Conjured (21 page)

“Your objection was noted, but we have no choice. He
will
start again. My sources have confirmed it. It’s a matter of when and who and where, not if.” Lou pointed a finger at Eve and then at the leather couch. “Lie down. Use your magic. Have a vision. Tell us what you see.”

Eve didn’t move. She must have heard him wrong. He couldn’t be asking her to …
No
, she thought. She couldn’t have done this before. She couldn’t have seen all those people!

She turned back to the bulletin board and tried to remember them again—but looking at them was looking at strangers. Except for the antlered girl and the boy with the tattoos. Eve wished she could run. She wanted to be as far from this place, these people, this case, as possible. But the photos stared at her.
He won’t stop
, Malcolm had said to her once.
He’ll find another way. If we don’t catch him, it will begin again
.

The antlered girl, Victoria’s sister, had worn silks and
velvets, Eve remembered. But she never wore shoes. She’d run through the forest at dawn while the undergrowth was still damp with dew and the air filled with birdsong. Eve had watched her, her bare feet pounding down the same path every morning. She’d skip over a brook, and it would burble and babble at her feet. Her footfalls were soft on the needles, but she was still loud enough to startle birds out of the underbrush and cause the squirrels to scurry to the tops of the trees. She had run alone.

Eve moved to the photo marked number two, the boy with tattoos. She leaned close until her nose almost touched the bulletin board. The tattoos looked like serpents that were woven so tightly together it was impossible to tell where one snake began and another ended. The scales bled into one another. She could picture a box with a clasp encrusted in silver serpents, a replica of those tattoos.

There’s truth in my visions
, she thought, and she felt her stomach churn. She tasted bile. If her visions were memories, or even twisted versions of real memories …

She realized both Lou and Malcolm were watching her. Arms crossed, Lou was drumming his fingers on his bicep. She wondered how many visions she’d already had and what she’d seen, and realized she was shaking.

Lou exhaled in a puff. “Just do it. Every moment you waste—”

“But I’ll lose days!” For every memory she gave them, she lost dozens more. “How many times have we had this conversation? How many times have I forgotten everything I’ve
done?” She waved her hand at all the photos on the bulletin board. “How many times have I forgotten everything I thought, felt, decided, believed? Everything I cared about? Everything I am?”

Malcolm was silent. He looked at Lou.

“We have had this conversation three times,” Lou said. “And we will have it again. And you
will
remember because otherwise people will die.”

Eve felt herself deflate.

“You will be here the entire time.” Malcolm’s voice was soothing, and he steered her gently to the couch. “You will be safe. You don’t have to be afraid.”

“Was I afraid before?” Eve lay down. She crossed her arms over her chest and felt as if she were lying in a coffin. The couch cushions were stiff and smelled of smoke.

Malcolm hesitated, as if he wanted to lie. “Every time.”

She leaned back onto the pillows. Her heart was pounding hard, so hard that it hurt. She laid her hands over her chest as if it were a bird that she wanted to hold inside her ribs. Her ribs were a cage, and her heart was a bird, and it was fluttering its wings so very fast. It would escape, and it would fly to the sky and leave her body to die, heartless and without memories on the couch.

“You don’t always forget.” Malcolm patted her hand. “Sometimes you remember—at least until next time.” He smiled as if this should reassure her. It didn’t.

“Get on with it,” Lou said.

She thought of a bit of magic she could do, harmless magic.
She remembered the flowers that Zach had grown in the library. She spread her hands and imagined there were flowers growing from them. Bark spread over her hands. Leaves sprouted between her fingers.

“Don’t transform!” Lou said sharply.

But it was too late. She was wood inside. She felt it spread, calming her, steadying her. She felt his voice recede until it was merely wind. He was shouting; she could see his lips move, and doctors were rushing into the office. Then bark sealed over her eyes, and she saw nothing until the smoke rolled in.

Smoke curls around me in shapes: a snake, a dragon, a cat, a hand … and then it dissipates into a formless haze. I am suspended in the smoke. Ropes are wrapped around my wrists, my elbows, my shoulders, my knees, my neck
.

I feel safe
.

Cocooned, I spin slowly, and the ropes wrap tighter around me. And then I spin in the other direction, and the ropes unwrap. I twist. I untwist
.

And then the ropes loosen, and I fall
.

The ropes snap. I scream
.

I am lying facedown in the muddy dirt. My arms shake as if they have never been used before, but I push myself upright
.

I am on the dirt floor of the carnival tent, in a row of feet and legs. Around me, above me, hands are clapping for a performance that I didn’t hear or see. Up farther, faces are smeared with white
paint and rose circles. Garish eyes are painted on foreheads and necks and chests. I can’t see the stage. It is shrouded in smoke, my smoke, that billows and puffs into a snake, a dragon, a cat, a hand … But I am outside the smoke, between strangers, and I do not feel safe anymore
.

Pushing past the legs and climbing over the feet, I squeeze down the row until I reach the aisle. At last, I can see the stage. It is draped in red velvet and lit by candles that line the edge
.

A cello plays slowly
.

The Magician pushes a box onstage. It is larger than those in the wagon, but it is undeniably the same. I recognize its gilded edges and the silver clasp. Staring at it, I feel my rib cage shrink inside me. It’s hard to breathe, and the smoke-laden air scratches my throat
.

A girl with many arms scuttles onto the stage, pushing a freestanding silver mirror with two of her arms and using her other arms as extra legs. She positions the mirror behind the Magician, and then disappears back into the smoke
.

Looking around, I see a break in the tent at the back of the audience. I walk toward it, away from the stage and the Magician and the box
.

I hear a gasp, then whispers
.

Hands point to the stage, but I do not look, will not look. I walk toward the exit, faster, but it seems farther away with each step
.

At last I reach it and push aside the curtain. And face a silver wall
.

In the silver, I see a reflection of the stage behind me. The
Magician has opened the box. He is looking over the audience at me, or at the silver wall. In the mirror, a boy with white-yellow hair and thin eyes stares out at me
.

I look over my shoulder … but there’s no boy. I am the boy
.

I look back at the silver, and now I am a taller boy with leopard-spot tattoos on my neck. Leather straps cross my chest, and a sword is strapped to my back. I reach back to touch it, and the hand of the boy in the mirror reaches in sync with me. The reflection touches the sword, but I feel nothing. I look for the sword—and this time when I look back at the silver, I am a girl with feathers in my hair and glittering scales on my arms
.

I reach to touch the reflection—and melt into it. Cold slices through me as I walk forward. Light pricks my eyes. I block my eyes with my arm and squint until my eyes adjust to the stabs of light
.

I am behind the Magician on the stage
.

The box, fully open, is in front of him. He flourishes his cape and then beckons with one finger. It is many-jointed, and it curls like a snake. I know without seeing his face that he is smiling
.

The audience stares at me with their unblinking painted eyes
.

A boy walks onto the stage, slowly and stiffly, as if he were pulled by puppet strings. He’s young, not yet a man, and he has dark hair and dark skin. He wears an embroidered gold shirt. And I know he is about to die
.

I want to warn him. Or stop him. Or force him to run away with me, far, far away until we can’t hear the tinny sound of the carousel or feel the painted eyes of the audience
.

But ropes wrap around my body, weaving themselves around my wrists, elbows, legs … tighter, tighter, until I cannot even shudder. I am lifted into the air and watch from above as the boy climbs into the box and lies down. The Magician closes the box
.

He lifts a saw over his head. He turns, showing the saw to the front, the left, the right. It is the saw of a woodcutter. Candlelight dances over the blade, caressing it
.

The audience is hushed, expectant, excited. I feel it in the air
.

The Magician begins to saw the box in half, and blood drips onto the stage and runs in a river that douses the candles. I swing from the rafters as smoke rises. It thickens and curls around me. Obscuring the stage, it shapes itself into a snake and a hand and a cat …

Eve woke in a hospital bed.

She lifted her hand. She hadn’t been strapped down this time. Spreading her fingers, she didn’t see leaves or bark. Maybe she had only imagined it. Or maybe the doctors had fixed her. She wondered if she looked the same. Her hands went to her face, and she touched the shape of her cheekbones, her chin, her forehead. She wondered how much time had passed.

“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
skritch
ing 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.