Conjured (11 page)

“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.

After aidan drove away, Eve knocked on the front door. She still didn’t have a key. Or if she did, she didn’t know where she had put it. She might have to invent a lie for why she didn’t have it.

The lies pulled on her like weights on her limbs, and she suddenly felt exhausted.

She wished she could simply walk down the street away from the house and keep walking until she was somewhere else where no one knew or remembered her any better than she knew or remembered them. But Malcolm’s car sat dark and silent across the street, and she had already knocked.

She heard footsteps inside. Sharp, loud, close. And then the door swung open.

“Oh, it’s you,” Aunt Nicki said. “I was hoping for something more interesting. Like a delivery of soap.” She waved her hand at Malcolm’s car, and he drove away. The street was empty except for parked cars and recycling bins. Aunt Nicki checked outside and then waved Eve inside.

Eve lingered in the hallway, looking for other changes that she might have missed in the morning—other clues to what she was supposed to know. She flipped through a stack of mail scattered on a small table. Most of the envelopes were addressed to “resident” or “occupant.” She supposed that was what she was, an occupant. She didn’t feel like she was home. She was merely occupying space.

Aunt Nicki bustled past her. “Worst part about this babysitting duty is that housecleaning isn’t included. Not enough cleaners with the right security clearance. Okay, obviously, that’s not the worst part.”

Eve faced the wall with the photo of a dead tree. She tried to force herself to picture “home,” to remember what it felt like to be there. If she was so sure that this
wasn’t
home, then what was? Did it have a smell, a sound, a color, a temperature? Anything?
Remember!
she shouted at her mind. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes. Her hands clenched into fists. She tried to focus on the single word “home.”

A towel smacked into her stomach, and Eve flinched.

“You dust,” Aunt Nicki said as she went into the living room.

Eve examined the towel. It had a smear of grease on one side, and the edges were frayed. She must have helped Aunt Nicki or someone clean before because she knew she was supposed to wipe down surfaces with it. At home? Or only here?

She peeked into the living room. The vacuum lay across the carpet. Aunt Nicki was squirting blue liquid onto the
mirror and then wiping it away. Eve entered the room and began dusting the coffee table. It had a thin film of gray dust that smeared as she rubbed it with the towel. Coffee rings were permanently ingrained in the wood. She moved aside a stack of magazines:
Country Gardens, Better Homes and Gardens, Fine Gardening
, and
Guns & Ammo
. “You like flowers?” Eve asked.

Another squirt on the mirror. “I like guns. Malcolm likes flowers.”

Examining the magazines, Eve tried to picture Malcolm in a garden. He’d loom over daffodils and crush any seedlings.

“He claims that weeding is therapeutic.” Aunt Nicki wiped the mirror and then squirted again. “He has his entire backyard mapped out so the plants bloom clockwise from spring to fall. Plus an entire wall of rhododendron bushes in garish fuchsias and purples. I know, I know, you wouldn’t think it to look at him. But he’s a mush inside. Likes to nurture flowers and puppies and broken kids.”

There was that word again. Broken.
She’s broken
. Could it have been Aunt Nicki’s voice? She hadn’t caught the voice, but the memory of the rest of the vision was as strong as a real memory, maybe stronger. She could picture the box she’d been trapped in: a wooden box, encrusted in jewels, with a silver snake-shaped clasp. The box was the size of a person’s hand. She’d been shrunk to fit inside it. Inside the box had reeked so badly that it had made her eyes sting. But she remembered worse smells: decay, a putrid and acidic stench that wafted through the air, and thick, cloying incense, overlaid to
hide the odor. “If I’m not a witness, why do you want me to remember so badly?” Eve asked.

Aunt Nicki stopped wiping. Blue dripped down the surface of the mirror. “Who said you weren’t a witness?” Her voice was careful, casual.

“Aidan. He said we’re merely targets.”

“Aidan isn’t supposed to discuss the case.”

Eve noticed she hadn’t denied it. “So I am a witness?”

The blue pooled on the mantel. “That boy has never had a truly casual conversation in his life. He always chooses his words. He
doesn’t
slip. What else did he say?”

Eve wished she hadn’t spoken. She pointed to the mantel. “The blue is dripping.”

“Yeah, and you missed a spot.” Aunt Nicki waved her hand at the coffee table. “I can’t imagine what he was thinking. You might be dense as a rock on an average day, but still …”

She remembered that Aidan had said,
Don’t play dense. It doesn’t suit you
. The same word. She wondered if that meant anything. “He said I wasn’t. Dense. I’m not dense.”

“Apparently not anymore. What is going on with you? Lately, you’re asking as many questions as a toddler.”

Eve shrugged and looked down at the towel that she was squeezing and twisting and strangling in her hands without realizing it. “Nothing.” She didn’t want to talk about herself anymore. “How was your day?”

Aunt Nicki’s eyes bulged like a bullfrog’s. “You have never once asked me that.”

“Oh.” Eve bent her attention to the coffee table, scrubbing
away every speck of dust that had dared to land on it. She artfully arranged the magazines like she’d seen the receptionist do in the agency lobby. She then paid meticulous attention to the coffee table legs. She didn’t look up. After a minute, she heard the squirt of Aunt Nicki’s cleaning supplies.