stop.”

Gently, he kissed her again, and they drifted down. She felt the carpet under her feet. Around them, the roses began to close. The vines withered and crumbled into dust. The painting stilled, and the water evaporated.

“Oh, don’t stop,” a voice drawled. “He still needs to serenade you or produce a marching band from his pocket.”

Aidan.

Within the wall of books, Aidan lounged against a bookshelf as if he’d been there for hours. He hadn’t changed since her last memory of him. His hair still dusted over his eyebrows, his lips were still curved in a mocking smile, and he was still lovely.

Zach stepped in front of Eve, as if to protect her. “You must be Aidan.”

Aidan tipped an imaginary cap. “And you must be Zach. Kudos on your dedication to getting the girl. Seriously, animated painted swans?”

“You aren’t welcome here,” Zach said.

“It’s a public place. By definition, everyone is welcome.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.” In front of Eve, Zach crossed his arms, as if attempting to channel Malcolm.

Aidan raised his eyebrows and then looked at Eve. “Eve, does your aunt know what kind of shenanigans you’ve been up to? I hope you’ve been sensible enough to hide it from her. For one thing, she’d be appalled that you fell for this sappy, maudlin mush. For another, if she knew you’ve been transferring your magic to a civilian … How much else have you told him?”

Eve opened her mouth and then shut it.

“Aww, you don’t remember, do you, Green Eyes?” Aidan said, ignoring Zach.

Eve felt as if her blood had turned cold. She couldn’t imagine that she’d told him about her memory losses, though of course she couldn’t remember if she had or not.

“But I’m not here about your extracurriculars. We have much more serious matters to discuss.” Aidan held out his hand, as if he expected Eve to take it. “Come on.”

“Don’t,” Zach said to Eve. “You told me you were warned not to trust him.”

Aidan mimed being stabbed in the chest. “I’m wounded to the quick! Who would say such a dastardly thing about me? Of course you can trust me, Green Eyes. We’re on the same side. This boy … He doesn’t even know there are sides. You think it’s a game, don’t you, local boy? Who can win the girl? Believe me, there’s a lot more at stake.”

Stepping in front of Zach, Eve blocked him. “You’re the one who plays games.”

“It was a test,” Aidan said, “as I have explained to you … and as you have forgotten. A test that you passed with flying colors.” He stretched out his hand again, palm up. “Come with me, and this time, I will explain everything. And more.”

“Everything?” Eve asked. If he had answers …

His smile broadened like a shark in view of a school of fish. “And more,” he promised.

“Eve isn’t going anywhere with you,” Zach said.

“Cute. But naïve. I see why you like him, Green Eyes. There’s such a sweet innocence about him. But it’s time to put away the toys. There are grown-up matters to attend to now.”

“You can’t—” Zach began.

Aidan vanished.

Eve suddenly felt hands on her shoulders.

“Oh yes, I can,” Aidan said.

And the library and Zach vanished around her.

White.

And then red.

And then white, red, white, red, until Eve’s vision cleared and she saw that she faced a wall of red-and-white checkered wallpaper, mirrors, and plaster sculptures of women in draped dresses. Aidan’s hands were tight on her shoulders. She yanked away and fell forward. She caught herself on a table with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, paper napkins, plastic cups, and menus.

“Easy there, Green Eyes,” Aidan said. “Takes a bit to adjust.”

The floor swam at her feet. She steadied herself on the table. She inhaled the smell of pizza and heard the bustle of people in a kitchen—the clanging of pans, the closing of ovens, the sound of knives on plates.

Straightening, she turned to face Mario’s House of Pizza. All the tables were empty except one. Topher and Victoria had staked out a round table tucked against the walls in the corner. It had three chairs. Seeing them, Victoria rose and dragged a fourth chair to the table.

“Take me back,” Eve said to Aidan.

“I told you,” he said. “It’s time to talk.”

She pulled the phone out of her pocket to call Malcolm. Aidan caught her wrist. He twisted the phone out of her hand and then slid it back into her pocket. She noticed that there was a mirror behind him. She could break it, make the glass fly at him … And end up in the hospital again, maybe lose even more days or weeks. She couldn’t face that. She sagged, and Aidan guided her toward the table as if he were a polite gentleman. Topher smiled a languid smile that could have been mocking or could have simply been pasted onto his face. Eve didn’t think for an instant that it was a genuine smile.

Victoria smiled at Eve too, showing her gleaming teeth. “Evy, relax. We want to be your friends. Believe me, we can be the most wonderful friends.”

Eve looked away. She couldn’t look at Victoria knowing that her sister—maybe even her sister’s death—was lodged somewhere in her memory … if she believed Aidan’s assertion that the antlered girl was Victoria’s sister.

“We thought we’d have time to win you over. Aidan had such a lovely plan …” Victoria sighed, and then said briskly, “But plans fall apart and time moves on, and now you’ll simply have to trust us.”

“Really, in your position, you don’t have much choice,” Topher said lazily. He propped his feet up on the table and tilted his chair back.

“What position would that be?” Eve asked.

Aidan drew the empty chair away from the table for Eve. Gently, he pushed down on her shoulder, encouraging her to sit. She shifted away from his hand, but she took the seat.

“I’m sensing a bit of tension,” Victoria said. “We need to remedy that with grease and garlic. Aidan, fetch the garlic knots. They should be ready by now.” She smiled again at Eve. “I think all serious conversations are better with fat and carbs, don’t you?”

Eve didn’t smile back. “What do you want?” She didn’t know what she was going to say when Victoria asked about her sister. She had no answers.

“Garlic knots. Weren’t you listening?” She snapped her fingers at Aidan. “Aidan. Fetch. Now.” Aidan looked amused, but he still trotted to the counter. “Nice boy,” Victoria said, either approvingly or ironically—Eve wasn’t sure which.

“He’s not,” Eve said. “He kidnapped me.”

“For your own good.” Victoria reached across the table and patted Eve’s hand. “We have to stick together. It’s dangerous these days.” Beside her, Topher played with sparks between his fingertips. He kept his hands low, under the table, so as not to attract attention.

“I’m sorry about your sister,” Eve said.

Topher rocked his chair forward, and it landed with a thump. His lazy smile had vanished. Victoria froze. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. For an instant, Eve thought her face was going to crack like an ice sculpture tapped with a chisel. “Thank you,” Victoria said, a chill frosting her voice. “Someday, she will be avenged.”

Returning, Aidan tossed a bowl of garlic knots on the table. The smell permeated the air and wormed into Eve’s nose until she breathed garlic.

Across the table, Topher squeezed Victoria’s hand. A smile flashed onto her face, too fast to be real. “Until then, there is one silver lining,” Victoria said. “If events hadn’t unfolded as they did, then we wouldn’t have been sent to this world, and we wouldn’t have met each other—or you.”

“Destiny,” Topher said.

“Ours and yours.” Aidan clasped Eve’s hand.

Eve extracted her hand from his. She didn’t know why they were making this hard sell to befriend her. She’d expected questions about Victoria’s sister or her visions or the case. “I’m not interested in destiny. I don’t need your ‘safety in numbers.’ The marshals are keeping me safe. So if you’ll excuse me—” She rose.

Victoria laughed, her voice a cascade. “Oh, Aidan, you are so right about her! She’s so … sweet and wide-eyed innocent as a little doe about to be served on a platter with julienned carrots and a fat apple in her mouth.” She mimed placing an apple in her mouth and then pretended to crunch into it.

Topher leaned forward. “You can’t trust the agency.”

“Funny,” Eve said. “They said the same thing about you.”

“Of course they did,” Victoria said. “They aren’t stupid.”

“Just short-sighted,” Aidan added.

“It’s their nature.” Topher tipped his chair back again. “They’re sheep. They can’t understand or appreciate the power and beauty of wolves. They try to tame us, of course, to use us, but in the end, they fear us.”

Sitting next to her, Aidan smiled, a tender, encompassing smile. He stretched his arm against the back of her chair. She sat ramrod straight, not touching his arm. “We see your power and beauty, Eve, and we admire it. We treasure it.”

“You will be our treasure, my dear sweet Eve,” Victoria cooed. Aidan had called her a treasure before—a treasure that he’d been seeking, a prize to win. Eve didn’t like the sound of that. She wasn’t a thing. Eve glanced at the door and wondered how quickly she could reach it. Not quickly enough, she thought. Aidan could stop her in an instant.

“She doesn’t look convinced,” Topher observed. “In fact, she looks confused. We need to be clearer.” He leaned forward again. “Once this is all over, once the ‘case’ is closed, you will be killed.”

Eve stared at him.

“Your big, strong protector agent man will kill you himself,” Victoria said. “Or perhaps it will be more anonymous. A little poison. An injection. An IV in the hospital. Oh, how easy it will be for them, especially once you fall into one of your oh-so-precious fainting fits, which, by the way, are ever so charming—the wilting heroine.”

Eve felt as if the ground were falling away beneath her feet. They had to be lying. The marshals were keeping her safe. Malcolm was devoted to her safety.

“Or perhaps it will be that aunt of yours,” Victoria continued. “She’s always despised you. If that big mush is too soft to do it himself, perhaps beloved ‘Aunt’ Nicki will smother you with a pillow as you sleep.”

“Or use a gun,” Topher said. “You always think of such elaborate death scenes, Victoria. Really, it isn’t as though they’ll tie her above a pool of sharks. They’re much more practical than that. When they’re done using her, bam. Dead.”

They’d given her a home, a job, food, even a name. They’d made it clear that they needed her and her memory … but what about after she remembered? What would happen after they had all they needed from her? Eve shook her head. She shouldn’t listen to this. It was lies. Poisonous lies. “Why are you saying this?”

“You’re special.” Victoria smiled again. “We saw it when we first met, and our observation of you has only confirmed it.” Eve thought of the snake on the rock in the woods. She thought of the times she’d felt watched in the library and elsewhere.

“You’ve been watching me?” Eve asked.

Topher popped a garlic knot in his mouth. His cheeks bulged as he chewed. “We’d like to offer you a choice. You could be a good little sheep, play along with your herders, let them fleece you, and then let them kill you like so much mutton. Or you could join with us, pledge to our world, and let us save you when the time is right.”

Eve sank into the chair. “How can I trust you? You tried to kill me when we met.”

“Only in jest!” Victoria said. Then she shrugged. “Okay, no, it was real. We did try to kill you. Lou promised that if we tested you, we could stay together. Believe me, until that afternoon, we had no idea who you were.”

Her heart beat faster. “Who am I?”

“You’re the one with the power!”

“You have power too,” Eve pointed out.

“Obviously.” Victoria rolled her eyes. “We all fit the killer’s favorite profile. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here. But you … you are unique!”

“A freak among freaks,” Topher drawled.

Victoria swatted him. “Amusingly, you don’t even know how special you are. You don’t know how rare it is to have even one power. To have more … No one has more! We are the best of the best, yet we have limits. Topher, for instance, only controls electricity. Aidan only teleports himself to places he’s been. Me … you’ve seen me. But you—you defy every theory of magic ever written! You possess multiple powers. And even more, you can share them. That’s unheard of! No one can do that. You have such incredible potential! You can’t even imagine the wonderful future that lies ahead of you!”

“If they don’t kill you first,” Topher said, eating another garlic knot.

“But … but why …” Eve swallowed and tried again. “Why am I unique?” That was the core question, she thought, the key to everything trapped inside her mixed-up, broken brain.

Aidan patted her shoulder. “It’s all right. You don’t need to remember why. It’s the future that matters, not the past, as far as we’re concerned.”

They all knew about her memory? Eve felt cold inside. Malcolm had cautioned her to lie—ordered her, even—yet they knew. “How …,” Eve began.

“How do we know you don’t remember? Aside from it being blatantly obvious every time you show up here with another memory lapse?” Victoria said. “Aside from that … well, snakes do have ears, despite common misconceptions.”

“Victoria makes an excellent spy,” Topher said proudly.

“Which is also how we know what they plan,” Victoria said. “Destroy you, and let my sister’s killer live. They fear you, and they think they can use him. They have it backward.”

Topher rolled his eyes at her. “This shouldn’t be a tough call. They plan to kill you, Eve. We don’t. Align yourself with us.”

“You don’t need to decide now,” Aidan said. “Consider it. Watch your keepers. Decide for yourself.” She noticed he was speaking faster. “If you decide you want to live a life of safety, grandeur, and purpose, then your choice is simple. When the time is right, come with us back to my world.”

“But …,” Eve began.

“Enough,” Topher said. “It’s time for our ‘treasure’ to leave us.”

“You’re … letting me go?” Eve asked.

Topher nodded at the door. “So to speak.”

Malcolm charged through the front door. He had three agents flanking him. He held his badge in one hand—he flashed it at the employees—and a gun in the other. The other three agents wore bulletproof vests and had their guns raised.

Victoria, Topher, and Aidan all raised their hands in surrender.

“Garlic knot?” Topher offered Malcolm.