Conjured

Chapter Nine

Safely behind a curtain, Eve studied Aidan through the library lobby window. He was leaning against his car in front of the entrance next to a NO PARKING sign. His hands were loosely in his pockets, his ankles were crossed, and his face, eyes closed, was tilted up toward the sun. He looked entirely at ease, as if he belonged there.

“Is that Pretty Boy?” Zach was behind her. His breath was soft on her neck.

Aidan was Pretty Boy. He looked like an airbrushed model in one of Aunt Nicki’s magazines. Seeing him, though, made her want to run in the opposite direction, which didn’t make sense if she was supposed to be with him. “He’s supposed to take me to lunch with his friends. I think.”

“Are you going?” Zach’s voice was neutral.

Malcolm had said she’d asked for the lunches. But she didn’t remember. How could she be committed when she didn’t remember? She thought of Aidan kissing her, and her fingers touched her lips.

Aidan stretched, pulling his arm across his torso and then over his head. His chest muscles flexed. He rolled his neck as if he were limbering up.

Eve stepped away from the window. She faced Zach. Behind him, she noticed Patti Langley at the circulation desk. Her hands processed books, scanning them, demagnetizing them, and handing them to patrons, but her eyes were glued to Eve, as always.

“No,” Eve said to Zach. “I’m not.”

“Are you going to tell him that you aren’t going?” Zach’s hands were shoved in his pockets, but he didn’t look anywhere near as comfortable as Aidan. In fact, he shifted from foot to foot as if nails poked into the soles of his feet.

“No.” She felt herself smiling, though she couldn’t explain why.

“You can escape through the back door in the staff room,” Zach said. “Get a couple blocks away and then call your aunt to pick you up.”

“I want to go with you.” She didn’t plan to say it, but the words felt right—the same way it felt right not to walk out the door and go with Aidan, no matter what her past self had planned.

“I don’t have a car. Or even use of my mom’s lunchbox-on-wheels.” But he seemed pleased. His eyes were bright again, and his cheeks were twitching as if he wanted to smile but thought he shouldn’t.

“Where do you go after work?” Eve asked.

“Home. I live a few streets that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction from Aidan. “Come home with me. For lunch, I mean.” He blushed pink. “I make a mean egg salad bagel sandwich. Pickles and everything.”

She thought that sounded wonderful. She was aware she was smiling goofily at him. He wore the same expression, his eyes full of her, as though drinking her in. “Can we skip the everything bagel?” she asked.

“You don’t like everything bagels?”

She shook her head.

“Why didn’t you ever say so before?”

“I’m saying so now.” I can’t be bound by a past self I don’t remember, she thought. It was a freeing thought, and she felt her entire heart lift.

His smile faded as his eyes flicked to look over her shoulder and out the window. “So, Pretty Boy … He won’t call your aunt and freak her out if you don’t show?”

Her shoulders slumped. He would, of course, and Aunt Nicki and Malcolm would crash down on her with full wrath if she left with no word. Eve peered out the window at Aidan and felt as if a box lid were slamming shut on her and she were shrinking inside. And then she straightened as an idea occurred to her. “I’ll tell Patti.”

Without waiting for Zach to respond, Eve crossed the lobby to the circulation desk.

The librarian immediately looked down at her computer, as if she hadn’t been staring at Eve for the past ten minutes. “Yes?” she said, like she’d expected a patron.

“There’s a boy waiting for me outside. I …” She thought of how concerned Patti had been about security, of Patti’s secret eyes, of her arrangement with WitSec. She’s hiding too, Eve thought. “I don’t feel safe with him.”

Patti looked up sharply, dropping the feigned air of disinterest. “He’s picked you up before. He must have been approved.”

“I know.” Eve couldn’t explain it to Patti any more than she could explain it to herself. She looked down at her feet, unable to meet Patti’s intense gaze, and thought that maybe this was a bad idea, maybe she should go with Aidan and not second-guess the agency.

“Intuition?”

Eve nodded, still studying her shoes. “I’d just … feel better if I went home with Zach. I can have Malcolm or Aunt Nicki pick me up at his house.”

“You’ll tell them about your unease with the boy?”

Eve looked up at Patti. There was sympathy in her eyes. “I will.”

“Good. I’ll take care of him for now.” Patti smiled reassuringly at Eve. The smile transformed the woman’s face, softening her by a decade.

Eve smiled back, though her cheeks felt stiff. “Thank you very much.”

“You have to trust yourself,” Patti said, and then her smile faded. “In the end—when they find you, when whoever you’re running from catches up—that’s all you can do.”

Eve shivered and wondered if that was experience talking or prophecy. She backed away slowly, then quickly, and returned to Zach. She took a deep breath, looked one more time out at Aidan, who was checking his watch, and said to Zach, “Show me that back door?”

He led her through the library, deep into the stacks, to a door marked STAFF ONLY, tucked between the audiobooks and older magazines. He forced the door open—it was half-barricaded by books—and they slipped inside.

The staff room was stuffed with books. Stacks of books were piled on the floor as high as Eve’s hip. Several work tables overflowed with books. Metal bookshelves that ran floor to ceiling were crammed with more books. In one corner a refrigerator hummed, and even it had books shoved on top of it. She wished she could burrow in between all the books and stay, but Aidan would undoubtedly find her here, as soon as he tired of waiting and came in to search the library. Following Zach, she zigzagged through the piles to a bright-orange door marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.

Zach pushed through the door. No alarm sounded. He held it open for her, and she stepped outside. The back of the library faced the woods.

The woods were thick. Oak, maple, and evergreen trees clustered close together, obscuring any view of the streets or houses beyond. Vines twisted around their trunks, and the undergrowth was a snarl of green bushes. Anything or anyone could be hiding in them. Eve stepped back toward the door as it sucked shut. She squeezed the door handle—it had locked behind them.

“Come on,” Zach said, “before Pretty Boy decides to look for you.” He tromped into the underbrush. “As much as I’d love to fight for your honor, that guy could flatten me with his pinkie. I have a fine sense of self-preservation.”

Eve doubted that. If he had, he wouldn’t be anywhere near her. But she followed Zach anyway. As she stepped into the woods, she heard the crackle of tiny branches snapping under her shoes—and she remembered she’d been in woods before.

The memory slammed into her so hard that she had to steady herself on a tree trunk.

Woods.

But not like these.

She’d been in a forest of gnarled, ancient trees whose leaves blotted out the sun, leaving the forest floor in perpetual twilight. The roots had been so thick that she’d had to climb over them. Here, the trees were as skinny as her arm, and the sun poked through the canopy above. The underbrush was thick and green, tangling her feet and covering a fallen stone wall. “This is a young forest,” she said.

“Used to be a cow pasture,” Zach said. “All of this was farmland. Hence all the stone walls. Now it’s just houses and trees. Must have looked really different.”

“You don’t remember?” Continuing after him, she remembered the sound of her feet crunching a layer of old leaves and needles as she ran. The mat of branches overhead had been so thick that only moss and a few ferns grew on the forest floor.

“It was a hundred years ago. Or, you know, some large number of years. Probably if we chopped down the fattest tree and counted the rings, we’d know. I don’t, however, have an ax handy.”

She couldn’t remember where the other forest was or why she had been fleeing or who had been with her. She did remember the way the trees had towered above her, how the branches had battered her, and how the roots had slowed her escape.

Eve checked behind them. She saw no one, but still, she felt watched. Shivers traveled up and down her spine. Birds rustled in the branches above. A squirrel darted through the underbrush. She jumped at each sound, her ears straining to hear more.

“I used to come here when I was a kid. It was pretty much the best superhero secret lair ever. That was one of my forts.” He pointed toward a fallen tree. “And that was my lookout.” He pointed next to a massive boulder beyond the fallen tree. She tried to see it as a child’s playground, not as the forest that loomed in her memory. “You know, to spot the supervillains that I’d proceed to defeat with my array of superpowers.” Still in the same light voice, he asked, “So, how long have you had superpowers?”

She halted for an instant, looking across the woods at the boulder. She’d thought she’d seen … It had looked like the S-curve of a snake, sleek scales reflecting the bits of sunlight that filtered through the leaves. Victoria? Eve started walking again, faster.

“I mean, it’s obviously not my power.” Crashing through the underbrush, Zach hurried to catch up to her. “I have never been able to do a single thing like that before. Believe me, I tried. I was that kid who used to attempt the Jedi mind trick on his teachers in elementary school. For art class, I fashioned my own Harry Potter wand. Lacked a phoenix feather, though. But when I kissed you … I was thinking how kissing you was like floating on air—and we did. And the second time, I deliberately imagined us levitating.”

“And the books flying?”

“I wanted to see what else we could do. So I imagined that. And it worked!” Up ahead, the trees were thinning, and she saw bits of roofs and corners of houses through the branches. “My current theory,” Zach continued, “is that we’re like the Wonder Twins, except with lips instead of rings. And you know, not related. Not at all related. Because that would be disgusting.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Alternately, and more likely, it has nothing at all to do with who I am. I could be anybody. You’re transferring your magic to me, and then I’m using it. You’re the only special one.”

Eve looked back at the rock. A snake slithered down the face of the boulder and disappeared into the underbrush. “Can we walk faster?” Continuing to look backward, she didn’t notice that they’d reached the edge of the woods until Zach stopped.

He pointed across a street. “That’s my house.”

Zach’s house could have been plucked from the cover of a beautiful-homes magazine. On the left and right, the yards were parched yellow, but his was vibrant green, mowed to look more like carpet than a live plant. The house itself was pristine white and had a porch with two white rocking chairs and a wind chime that hung listlessly in the still air.

Eve took a step out of the bushes and then stopped as she heard a car turn onto Zach’s street. She retreated and crouched behind a tree.

A blue car drove past them.

She emerged again and checked to the right and left, aware that she was mimicking the way Malcolm always checked the street. Several houses down, a neighbor was mowing his lawn. A few houses beyond that, a brown dog slept on a porch. Eve didn’t see anything that seemed threatening or unusual. She started across the street.

Zach didn’t move.

“What is it?” Eve asked. She turned back to him and was rocked with another burst of memory: she’d been fleeing with her family. Or maybe it wasn’t her family, but she knew them well. At some point, she had fallen, and a man had picked her up and carried her over his shoulder as if she were as light as a jacket. She hadn’t been left behind.

Zach pointed to a silver car in the driveway. “My mom’s home.”

“Oh.” Eve tried to picture the people who had run with her. Family or not? The man who had carried her, had he been her father? Brother? Uncle? “Is that … bad?”

He still didn’t move.

“Back to the woods or to the house?” She felt too exposed outside the bushes. Anyone in any nearby house could see her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a red car speed past their street. She tensed, ready to run, but it didn’t turn.

Zach shook himself. “Sorry. House.”

Eve bolted across the street, down the slate walkway, and onto the porch. Zach’s house had an antique door knocker and two baskets of flowers that framed the door. Several long seconds later, Zach joined her.

Slowly, so slowly that Eve wanted to grab the key herself, Zach drew a key out of his pocket. As he slid it into the lock, the front door opened. A woman in a pink shirt and white capris was framed in the doorway. “Yes?” She had pearls around her neck and a faded bruise on her left cheekbone, mostly obscured by makeup. She wore a layer of makeup over her face, her eyelids, and her lips, as if it were a thin plastic mask. “Oh, Zach! You’re home! And you brought a friend.”

This must be Zach’s mother, Eve thought. He had her lips, though hers weren’t curved into a smile like Zach’s often were. Her cheeks were so smooth that Eve wondered if she ever smiled.

“This is Eve,” Zach said. “She works with me at the library.”

“How lovely,” his mother said.

Eve checked the street as a blue SUV barreled by. For an instant, she couldn’t breathe. But the car didn’t slow, and she glimpsed a family inside it.

“I invited her to lunch.” Zach was peering over his mother’s shoulder as if he expected to see someone else with her.

“Delightful,” his mother said.

Another car, a black one, turned onto the street. She had to get inside, or at least out of sight. She inched closer to the door.

“I didn’t think you’d be home,” Zach said. “Is everything okay?”

Zach’s mother’s eyes brightened. “Of course, Zachary! Don’t be silly. Can’t I have a change in plans without causing concern? Come in, please, both of you.” She opened the door wider.

Eve darted inside. She flattened against the wall and watched through the window as a black car with tinted windows crept down the street. It rolled past the house without stopping. Her rib cage loosened, and she took a deep breath.

“I thought you had your museum meetings today,” Zach said, coming inside too.

“Oh, I couldn’t. Your father has some business associates coming for dinner. I need to prepare.” His mother shut the door behind them, and Eve sagged against the wall. Safe, she thought.

Zach frowned at her. “You’ve been preparing for those meetings all month.”

“I can catch up on the meeting minutes later.” His mother dismissed his words with a wave. “Let’s see what I can whip you two up for lunch!” She beamed at both of them, and her cheeks shifted shape as if they were molded plastic.

For the first time, Eve looked at the inside of the house. A staircase with white carpet swept up in a curve to a second floor, and a brass chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling. To her right, she saw a living room with stiff chairs that faced an immaculate fireplace. To her left was a dining room with a banquet-style table decorated with a linen tablecloth, crystal candlesticks, and a bowl with orchid blossoms floating in water.

“I’ll make us sandwiches,” Zach said to his mother. “Don’t worry about us. Mom, you—”

Her plastic smile erased as quickly as it had appeared. “Don’t start, Zachary.” She kissed him on the top of his head. “You and your friend go sit on the sun porch. I’ll bring you something nice.” She scurried into the dining room and then through a white door.

Zach sighed. “And that’s my mother. Come on. We’d better sit on the back porch.”

Eve followed him past the staircase to a hall filled with framed photos. Slowing, she looked at them. One was a bride, a younger version of his mother with coiffed hair and a smile that looked exactly like Zach’s—a happy smile, not a plastic one. She wore a lace-encrusted dress and stood on a curved staircase. Another was a man in a suit, shaking hands with other men in suits. In another photo, the same man was in a boat on a lake in jeans and a plaid shirt. He held a fish that was as long as his forearm. Eve stared at the lake photo the longest. She knew this place. Another memory? Leaning closer, she peered at the shape of the evergreen-covered hills and the dock, all familiar.

“The fish that didn’t get away,” Zach said. “I caught a minnow that day, as Dad is very fond of reminding me. I threw it back.”

“Lake Horace,” she said, suddenly sure.

“You’ve been there?” Zach asked.

She felt herself deflate. “No.” She’d seen it in a photo on the mantel, one of the fake photos that the agency had made. “I mean … yes. I … spent a few summers there as a little kid.”

“You remember the bait shop on East Main? My father swears by their tackle. We’d stop there on the way up, buy Dr. Peppers and bait, and then we’d spend the afternoons on the lake.”

She swallowed a lump in her throat. She didn’t know why her eyes suddenly felt hot. “Sounds nice.”

“Yeah, well, out of the four of us in that boat—me, Dad, his fish, and my minnow—I think the only happy one was that minnow. I set him free.” He guided her to another photo, a boy and a man with hats and goggles who were bundled in pillowlike coats and pants. “Another of Dad’s favorite activities, skiing. This shot is memorable as the ‘before’ image on the day I broke my arm.” He pointed to another. “And this was my first day of first grade. Clearly, I would not have acquiesced to the tie if I’d had any choice.”

From the kitchen, his mother called, “You looked adorable! And it was a hairline fracture.”

“I looked like a tool. Sheer luck I wasn’t saddled with horrific nicknames for all of elementary school. Do you have any nicknames?”

Eve shook her head. Aidan called her “Green Eyes,” but she didn’t want to think about him. She was safely inside Zach’s house, away from him, away from the agency, away from anyone who knew who she used to be. She peered at another photo, a little girl on a swing. The girl was so clearly laughing that you could almost hear it through the picture. A boy—Zach, much younger—was behind her, also laughing. Sunlight was caught in his eyes. “That looks like a happy memory.”

“My sister.” Zach’s voice was flat. “She died when I was eight.”

“Oh.” Eve was aware that she was supposed to say more. But her mind felt blank. He stared at the photo for a long time, as if he were trying to memorize the way her curls flew into the air with the wind.

“You’re right, though,” Zach said at last. “That day was happy.”

Side by side, they looked at the picture.

Zach broke the silence. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

Maybe, she thought. She could have dozens or none. Her stomach felt as if it were squeezed tight. She couldn’t remember one happy day or horrible day with her family, at least not with any certainty. “I live with my aunt.”

“Right. I know.” He looked as though he wanted to ask more. But he didn’t. “Come on. Back porch has chairs you can actually sit on, as opposed to the living room, which is designed solely for Victorian women in corsets.” He tugged on her elbow, and she followed him to an enclosed porch at the back of the house. The porch had windows on all sides, as well as three skylights. Flowering plants hung from each corner, and a fan turned overhead, stirring the warm air. Most of the windows were open. Screens kept the bugs outside.

Behind them, Zach’s mom appeared with a tray holding two tall glasses filled with yellow liquid, lots of ice, and little plastic swords that pierced slices of lemon. “Lemonade?” she said brightly. She laid the tray down on a wicker table.

Zach sighed again. “Thanks, Mom. You really didn’t have to.”

His mom patted his cheek. “I like to. Don’t deny me this.” She scurried back inside and shut the door behind her. A stained-glass sailboat hung on the door. It swayed from the motion of the shutting door.

“Your mom …” Eve stopped. She couldn’t say what she was thinking—that he was lucky to know his mother. She wondered if her own mother missed her, and she wished she could miss her mother. She couldn’t ask what it was like to have a mother. I’m broken, Eve thought. Empty pieces were rattling inside her. She thought again of the forest. She remembered she’d felt safe when she’d been carried through the trees. Whoever he was—father, brother, uncle, friend—he had made her feel safe.

“I don’t want to talk about her,” Zach said, again in that flat voice. “Let’s talk more about you, okay? How did you discover you can … you know? Does anyone else know?”

“My aunt knows. And her friend Malcolm.”

“The guy who drops you off, right? Large, African American man with legs the size of sequoia tree trunks? Looks like a bodyguard, right down to the leather jacket and the shades? Probably knows six kinds of martial arts and carries a knife in his socks?”

“It’s a gun.”

Zach’s eyes widened. “I can never tell if you’re serious or if you have the most awesome deadpan delivery of any person alive.”

Eve shrugged and looked out at Zach’s backyard. It was perfectly manicured. The grass was brilliant green like the front yard and looked as if it had been combed so that all the blades bent in the same direction. Flowering bushes framed the yard, and a patio with a table and chairs was in the center. Gardening supplies were artfully stacked in another corner. Everything had its place. Its precision reminded her of a hospital room. She shuddered and looked away. To hide her reaction, she took a lemonade and sipped it. The tartness felt like a pinch on her tongue. She set the glass down again.

“So, what can you do?” Zach asked. It was the same question Victoria had asked her. But unlike Victoria, he didn’t stop there. Questions tumbled out of his mouth as if they were in a hurry to escape him. “How much magic can you transfer at a time? What are its limitations? What fuels it? Is it innate? Is it powered by something? Powered by kisses? Are you a succubus sucking my life force?” He sucked in a deep breath and then blew it out. Eve couldn’t help smiling. “Yay! A smile, at last! Eve, what you have, what you can do … it’s wonderful, amazing, incredible, worthy of a smile! And so are you. Even if you are a succubus.”

He took her hand. She let him. Her hand was awkward in his, as if his fingers weren’t sure how to encompass hers. It didn’t feel like holding Aidan’s hand; it didn’t feel practiced. Zach cradled her hand in both of his, and his hands shifted from position to position.

“Don’t be afraid, Eve. Not of this. You can be afraid of spiders or snakes or airplane crashes or a zombie apocalypse … but don’t be afraid of yourself.”

He was right. She’d come here so she wouldn’t have to be afraid. She looked out at the perfect lawn and tried to think of this house as a sanctuary. For one afternoon, she didn’t have to be afraid of Aidan, the case, her magic, or her visions. Of course it wouldn’t last, but for the space of a few moments, she could feel free.

“Eve?” Zach asked, a little hesitantly.

Eve looked into his warm, brown, hopeful eyes. She felt as if she were looking straight into his heart. She wondered if this was what it felt like to fall in love. She had nothing to compare it to. But she knew that more than anything else, right this moment, she wanted to make him smile. “Do you want to try to make it rain?” she offered.

She watched delight spread over his face.

“Think of rain,” she ordered him. And then she kissed him. For that moment, it felt as if the rest of the world melted away. She let go of her worries, fears, memories, questions, all of it. She was conscious of the taste of his lips, the feel of his breath, and the soft smell of his skin.

She heard Zach’s mother say, “Oh my!”

Eve and Zach sprang apart.

His mother stepped onto the porch carrying a tray of sandwiches, enough for six people, but she wasn’t looking at Eve or Zach. She laid the tray on the table next to the lemonade. “It wasn’t supposed to rain today. I’d better pull in the patio chair cushions.” She scurried outside as the first drop of rain hit.

“Whoa,” Zach said.

Rain fell fast. Drops hit the slate patio like bullets.

“Good thing I didn’t think of a tornado,” Zach said.

Eve agreed.

“You’ve never done this before?”

She shook her head, and then she jumped as her pocket buzzed and trilled. She pulled out the cell phone and stared at it as it shook and sang in her hand. Zach reached over and pressed the Talk button. She felt her face flush, and she put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Are you safe?” Malcolm asked in her ear.

She looked at Zach. “Yes.” She meant it. With him, she felt completely safe.

“I am coming to fetch you now,” he said. “Stay exactly where you are, keep away from windows, and don’t ever, ever do this again.” She heard a click, and the phone call ended.

“Your aunt?” Zach asked.

She shook her head, staring at the silent phone. She’d never heard Malcolm sound like that, as if he were radiating anger.

“Big black guy with the gun in his sock?”

She nodded.

“Are you in some kind of trouble? I don’t mean only right now. I mean, you look out the window a lot. You’re jumpy. I just … Are you safe?”

She flinched at the repetition of Malcolm’s question, and suddenly she didn’t feel so safe anymore. The porch had windows on three sides. The flowering bushes could be hiding anyone.

Rain pelted outside. Zach’s mother raced toward the porch, holding an array of pillows to her chest. Zach got to his feet. “I’d better help her.”

Eve didn’t move. Rain smacked the roof, loud as a hammer. She’d been stupid to come here, stupid to involve Zach. Zach shielded his head with his arms and ran outside to fetch more chair cushions. His mother dumped her batch of cushions inside and then ran back into the rain.

As they finished, Eve heard the squeal of tires from the front of the house. Seconds later, the doorbell rang. “Oh!” Zach’s mother said. Her makeup ran down her cheeks, and her hair was flattened against her face. Her blouse was plastered to her skin, and her pants were stained with rain. She hurried to the door, poking at her hair to try to fix it. Eve heard the door open. “Yes?”

A deep voice answered in a familiar rumble. Eve stood. Without meeting Zach’s eyes, she walked toward the voice, through the hallway of family photos.

Malcolm towered in the front doorway. Rain streaked his face and plastered his coat to the muscles in his arms. He fixed his eyes on her, but he addressed Zach’s mother.

Behind her, so soft that only Eve could hear, Zach said, “You didn’t answer me. Are you safe?”

Eve didn’t answer. I’m supposed to be, she thought, looking at Malcolm. She thought of Aidan and the hesitation in his voice as he’d answered that question.

“You might want to learn how to lie,” she said at last.