Текст книги "Conjured"
Автор книги: Sarah Beth Durst
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
“Want a mirror?” Aunt Nicki asked.
Eve started. She hadn’t noticed Aunt Nicki was there. Aunt Nicki was curled on a chair next to the hospital bed. She had an array of empty, stained coffee cups next to her and a magazine on her lap. Searching her purse, Aunt Nicki produced a small case. She flipped it open and held the mirror up to Eve’s face.
She didn’t see the antlered girl, or the boy with the leopard tattoos, or anyone from a photo on the bulletin board. She saw only the face she remembered, the girl with green eyes.
“Neat trick you pulled,” Aunt Nicki said. “Don’t do it again. Can’t put a lilac bush—or whatever you were—on the witness stand.”
Eve felt her cheek, and her fingers touched smooth skin. “More surgeries?”
“You changed yourself back. Don’t you remember? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Clearly you don’t, and no, I am not going to play twenty questions with you so you can figure out how much time you lost. You’ll only forget again, so what’s the point?”
Eve turned her face away from the mirror and stared through the bars of the hospital bed at the blank wall. This room did not have windows. Beside her, machines beeped in a steady rhythm. She had an IV attached to her arm. She heard Aunt Nicki’s chair creak, and then rustling, as if Aunt Nicki were searching through her purse again.
“Okay, I need the details,” Aunt Nicki said. Paper crinkled, and a pen clicked.
Eve didn’t turn her head. “It’s real, isn’t it? The people that I see …” Her voice sounded dead to her ears. She felt so very tired, as if all the pain and surprise and fear had been drained out of her, replaced by the saline that dripped into her veins through the needle in her arm.
“Faces? Names? Locations? Come on, I know the visions aren’t fun. Don’t let them be pointless too. Share with your auntie.”
Eve listened to the heart monitor and told Aunt Nicki every detail she could remember—the smoke, the audience with the painted eyes, the boy in the box, the silver mirror and her changing reflections. Aunt Nicki scribbled notes as Eve talked, the pen skritching over the paper. Eve also heard the click of a voice recorder, and she knew she was being filmed by at least two security cameras focused on the hospital bed.
“Great,” Aunt Nicki said. “Photo time.” She dumped the tablet onto Eve’s lap. Eve tried to prop herself up on her elbows. An alarm shrieked. Aunt Nicki silenced it and waved away the guard and nurse who had shoved through the door side by side.
Aunt Nicki picked up the tablet and scrolled to the first face. “Do you recognize her?”
Eve shook her head.
Aunt Nicki slid to the next photo.
Another shake.
Next photo.
No.
Next.
No.
Next.
No.
Another. And another. And another.
“Yes.” Eve studied the boy with the embroidered gold shirt. “Yes, this is the one I saw.”
Aunt Nicki was silent for a moment.
Eve turned her head to look at her. Her face looked raw, pain clear on her features. She then switched off the tablet and stowed it in her bag. She didn’t meet Eve’s eyes.
“I knew him,” Aunt Nicki said quietly. “He was one of the best.” She stood and put her bag over her shoulder. “You should sleep now.”
Eve thought of the smoke and the box. “I don’t think I can.”
Aunt Nicki smiled, but it was a cold smile. She twisted a dial on the IV. “You will.” She left the room. The door closed behind her.
Eve watched the monitor as her heart rate slowed, and she faded into dreamless darkness.
Chapter Fifteen
As Malcolm talked to the nurses outside her room, Eve shed her blue hospital gown and dressed in ordinary clothes. She raked a brush through her hair and thought of the boy in the golden shirt. He’d admired the acrobats: three men with red-and-orange feathers that had either sprouted from their skin or been sewn into it. They’d been practicing a routine where they’d tossed one another into the air and rode the wind high above the carnival tent, spinning and swirling before plummeting in a dive that ended in a tumble. All three had been more graceful than birds, silent in their aerial dance. One had unfurled a ribbon from his wrist. Another had caught it and swung, and then they’d painted the sky with silks of ruby, emerald, and gold. Flipping over one another, they’d woven the ribbons into a circle that they then let flutter to the ground. Hands outstretched, the boy in gold had caught the circle of ribbons. He’d then flown into the sky with it—without hidden wires, a trapeze, or ribbons to lift him—and met the acrobats in the air.
In that world, the carnival had been beneath a city in the trees. Above them, vast structures had been woven into the branches, and the homes had been like enclosed nests. As the acrobats flew overhead, the Storyteller had nestled in the roots of one of the trees. She had told tales about birds who guarded treasure while silver-clad monkeys stole everlasting fruit. While listening to her, Eve had watched the golden boy.
Bits of memory or bits of imagination?
Eve didn’t know, and she couldn’t summon the energy to care. She felt drained, as if someone had siphoned every drop of blood and moisture out of her body and left her a husk.
Leaving the hospital room, Eve joined Malcolm at the nurses’ station. He glanced at her and then handed the paperwork to an expressionless nurse with slicked-back hair. The nurse filed the papers and then turned to Eve. “Wrist,” the nurse commanded.
Eve glanced at Malcolm to interpret this cryptic statement, and he tapped his left wrist. She wore an ID bracelet. She hadn’t noticed it. As she lifted her arm up, she read the bracelet: PATIENT 001. She wondered if that meant she was their only patient or their first. She didn’t ask. The nurse snipped the plastic band off and dropped it in the trash.
“Keep her hydrated,” the nurse said to Malcolm, as if Eve weren’t capable of listening to and following instructions. Maybe I’m not, Eve thought. She wondered how many instructions she’d heard and forgotten over the weeks, months, or however long she’d been with WitSec. “Lots of rest. You keep pushing her like this, and I won’t be held responsible.”
“It’s not my call, not anymore,” Malcolm said. “The situation changed.” Eve looked sharply at him. “But I will do what I can. Her well-being is always my priority.” Hand on her shoulder, Malcolm guided Eve away from the nurses’ station. She wondered what had changed and if it would do any good to ask. Swiping his ID card, Malcolm unlocked a door and led her through a white hall to an elevator. He pushed the down button. The doors slid open—
She knew this elevator: the brown-walled interior and the worn carpet, the tinny music that drifted out the open door.
This isn’t a hospital, she realized.
She’d never left the agency.
Eve followed Malcolm into the elevator. He punched the button for the garage, and the doors slid closed. The elevator lurched down. She’d been on level four. The offices were three. Level five had the room with the silver walls.
“How many times?” Eve asked dully.
Malcolm raised his eyebrows.
“I was at the pizza place with Aidan, Topher, and Victoria. You brought me here. How long have I been here?”
“Seven,” Malcolm said.
“Days or visions?”
“Days,” he said as the elevator opened. “I don’t know how many visions.”
Seven lost days, she thought. Numbly, she followed him out of the elevator and through the garage to yet another black car. She climbed into the passenger seat, snapped on her seat belt, and rested her head against the window as Malcolm drove out of the garage.
“You need rest,” Malcolm said. “I told Lou this was too intense. You need the memories to return more naturally—through association or memory prompts, not self-inflicted comas. But Lou’s under pressure with the latest incidents—” He cut himself off.
“Tell me more of your memories,” Eve said. “You told me about your mother singing. Tell me about your father. Nice memories. I only want nice memories.” Nice memories to scrub away the smoke and blood inside her.
He drove out of the parking garage. “My memories?” He sounded relieved, as if he’d expected other questions, but Eve couldn’t bring herself to ask the real questions or hear about “incidents,” not when she felt as if she’d been scraped raw inside. “Okay … um, let me think … My dad and I used to play basketball. When I was a kid, he’d lift me halfway up to the basket. I’d dunk it in, and he’d cheer and shake me in the air like I was a trophy.” Taking one hand off the steering wheel, he demonstrated the shaking. “But I’d never made a basket on my own until one summer, when my father was away for two weeks. Every day of those two weeks, I practiced for hours. And the next Saturday, when Dad asked me to shoot hoops with him, I shot the basket from the ground by myself. My dad lifted me up and shook me like a trophy.”
Eve closed her eyes. “Tell me more.”
“My father was a cop, and he hoped I’d follow in his footsteps. Have a son on the force, you know? On the day I told him I was a US marshal … I swear he wanted to lift me in the air and shake me like a trophy. Only reason he didn’t was that I outweighed him by then. Also because my mom cried.”
Eve opened her eyes. The sky was cloudless blue. The trees were heavy with dark-green leaves, motionless in the still air. She watched the telephone poles pass. “Why did she cry?”
“She didn’t want me to be in any kind of law enforcement. She wanted me to be something safe like a veterinarian, even though I’m not good with animals. Hate cats. Okay with dogs. Don’t see the point of goldfish.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “Five years in, I was recruited for WitSec. Two years after that, a routine case proved to be anything but routine, and I came to the attention of the paranormal division. Para-WitSec is always looking for new agents. Since this is the only known nonmagical world, we are in high demand as a safe haven for witnesses of magical crimes. I was immediately assigned to multiple cases. All of it was classified, but I always wished I could have told her. As it was … she didn’t understand that my job is to keep other people safe. I’m doing what she—what both of them—taught me, what feels right and natural.”
Malcolm parked the car in front of the drab yellow house. She watched him get out, check the area, and then open her door. She stepped onto the sidewalk next to him.
“Was that the kind of thing you wanted to hear?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Good.” He slid on his sunglasses. “Because that’s as much sharing as I do. Go on in.” He nodded toward the house as Aunt Nicki swung the door open. Eve headed toward her, then glanced back over her shoulder at Malcolm.
Unmoving, he watched her from the sidewalk.
* * *
Inside, Aunt Nicki put her hands on her hips. “You look exhausted,” she pronounced. “And too thin.” She picked up Eve’s wrist and wrapped her fingers around it. “You’re wasting away. I don’t care how much pressure Lou is under. We can’t have you wasting away. Are you eating?”
Eve shrugged. She didn’t know how many of the seven days she’d spent in the hospital bed and how many in Malcolm’s office. “Intravenously, I think.”
“Doesn’t count.” Aunt Nicki bustled into the kitchen, and Eve followed. “Soup? Sandwich?” She checked the refrigerator. “I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich with microwaved tomato soup. Serious comfort food. You look in need of serious comfort food.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Did I ask if you were hungry?”
“Will you tell me your memories instead?”
Aunt Nicki slowed. She stared at her, blinked once. “Excuse me?”
“I want … to hear your memories. I’m hungry for memories.” It was the best way she could think of to put it. It felt like hunger, vast empty spaces yawning inside her that wanted to be filled.
“You are the weirdest kid that I have ever met.” Aunt Nicki sped up again, making a cheese sandwich and plopping it into a pan. It sat there, sad and unsizzling. She selected a cup of soup and put it in the microwave.
Eve sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Not looking at Aunt Nicki, she fiddled with the edge of a placemat. It curled as she kneaded it. She only had a few memories of her own, rattling in the emptiness inside her, and so few of them made sense. “Why do I have memories of them, the people on the bulletin board? And why do I know they died? Was I … was I there when they died?”
Aunt Nicki didn’t turn. Looking up at her, Eve saw that the muscles in her neck and shoulders were tense. “It’s what you choose going forward that defines who you are,” Aunt Nicki said. “Not what you chose in the past.”
“What did I choose?” Eve asked. “Why didn’t I stop their deaths? Could I have …” Her voice failed her, and she sat in silence. She clenched her hands in front of her on the placement.
Aunt Nicki flipped the sandwich. It was still pale yellow with unmelted chunks of butter on the other side. “Ah, yes, heat will help,” she said, falsely merry. She turned on the stove. “There we go.” She fetched a plate and a bowl and a spoon. Folding a napkin, she adjusted it so that it tucked neatly under the side of the plate.
“I need to know,” Eve said softly.
“You asked about my memories.” Aunt Nicki sat opposite Eve and uncurled Eve’s fingers. Eve had bunched up the corner of the placemat. Aunt Nicki smoothed it flat. “I spent a lot of time trying to forget my past. My childhood … Let’s say I did not have a perfect one. Spent a lot of time … Well, when I hit eighteen, that was it. I left it all behind.”
“I didn’t choose to leave my past behind,” Eve said. “It was taken from me.”
“Are you sure about that?” Aunt Nicki asked gently. The microwave dinged. She popped out of her chair, retrieved the soup, and flipped the sandwich. At the stove, her back to Eve, she said, “My father drank. My mother drank. My older brother … dead in prison by eighteen. Hanged himself. Or had someone help him. No one was ever sure. Can’t say I was sorry. He used to put out his cigarettes on my arm, at least until Dad stopped him with a baseball bat. After that, he left home, and Dad left soon after. Now, it’s just Mom and my baby brother. He’s in California, as far away as he could get. She’s in a nursing home and needs twenty-four-seven care, which I can barely afford. Alcohol ate her brain cells. She’s fifty-eight and barely knows her own name … She reminds me of you, actually, but you drool less. And so I chase down petty fugitives to pay her bills, when I’m not babysitting for someone who doesn’t know me and barely knows herself. But it’s my choice, to be the responsible one, to be the caretaker, to be the person who …” Aunt Nicki took a deep breath and turned around. “Point is, I invented me … maybe as a reaction to them … definitely as a reaction to them. I am myself in spite of my memories.”
“So are you saying I shouldn’t remember?” Eve asked.
“God, no,” Aunt Nicki said. “Lou would have my head. Especially now, with the latest developments. You need to remember faster.” She pushed away from the table and returned to the stove. A minute later, she flopped the grilled cheese sandwich onto a plate and slid it next to the soup in front of Eve. “Eat.”
Eve sipped her soup. It slid warmly down her throat. She bit into the sandwich, and the cheese singed the roof of her mouth. She puffed air to cool her mouth.
“Dip it,” Aunt Nicki suggested. She mimed dipping the sandwich into the soup.
Eve tried it. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s comfort food.” Eating it made the agency and the hospital and the visions feel far away. She couldn’t bring herself to ask about the “latest developments.” Most likely Aunt Nicki wouldn’t explain anyway.
She ate in silence and didn’t try to remember anything. If she couldn’t remember everything, she wondered if it would be easier if she remembered nothing. Aunt Nicki busied herself cleaning the kitchen. At last Eve asked, “Do you think I could do that? I mean, invent myself like you did.”
Aunt Nicki stopped. “I have absolutely no idea.”
As she turned that thought over and over in her mind, Eve finished the soup, running the last of the sandwich crust around the bowl.
Aunt Nicki cleared her dishes. “Get some sleep. That boy from the library is anxious to see you at work tomorrow. He’s been calling nonstop for the past week.”
Zach! Eve stood up. “I can call him back—”
Aunt Nicki shook her head. “Sleep. One more night won’t kill him.”
“Can you promise me that?”
“He’s not the primary target,” Aunt Nicki said. “I can promise you that.”
Eve thought of the who’s-next game from the cafeteria, and she wondered how many people—aside from Aidan, Topher, and Victoria—the marshals were protecting. For all she knew, there were hundreds hidden around the city or spread throughout this world. “Who’s the primary target?”
Aunt Nicki looked at her. “You,” she said. “It’s always been you.”
Eve nodded. Of course. She knew that. She’d always known that. She was the key, whatever that meant. “Thank you for the food.”
“Go.” Aunt Nicki waved toward the bedroom. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite, and all that.”
Eve tried to smile, failed, and gave up. She nodded to Aunt Nicki, then headed down the hall. She trailed her fingers over the faded hall wallpaper and thought of Zach. His hall had been filled with family memories.
She wondered if, someday, she could piece together bits of memories like that wall. Maybe if she accumulated enough little memories, she too could have a history. Thinking of that possibility, Eve opened the door to her bedroom.
Lying in the center of the quilt was the Magician’s hat.
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.
