Conjured

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Zach dropped her hand and jumped back. His cheeks were tinted pink. “Patti will be by to check on us. We should, um, look useful.”

  Eve turned away from him and toward the shelves. “So … we shelve?”

  “Or we select a book, mock it relentlessly, and then put it back on the shelves, which is pretty much the same thing that you said.”

  She supposed that’s what they’d been doing these past weeks. That seemed nice.

  Side by side, they scanned through the books, shifting those that were out of order. She was aware of his movements, taking a book down, shifting others over, and reshelving. Shelf by shelf, they worked through the section.

  She wished she could remember this. She wished it so hard that her fingers shook. She had to squeeze the books to hold them steady. Yes, she’d lost memories before, but this time … This time it felt so much more immediate. She’d spent hours, days, in these bookshelves with this boy. She felt like if she reached out she could pull the trace of her lost self from the air around her. The memories should linger here, like ghosts. Ghost memories, all around her. Eve spread her fingers out and stared at them as if she could will them to catch and hold her lost memories.

  She wondered if she’d lose today too, the next time her mind betrayed her. She didn’t want it to slip through her fingers. She wanted to do something, something momentous, that would fix it in her memory so it couldn’t slip away into nothingness, erased in a single, arbitrary moment.

  “Zach?” Eve said.

  “Hmm?”

  Eve leaned toward him and pressed her lips against his. His eyes flew wide, and she felt him freeze. But as she was about to pull away, he kissed her back.

  She didn’t know she knew how to kiss. She had no memory of kissing anyone. But still, it felt natural, and it felt right. Eve wrapped her arms around his neck and wove her fingers into his soft, soft hair. She tasted his breath; still a hint of cream cheese. Close to her, his body felt warm, and his lips moved gently against hers as if whispering silent secrets.

  She closed her eyes, shutting out the view of the books around them. The sound of distant voices, footsteps, the hum of computers, the rustle of pages, all faded. She could no longer feel the carpet beneath her feet. The solid ground had melted away, and she felt as if she were floating.

  It felt both unreal and wonderfully real at the same time.

  “Enough,” a woman’s voice said.

  Zach broke away.

  And then they fell.

  Their feet hit hard on the carpeted floor. Zach staggered backward, catching himself on the shelves. Eve reached forward, steadying herself on him. He gripped her elbows. “What was—” he began. His eyes widened as he looked beyond Eve’s shoulder, and he released Eve. “Ms. Langley!”

  Catching her balance, Eve pivoted to face Patti Langley. The librarian looked pale, and Eve thought she saw a hint of fear. But it vanished fast, hidden beneath a scowl.

  “Did you see that?” Zach asked her.

  “Unfortunately, yes.” Patti placed her hands on her hips. “This is not appropriate behavior for a library. I’d expected better of both of you.”

  Zach waved his hand at the ceiling. “No, no, I mean—we were flying! Seriously, feet off the ground! You must have seen it.”

  Eve opened her mouth and then shut it. She’d felt it too. But it wasn’t possible. If she’d used magic, she would have fallen into a vision, not straight down onto the carpet, awake and alert. “We couldn’t have been.”

  He looked at her. “You do sweep me off my feet in a clichéd, metaphoric way. But this was literal! You must have felt it. We crashed down!”

  Eve shook her head. She knew how it worked—if she used magic, she collapsed. It was the one constant. “It must have been your imagination.”

  “There was no flying,” Patti said. “Or floating. Or even hopping enthusiastically. There were only two library pages who weren’t shelving.” She waved at the shelves and the half-full book cart nearby.

  “But—” Zach began.

  Patti held up her hand. “Zachary, I’m going to have to ask you to work the front desk for the rest of the day.”

  He turned to Eve. “Eve—”

  “It was a nice kiss. So nice it made me dizzy.” Eve withdrew from him. “But my feet didn’t leave the floor, and neither did yours.”

  “I was sure—”

  “Zachary,” Patti said. “Now.”

  Eve forced herself to smile at him. “You should do what she says.” Shooting glances over his shoulder, Zach retreated through the shelves.

  Both Patti and Eve were silent until Zach was gone.

  Patti leveled a finger at Eve. “I can see the wrongness gathering around you like a storm.” She tapped her sternum above her extra eyes as she said “see.” “When your storm breaks … don’t catch that boy in it. And don’t use magic in my library ever again.”

  She left before Eve could think of a reply.

  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 th
ere 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 anti
septic, 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.