Conjured

Chapter Seven

Fluorescent lights bathed the library shelves in a sickly yellow. In several rows, the lights flickered or had already died. Eve avoided those. Aimless, she drifted deeper into the stacks.

Any time she heard footsteps, Eve veered into a different row. It wasn’t difficult. The library patrons strode through the bookshelves with purpose, often lugging already-full book bags, and they zeroed in on one section of shelves. Sometimes they’d linger there, opening and shutting books, murmuring to themselves, and sometimes they’d strike, selecting a single volume and taking off with it. She watched them through the gaps in the books several rows away, and then she’d continue on, alone again.

As she passed by books, she ran her fingers over the spines. Bits of dust clung to her fingertips, and she wiped them on her jeans. She didn’t open any of the books. It was enough to know that the words were there—that at least someone had remembered enough moments and facts to fill a book. Occasionally she noticed a book that had been misshelved and moved it. Oddly, that act made her feel better, calmer.

If my insides were a bookshelf, she thought, I’d be a jumble of volumes, stacked in random order and filled with blank pages.

She wandered deep into the library, going to the end of every row. Each row ended in a brick wall with a faded print of a cracked oil painting: a garden or a pond or a fruit bowl. Studying one, she decided that it was hideous and that she liked it. The scene was so motionless that it felt as though it were outside of time; there was no past or future to it, just a garden with blurred purple flowers and a too-blue sky.

“Eve?” A woman’s voice.

Eve jumped and then pivoted to face a woman she didn’t know. The woman was dressed in a mud-brown blouse, her gray hair held in a twist on her head. She wore slipper-like shoes that were soundless on the carpeted floor. She didn’t hold a gun or look threatening in any way, but still Eve’s heart pounded wildly.

“Your shift ended fifteen minutes ago,” the woman said.

“Oh,” Eve said.

“Your ride’s outside, and he’s impatient.” She gestured toward the front of the library.

“I must have lost track of time.” Eve winced at her own wording. In truth, she had no idea when her shift was supposed to end. Malcolm must be worried. He was always worrying—it was part of his job description. She was surprised he’d waited fifteen minutes instead of marching in to find her.

“Overachiever. You make the rest of us look bad.” The woman smiled as she said it to soften the words, and Eve attempted a smile back.

She headed through the stacks, past the reference desk, and into the lobby. Eve didn’t see Zach. At the circulation desk, Patti watched Eve with her two visible eyes. Feeling Patti’s eyes on her, Eve walked quickly out the sliding glass door.

She halted on the welcome mat.

A boy with tousled hair leaned against a fiery-red sports car. He raised his hand in a wave when he saw her. She scanned the parking lot, looking for Malcolm’s car or even the SUV that had been parked there earlier. She didn’t see anything that looked like an agency car.

Aidan could not be her ride.

“You coming, Green Eyes?” he called to her.

“With you?” Eve asked.

For an instant, he tensed—and Eve suddenly pictured a different boy, tensed like that, alert and listening, in the darkness. He’d worn an embroidered gold shirt. The image was so vivid that Eve was certain it was a memory, but she didn’t know from when or where. And then Aidan relaxed and smiled lazily at Eve, destroying any similarity to her memory. “Yeah, with me. Unless you want to walk, which I wouldn’t recommend since it looks like rain. You don’t have the right complexion for ‘drowned rat.’”

The memory didn’t sharpen. She could picture the set of the boy’s shoulders, the tension in his legs—as if he were caught between fight or flight—but she couldn’t see his face. He was a shadow, and the world around him was a blur.

“There’s nothing wrong with my complexion,” Eve said. Fact, not arrogance. The surgeries had left her with perfect skin.

“Of course not,” he said smoothly.

She looked at the parking lot again. Still no Malcolm or Aunt Nicki. This could be the routine, she thought. The woman in the brown blouse had said “her ride” as if this were normal.

She continued to hesitate, glancing over her shoulder at the library lobby. From the circulation desk, Patti Langley watched her. Her hands were on the books, scanning them and handing them to patrons, but her eyes were unblinkingly fixed on Eve.

If this was the routine, she couldn’t let Aidan guess she’d forgotten. And she couldn’t let Patti think anything was wrong.

Malcolm’s voice whispered in her memory. Lie to everyone.

Eve walked down the stairs.

Aidan opened the passenger door. “Your chariot, Princess of the Perfect Pores.” He executed an elegant bow. “Get in. I’m starving, and everyone’s waiting.”

Climbing into the passenger seat, Eve wondered who “everyone” was, and whether they planned to try to kill her again. She looked once more at the lot and then the library.

Patti watched her from one of the lobby windows.

Aidan hopped into the car, turned on the ignition, and cranked up the radio. She felt the beat of the bass drum thump through the seat and into her thighs. “Ten points for each pedestrian; fifteen for the cyclists,” he said over the music.

She kept her face impassive, as if his statement made sense.

“It’s a joke. Hit them; rack up points. Like a video game. Really, you should try to absorb some of the local culture. It’s fascinating stuff.”

Eve fastened her seat belt as he slammed his foot on the gas. His tires squealed as he peeled toward the street. He slammed on the brakes at a stop sign as a woman walked her dog across the street. The woman glared at him as he inched forward, and he smirked. “Never can impress you, can I?”

“Her or me?”

“Don’t play dense, Evy. It doesn’t suit you.”

“What does suit me?” she asked.

“Me, of course.” He flashed a dazzling smile at her. Reaching over, he took her hand and laced his fingers through hers. He held her hand so easily that she was certain this was not the first time he’d done so. Eve felt the muscles in her body tensing as if they were braiding themselves together.

It was easier to swallow the loss of stretches of nebulous memories than to face the absence of a single specific memory. Aidan, holding her hand. Zach, shelving books beside her.

As he drove with his other hand, he played with her fingers, running his thumb across her knuckles. His hand knew hers. She looked away, and her eyes fixed on the side mirror—a black car with tinted windows was behind them.

She saw a street sign: Hall Avenue. She tensed even more. “You missed my turn,” she said as evenly as possible. I made a mistake, she thought. I shouldn’t have gotten in this car. It’s a trap. She eased her hand away from his.

“Pizza, Green Eyes,” Aidan said. “Like yesterday. And the day before.”

“Oh.” Eve felt her face flush red.

He was studying her instead of watching the road. She didn’t like how speculative he looked, as if he knew what was wrong. She pointed at a traffic light as it switched to yellow. “Watch the road.”

He sped through the red light.

The black car sped through it behind them.

She twisted in her seat to look backward, trying to see the driver’s face through the tinted window. Savior, enemy, or chaperone?

“You want to lose our tail?” Aidan asked.

He’d seen the car. Eve couldn’t tell from his statement if the car’s presence was normal or alarming, and Aidan didn’t wait for her to decide how to answer. He swung the car onto a side street, roaring past houses and dodging garbage cans.

The black car followed.

Aidan zigzagged through the town, choosing one-way streets that fed into others, until he peeled out onto the main road without pausing at the stop sign. He barreled over the median and reversed directions.

And all of a sudden, a memory bloomed in her mind. A city, at night. She’d been carried through the streets, skyscrapers’ dark silhouettes blotting out the night sky. She’d felt the rapid heartbeat of the person who carried her. His feet were silent on the pavement; his breath was loud in the silence. She’d felt the wind in her face and through her hair. And she’d felt a laugh inside her as they’d escaped …

Eve, without meaning to, laughed out loud.

Grinning at her, Aidan floored the gas.

Keep running, her memory whispered to her. Don’t stop! “Go there,” she ordered. She pointed to a parking lot. The lot was empty, the pavement broken with tufts of withered grass in the fissures. “Left,” Eve said, trying to chase the memory. “And then left again.”

Aidan careened left.

The lot opened onto another street. At the light, Aidan yanked the wheel to the left again. “And we’re behind him,” Aidan said. “That, Green Eyes, is why I love you.”

He … She felt as if her brain stalled at those words. The memory evaporated. Music from the radio pounded in her head. It had to be an expression—just something he said in the moment, right? Her brain couldn’t have forgotten something as momentous as falling in love.

He drove up behind the black car and leaned on the horn. He then pulled around the black car, waved, and drove slowly and sedately to the parking lot of a restaurant with a neon sign that read MARIO’S HOUSE OF PIZZA. He parked and turned off the engine.

The black car parked beside them.

The window rolled down, and Malcolm glared at them.

Unclipping his seat belt, Aidan shot out of his seat and planted his lips on Eve’s. His lips were hard, and his breath was warm. Eyes open wide, Eve didn’t move.

Laughing, Aidan climbed out of the car and stretched. Slowly, Eve got out of the car. She trotted to Malcolm’s window. Before he could speak, she said, “You could have warned me.” She meant about everything: Aidan picking her up, whatever relationship she had with him, the fact that Malcolm would be following her.

“You asked to come here,” Malcolm said.

“I did?”

“Lou told you it could help, exposure to others.”

She digested that. “What do you think—” Before she could finish the question, Aidan put his hand on her shoulder.

“One slice of pepperoni,” Malcolm said. “Extra cheese.” He rolled the window back up again.

“Come on, Green Eyes. Garlic knots won’t eat themselves.” Aidan trotted to the door of Mario’s House of Pizza. She glanced beyond Malcolm’s car toward the traffic light and the strips of stores. She had, for an instant in the middle of the chase, touched her past.

Maybe exposure to Aidan would help her remember more.

Eve followed Aidan into the restaurant.

Inside, Mario’s House of Pizza reeked of burned bread, like Aunt Nicki’s toast, but tinged with the faint sting of antiseptic, like the hospital. The floor was sticky, the décor was red and white, and the tables were mostly empty.

“Good,” Aidan said. “They’re still here.”

In one corner, Topher and Victoria had staked out a table. The table was for eight, and three of the empty seats had used paper plates, napkins, and cups in front of them. Topher raised his hand in a half salute, half wave. Victoria looked up from her book and tossed her hair, clearly broadcasting that she’d registered their arrival and was unimpressed.

Aidan curved his arm around Eve’s waist and deliberately patted her butt. Eve froze, unsure if this was a common occurrence or new, and also unsure what reaction was expected.

Topher’s eyebrows shot up toward his hairline. Aidan strolled to the table as if nothing unusual had happened. He parked himself at the table and swept aside the used plates with his arm.

Feeling Victoria and Topher’s eyes on her, Eve approached the table more slowly and slid into a seat next to Victoria. She wondered when and how they’d switched from trying to kill her to wanting to eat with her—and when and how Aidan had started to say “love.”

“Sorry we’re late,” Aidan said to Topher and Victoria.

Victoria studied her. “You missed Nicholas, Melissa, and Emily. But that’s okay—they weren’t worthy of joining us anyway.”

“Oh.” Eve filed those names away in her head as Victoria and Topher exchanged inscrutable looks. Eve wondered how many others like them there were, as well as the wisdom of allowing them to meet. If they were all in WitSec, wouldn’t it be safer to be separated? Again, a question she couldn’t ask.

Aidan smiled broadly, and then he planted a kiss on the top of Eve’s head. “One slice of mushrooms and peppers? Like usual?”

“Like usual,” Eve echoed.

Victoria snapped her book shut. “Well, then.”

Whistling, Aidan sauntered toward the counter. Eve watched him walk away, so sure of himself and who he was. She envied that confidence in a rush of jealousy so acute that it felt like a thumb shoved into her solar plexus. She turned back to Victoria and Topher to find them staring at her.

Both of them plastered smiles on their faces at the exact same time.

Eve twisted the corners of her lips upward in what she hoped resembled a smile. She was grateful that she’d sat on the side of the table closest to the door. She’d only have a few seconds’ head start if she had to run.

“So … how are things with you and Aidan?” Victoria asked. Eve noticed that her eyes looked more human than they did before. The whites were wider, and the pupils were rounder. Her irises were still golden.

Eve shot a look at Aidan. At the counter, he winked at her and blew her a kiss. He then turned and spoke to the man at the cash register. She assumed he was ordering, but she couldn’t hear his words. “Fine,” Eve said vaguely.

“He’s going to be insufferable now,” Topher said to Victoria.

“Only if this works,” Victoria said.

Can I ask what they mean? Eve wondered. Or am I supposed to know?

Topher called to Aidan, “Get an order of garlic knots!” At the counter, Aidan waved. He talked more to the man at the cash register, then pulled out his wallet to pay.

“What made you late?” Victoria asked. “Or am I prying?” Beside her, Topher smirked, and Victoria elbowed him. His smirk half vanished.

“I had work,” Eve said.

“You”—Topher leveled a finger at her nose—“shouldn’t be working so hard at that library. You should be spending time with us instead.”

Eve tried to remember agreeing to spend any time with these people. She couldn’t.

“Besides,” Topher continued, “books lie.”

Victoria whacked his shoulder with her book. “Philistine.”

“Beyond the misuse of your time, if you spend too much time with the locals and their literature, you’ll end up with vocabulary exclusive to this world,” Topher said. “Case in point, ‘philistine.’ You need to be in a world with certain historical facts for that word to exist.” He stretched his legs out and propped them on one of the empty chairs. “And most worlds differ so dramatically that that kind of historical overlap isn’t even on the table.”

“But that’s why it’s so fascinating! All the differences reveal the minute and not-so-minute differences between related realms,” Victoria said. “Seriously, Topher, you can’t tell me you don’t enjoy the interrealm equivalent of the regional-dialect-comparison conversation. You know, the grander version of: some say ‘soda’; some say ‘pop.’ Some call it a ‘bubbler’; others a ‘water fountain.’” Victoria made air quotes as she talked in her mocking lilt. Eve tried to keep her face blank. She wondered if this conversation would have made sense if she had all her memories.

“No one says ‘bubbler’ in any world,” Topher said.

“You are in the heartland of ‘bubbler,’” Victoria said. “Soak in the ‘bubbler.’”

“I hate the people here.” Topher scowled at the other customers. There were only three other occupied tables. Across the restaurant, by the window, a woman coaxed her three children to eat their pizza without stripping off the cheese. Their faces were smeared with orangish grease. In another corner, an older couple ate sauce-soaked sandwiches. The man stared out the window as he ate, and the woman continually checked her phone. The last customer was a middle-aged man in paint-stained jeans who had folded a piece of pizza in half and was shoving it into his mouth. Eve wondered what people in other worlds were like.

“They are pigs,” Victoria said prissily.

One of the kids tossed his pizza on the floor and began to cry, a bleating sound.

“Sheep,” Topher corrected.

Aidan laid a tray on the table. He slid a slice of mushroom and pepper pizza in front of Eve. She had no memory of eating that kind of pizza before. The mushrooms resembled dried slugs. “At least no one here is trying to kill us,” Aidan said.

“Yet,” Topher added.

He’d said it so casually, as if death could stride through the door any second and order garlic knots. Eve felt as if the grease-tinged air had turned rancid. Her eyes slid to the door, and then to the black agency car with the tinted windows. She hadn’t thought … Of course she’d known that Malcolm and Aunt Nicki were her guards. She’d known she was in WitSec for her protection. All the security cameras. All the guns. But to hear out loud, tossed off in conversation, this easy talk of death …

Topher suddenly grinned. He rubbed his hands together, and sparks danced over his palms. “Let’s have some fun with the sheep.” Stretching back, he slapped his palms on the wall. The lights in the pizza place flashed.

“Cut it out, man,” Aidan said. “I still have two slices cooking.”

“Why don’t you go electrify the urinal again instead?” Victoria suggested. “That seems to be suitably juvenile for you.”

“If ‘juvenile’ means ‘hilarious and awesome’ in the local dialect, then yes, you are correct,” Topher said. “But I’ll quit if you fetch more Tabasco sauce.” He picked up a nearly empty bottle and waved it in the air. He then uncorked it and chugged the remaining sauce. A shudder ran through his body, and he shook it off like a horse shaking its mane. “Fantastic stuff. Must remember to pack a case for home.”

Eve’s stomach churned, but not from the sight of the sauce. She tried to will it to steady. Don’t be sick, she thought. Hold it together. She tried to breathe evenly. In and out. In and out. Malcolm had said “he” was still out there, and Patti had been concerned about security. She shouldn’t be so surprised. She’d just had so much else to think about. Lately, it felt as if her thoughts were swirling and bubbling inside her. She didn’t remember feeling like this before, but then, given her memory …

Aiden draped his arm around her, and Eve flinched. “Green Eyes, you okay?”

“You are looking greenish beyond your eyes,” Victoria said. “Not an attractive shade.”

Eve licked her lips and coughed. Her throat felt as if sand had been poured down it. She thought of what Topher had said and clung to the word “home.” “After this is over … after we testify … can we go home?”

All three of them looked at her.

“Testify?” Topher asked carefully.

“We aren’t witnesses,” Victoria said, “despite the agency name.”

“But I thought …,” Eve began.

“All the witnesses are dead,” Aidan said. His voice was kind. She looked at him, into his eyes, which suddenly looked more serious and sad than she’d thought he could look. He stroked her cheek and brushed her hair back behind her ears. With pity in his voice, he said, “Didn’t you know? We’re merely likely targets.”

“He only kills the best of the best,” Victoria said. “The young and the strong.”

“And that,” Topher said, “is why we have to stick together.”

Victoria smiled at her as if they were friends. “Strength in numbers.”

Aidan brought Eve’s hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. “Together.”

An hour later, Eve knocked on the window of Malcolm’s car. He rolled down the window. She handed him a slice of pepperoni.

“Extra cheese?” Malcolm asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. No, she thought.

“Aidan?” Malcolm leveled a look at him. “What game are you playing now?”

Behind her, Aidan placed his hands on her shoulders. “No game. I’ll take her straight home. You can stay and eat your grease.” His hands felt like shackles, chaining her to him. Together, she thought. Safety in numbers.

Malcolm snorted. “I’ll be so close behind you that you’ll think my license plate is yours. You’ll wonder if I’m actually in your back seat, and then you’ll realize, no, that’s Malcolm, stuck to my rear like a bumper sticker.”

Eve didn’t have to look at Aidan to know that he was grinning. “Sounds like a dare,” Aidan said. “What do you say, Eve? Up for some more fun?”

“Nuh-uh.” Malcolm leveled a finger at Aidan. “You pull any of that stunt-car driving again, and I’ll ram your car so fast that you won’t know which happened first—your stunt or my crash.” He looked at Eve. “Do you want to ride with me? Just say the word.”

She must have had a reason to agree to these pizza dates. Her past self must have seen something in Aidan. “I’ll be fine.”

Aidan thumped her shoulders. “That’s my girl.”

She wanted to say she wasn’t his girl. But maybe she was. Maybe it was safer if she was. She let him guide her to his car.

In the car, Eve leaned her forehead against the car window. She counted the parked cars and then the telephone poles as they drove past. Every once in a while, she checked for Malcolm’s car in the side mirror. He kept behind them by exactly one car length.

“You’re quiet today, Green Eyes. What’s churning in that pretty head of yours?” Aidan reached over and ruffled Eve’s hair. She tensed as the car veered toward the median. He corrected it, both hands on the wheel again. Behind them, Malcolm closed the gap until he was only a few feet from their fender. “Is it Topher? You know he gets in these moods.” Before the end of lunch, Topher had shorted out one cash register and singed multiple tables. “Just think of him as a blond, blue-eyed version of an elephant transported from the wide savannah to a city zoo. Sometimes he sees this place as more cage than sanctuary.”

“Are we safe here?” Eve asked.

He flashed a smile at her. “If we stick together.”

“If then. Are we safe here?”

His smile faded. He said carefully, “They say we are.”

“Do you think we’re safe here?” She studied him, trying to read his face, trying to gauge whether he would lie to her. She thought of the who’s-next-to-die game and the cavalier jokes about death. All the jokes didn’t mean there wasn’t something very real to fear. In fact, she thought they meant the opposite.

Aidan was silent for a moment, then said, “There’s only one way in and one way out of this world. It’s the safest place we could be. He should have explained this to you.”

“He didn’t,” Eve said. Or maybe he did.

Aidan whistled low. “You should have been briefed like the rest of us when you arrived.”

Eve glanced again at the side mirror. As Aidan braked at a traffic light, Malcolm braked too. The front of his car looked like a scowl. “Can you brief me?”

“Yeah, no, not my job,” Aidan said. “Our tailgating friend would have my head on a platter. He’s a bit protective of you, you may have noticed. He plays favorites. Only reason I’m allowed near you at all is that Lou insisted.”

“But if I’m supposed to know already …,” Eve argued.

“There’s no magic in this world, right? So, no portals. The only known one is in the agency—it was brought from another world. And don’t ask me how that was accomplished if there were no portals here. Apparently, it happened decades ago—who knows, maybe centuries. The agents won’t spill about that. And don’t ask me where the portal is either. Close-lipped bunch of bastards.”

Level five, she thought. She didn’t know why she was so sure. She’d been in the silver room, and she hadn’t seen any “portal,” whatever that was. But still, she was certain. “You don’t know?” Maybe he’d forgotten. Maybe he’d lost memories too. Maybe she wasn’t alone. Taking a deep breath, she took a risk. “Do you remember coming here? Do you remember where you’re from?”

“Tsk-tsk. Rules are rules.”

“But do you remember?”

He looked at her instead of the road. Behind them, Malcolm honked as if saying, Pay attention. Aidan veered around a parked car. “Yeah, of course. It’s only been a few months. And the only reason I don’t know the portal location is because the agents blindfolded me—a security precaution, they said. They didn’t want me popping in and out of there without their approval. I can’t teleport to a location I haven’t seen. Didn’t they blindfold you? They claimed it was standard procedure.”

“Yes, of course,” she lied. She shouldn’t have asked. She’d revealed too much. Eve laced her fingers together and then unlaced them. Maybe she was the only one with memory losses. Maybe she was the only one with visions. None of them had collapsed back at the agency when they’d used their power in the game. Topher hadn’t collapsed in the pizza place when he’d used his. She’d been blaming the surgery for her problems, but from the perfection in their faces, it was clear they’d had the same surgeries that she’d had. Maybe the surgery was different for different people. Maybe hers had been botched. She spread her hands on her lap. Her hands looked perfect, her fingers smooth and even. She was perfect on the outside but broken on the inside. A voice inside her whispered, She’s broken. But she couldn’t tell if that was a real memory or a memory of a vision.

She noticed Aidan was watching her. He was trying to be subtle, but she caught the quick glances as he drove. She tried to figure out how she could salvage the conversation, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, she looked out the window at the cookie-cutter houses and the mailboxes and the bleached, dry lawns. Her thoughts spun and spun as if caught in a blender. He’d said he’d been here only a few months; she knew she’d been here longer. Longer than Victoria? Longer than Topher? Longer than the ones like them that she hadn’t met (or had met but didn’t remember)? She could have been the first, the experimental surgery, and they’d perfected it later.

Or maybe she was flawed in some other way. Maybe she always had been.

Aidan parked in front of her house. Malcolm parked on the opposite side of the street. A tree, heavy with branches, hung over the black car as if it wanted to hide Malcolm from view. “He’s never liked me,” Aidan said.

“I thought you charmed everyone.”

Aidan flashed a grin at her. “Only those I deem worthy.”

“Are you complimenting me or insulting Malcolm?”

“Both at once,” Aidan quipped. “Aren’t I impressive? I can also walk and talk at the same time.” She could tell he wanted her to smile. She couldn’t. Her cheek muscles wouldn’t budge, so she looked at the house instead.

She heard Aidan open his car door. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him scoot around the front of the car. He opened her door and held out his hand. She fumbled with the seat belt and stepped out of the car. She didn’t take his hand.

On the sidewalk, she looked at Malcolm’s car. “Why doesn’t he get out?”

“Ignore him.” Aidan drew her toward the house. “He’s jealous because he’s too old for you.” She shot another look at the car. That couldn’t be true—could it? “Or maybe it’s the pepperoni pizza. By now, the smell should have permeated the car. He might be unable to resist it any longer and is busily stuffing his face.”

“He could have eaten while driving,” Eve pointed out.

“Possible,” Aidan said. “But unsafe. Good thing you were with me.” At the door, Aidan raised her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles. His lips were soft. He turned her hand over and kissed her palm, then her wrist. “I’d never endanger you.”

Eve extracted her hand. “Except for when you tried to kill me.”

“Except for that,” he agreed. He leaned closer, and Eve shot a look again at Malcolm’s car. Lie to everyone, he’d said, until you know the truth.

She let him kiss her. But she didn’t float above the cement steps, and when he stepped back and smiled at her, she had to remind herself to smile too. He left whistling. She stayed on the steps and watched him drive away, aware that Malcolm was watching her.