Conjured

Chapter Sixteen

The black velvet hat was incongruous on the cotton quilt. It lay like a cat, asleep or dead, in the center of the bed. Dust particles drifted around it, catching the light from the window.

Eve screamed.

The air shoved out of her throat so hard and fast that she felt as if it would never reverse and she would never breathe again. She would simply scream and scream until every bit of oxygen was forced from her lungs, her blood, her body, her mind, and she turned inside out into the air itself and dissolved into her scream.

And then Aunt Nicki was there.

Out of the corner of her eye, Eve saw the marshal burst into the room with her gun drawn. Kneeling, she swept the gun in a circle, aiming it at all corners of the room. She stalked to the closet, kicked it open, aimed the gun inside. Empty. She dropped to the floor, looked under the bed. She checked behind the door. At last, she leaned against the wall beside the window. Gun up, Aunt Nicki peeked out the window. The backyard was empty.

Eve’s scream slowly died.

Aunt Nicki pulled out her phone. “Code 34. Malcolm, respond now.” To Eve, she said, “Keep clear of the window, stay away from the door. Center of the room is safest.”

“Don’t leave me alone with it.” Eve couldn’t tear her eyes away from the hat. It permeated her vision, as if it were growing and spreading through her mind’s eye.

“I’m not leaving you,” Aunt Nicki said. “And reinforcements are on the way. I need you to stay calm. Breathe. Atta girl. Breathe in, breathe out. It’s only a hat. See?” Aunt Nicki tipped the hat with the butt of her gun, and it fell to the side.

Eve sprang back.

But the hat was empty and motionless. No horrors crawled from it. Inside was red velvet trim … She’d expected black. The Magician’s hat was black inside.

Eve took a step toward the bed, toward the hat. It had a silk ribbon around its base. His hat didn’t. This hat’s brim curved slightly like his, but it wasn’t battered. His had a dent in the brim halfway around and a rip in the velvet …

“It’s not his hat.” Eve felt oxygen rush into her lungs. She could breathe again. “It’s not. It’s … Whose is it? Why is it here? Who put it here?”

Again, Aunt Nicki glanced at the door, but this time it seemed to be the glance of someone who was looking away, not looking toward something.

“You?”

“No!” Aunt Nicki said.

“Not Malcolm. Lou?”

Aunt Nicki wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It’s an extreme technique to jog your memory. And it did work. You remembered the original enough to spot this as a fake, right? That kind of precision is exactly what we need on the witness stand.”

“And the box in the library?” Eve thought her voice sounded calm. Distant but calm.

Aunt Nicki didn’t answer.

Eve backed away from Aunt Nicki until she felt the wall at her back. She spread her hands against the images of branches and birds as if they could somehow comfort her or protect her against this woman who was supposed to be her protector, her guard, even her family.

Aidan, Topher, and Victoria had been right. She couldn’t trust them.

“This was for your own good,” Aunt Nicki said. “Lou thought—”

“You let him come in here and place this thing on my bed, where I’m supposed to be safe, where I’m supposed to feel safe.” Eve wanted to knock the hat off her bed. She couldn’t bring herself to approach it. “I wanted so badly to trust you.”

“Of course you can trust us!”

“How can I?” Eve noticed that Aunt Nicki still held her gun. It was pointed down, held loosely in her right hand. She didn’t think Aunt Nicki would aim it at her. Oh no. Not while she was still useful. Not while there were memories to pry from her. “All you care about is accessing my memories. Once you have them all, then what? You kill me?”

Aunt Nicki blanched.

It’s true, Eve thought. Without a shadow of a doubt, she was certain. She could see it in Aunt Nicki’s eyes. They’d use her, and they’d dispose of her.

Aunt Nicki tried to cover. “The hat was a mistake. But let’s not overreact. Obviously you’re distraught, but take a deep breath and think for a minute. People are dying out there! He’s started to kill again, and you have information in that dense head of yours that we need to find him and stop him. Don’t you want us to get that information out? Don’t you want to save people? I know you do! You want what we want, for this all to be over. Think about it, Eve. This helps you as much as it helps us!”

Eve felt along the wallpaper, inching away from her. “How do I know that anything any of you say is true? How do I even know there is a killer? Or if there is, how do I know you’re not on his side?” They’d manipulated her at least twice that she knew of. They’d confessed to the surgeries that changed her body and maybe affected her memory. How did she know where the truth ended and the lies began? It could all be lies. Everything she knew could be a lie.

She heard the front door slam open. Footsteps in the hall.

I can’t trust anyone, Eve thought.

Aunt Nicki turned her head toward the door, and Eve pressed backward into the wall. She imagined she were melting into the wallpaper. She felt the air rush out of her and felt herself shrink, spread, and flatten. She shaped herself into a bird on the wallpaper, perched on a branch, identical to the hundred other birds on the wall.

Malcolm burst into the room. “Where is she?”

Aunt Nicki pivoted to point … and then she faltered. “She was right here!”

On the wall, a bird in the wallpaper, Eve lost consciousness again.