“Now the incense,” Mirabelle said and I lit the stick of jasmine.
RJ returned from the kitchen, a glass bowl full of water in his hands.
“Oh good, put that over there,” Mirabelle directed him.
RJ set the bowl on the floor just inside the circle of candles where I sat. He gave me a thumb’s up and then retreated and settled on the couch beside Alex. He reached over and hit play on his phone. A second later, soft chimes dripping from RJ’s Bluetooth speakers sounded more like an alarm than music. Or maybe a death march. I was not optimistic about what would happen next.
Mirabelle stepped inside her own circle of candles and faced me. She’d changed too. A flowing gypsy skirt, multi-colored and quilted, flowing out at the ankles when she moved.
“Is all this really necessary?” I asked, looking from her to Wes as he returned. Tara hung back and I was glad. I didn’t want to see her now. I needed to focus.
“My part won’t take long,” Wes said, coming to sit in front of me just outside the candle circle.
“Then why all the ceremony?” I asked.
“That’s not for Wes,” Mirabelle explained. “That’s for you. For after.”
“What’s going to happen after?” I asked, nerves forming a tight ball in my stomach.
They exchanged a look. “We don’t know,” Wes admitted.
“Haven’t you done this before?” I asked, the words coming out high-pitched.
“I’ve done memory removal and alteration many times,” he said. “I rarely give them back and never after so long.”
I tried not to let my fury distract me but it was useless. “Which is why you have no business—” I began.
Mirabelle stopped me. “Ready?” she asked.
I took a deep breath, willing myself to calm down. Then, uncertainty hit all over again. “Um.” I didn’t want to lie but—
“Close your eyes,” Wes said.
I did as he said. A moment later, the music changed.
“Is that Florence and the—?” I began, one eye opening.
“Sshh. Eyes closed,” Mirabelle said.
I shut my eyes, squeezing my hands together in my lap.
A snicker sounded from the couch where I’d last seen RJ followed by a shuffle and a grunt. When I peeked, Tara had settled beside him and he looked extra serious.
I shut my eyes again and waited, uncertainty and nerves threatening to steal my concentration. I forced it all aside as Wes spoke again.
“With your eyes closed, focus on your senses. Breathe. In. Out.” Wes paused and I inhaled then exhaled slowly.
“In. Out. Think about your fingertips. Focus there. On the sensation of touch. Now inhale. Focus on smell. Ground yourself in this moment. Focus on it. Open yourself to it.” Wes spoke quietly, his voice low and soothing yet somehow also full of authority. Like he’d done this a thousand times. He probably had.
I focused on the moment. On my breath. On the feel of the oxygen inside my lungs. The hard floor beneath my hands and bare legs. On the crackling of the candle wicks at my feet. On the blood circulating in my veins.
Unbidden, images came to me. Memories from long ago. My childhood. Before I met Tara or Wes or any of them. My mother and father absent on a birthday, both of them stuck at work. Aunt Kiwi taking me for Chinese food. A weekend spent with my aunt in the mountains. Swimming in hot springs out west while she danced and swayed and chanted aloud, calling down the moon. I hadn’t understood then.
I barely did now.
But then I wasn’t the one pulling the strings here. Someone else was… sifting. Memories continued to flicker to life behind my closed lids. Like an old projector screen flipping through slides.
Time marched forward and I saw myself growing older. Adolescence morphed into puberty and beyond. A walk in the park with my mother. An injured bird. I bent to touch it and with one finger on its feathered wing, it jerked and jumped and screeched before flying away. My mother had screamed.
More time passed, flicking by like a card catalogue.
The scenes became more social. Less parental supervision. No more aunt Kiwi. No more injured animals or weird chants as bedtime stories. Slowly, I realized the random thoughts flitting through my head weren’t of my choosing. And they weren’t random.
My high school experience flashed in and out. Parties. Movies. Shopping. Me and my friends together in the hallway between classes. Mason with his arm around me senior year. My stomach had been a ball of angst and fear by then. Any second, someone would discover I wasn’t like them. I wasn’t normal. Even then, I’d known.
I tried yanking back, wanting to recover the earlier, happier times with the bird and the hot springs. But I couldn’t move the scenes anymore. I wasn’t in charge.
Mirabelle’s voice rang out. “Now, pick up the stone.”
I cracked an eyelid and reached for the stone, breathless. My movements were fast—I had to grab it before I could change my mind. The moment my hand closed over the cool, rough surface, everything changed.
I clutched it tightly to my chest to keep from dropping it, and my eyes squeezed shut against the rush inside me. Lines formed behind my lids. Black and yellow shots of light streaking across the darkness. Warmth built in my cheeks, sending a flush through my body, heating my face and throat. I squeezed harder against the rock in my fist as if the pressure could stave off what was coming.
What was coming?
Fear bubbled, and the streaks of light grew wider, bigger, faster. I squeezed my eyes tight against the urge to open them and end this. It felt like I was moving, even though I was perfectly aware of my butt still on the floor of RJ’s living room.
Mirabelle was chanting something; words I couldn’t understand. The music—a ballad with rich tones, echoing drum beats, and a haunting female voice—surrounded me. Covered me. Seeping in. Something about following the heart lines. The singer’s voice sounded like it came from inside my eardrum. My veins thrummed with the rhythm.
My palms itched but not like before—not like with the fur balls. It was as if I could feel the lines on my skin. The life lines, Mirabelle had called them once. Or maybe it was the very blood in my veins tracking from my hands to my heart. It was energy. It was all energy.
I couldn’t breathe but I was full of oxygen. Light as air.
I wanted to cry and sing and dance and melt into the floor.
Something was coming. Something I’d forgotten. A force that wasn’t my own hit me like a wall, knocking me sideways and suddenly I couldn’t tell if I was standing or sitting. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t need my body, anyway.
I opened my mouth—or I tried—to tell Mirabelle and the others goodbye. That I’d chosen to float away as this… whatever I was. A soul? But my voice wouldn’t work. Or it was gone. Or I was gone.
Energy—a white light of power and passion and consuming knowing—crept forward. The wall met my skin and kept coming. Sinking slowly inside me until it was me.
Mirabelle had been right all along. The Universe was waiting to talk to me if I’d just listen. All I had to do was open.
Two and a half years earlier…
My cheeks burned with an inner heat that sliced at my throat and skin until I couldn’t bear to touch my own body. Convulsions shook me, alternately sending me lurching forward or backward in my seat.
My couch felt like wood underneath me instead of soft cushions.
Flames licked at me from the inside out and I could almost track their burn from the center of my heart straight out into my hands. I was positive if I looked down, I would see my life lines lit up like glow sticks.
I couldn’t look.
And it wasn’t just that I was afraid. Sadness—a raw desolation unlike anything I’d ever experienced before—gripped me and I couldn’t bear to see evidence of… I didn’t exactly know what. A responsibility.
My friend, Angela, stared back at me from where she sat perched on my mother’s coffee table. I hated the way she was watching me: conce
rn, pity, fear. She pushed her glasses further up her nose and reached for my knee.
I tensed and when the next convulsion shook my body, I used it as an excuse to pull away from her touch.
“It’s going to be okay,” Angela murmured but I ignored her and instead stared at the overturned chair and broken lamp on the floor nearby.
My house was trashed. I couldn’t remember why. My jerky gaze swept the room, looking for some clue to remind me what had happened. Shock, I knew in the back of my mind. I was in shock. My thoughts were disjointed.
Just over Angela’s shoulder was another set of eyes. Dark like chocolate but hard like stone—his expression embodied a similar reaction to Angela’s. Except his concern was muted by nothing more than cold curiosity as he stared back at me. He held a hand to his side, clutching a bandage that was already seeping through with a red stain and his breaths were labored.
The room smelled like blood and animal hide. Or maybe it was simply a scent stuck in my own nose. In my sensory memory.
Wolves. I recalled it suddenly as if the memory had struck me over the head. Dozens of them—jaws wide open and aimed for me and my friends. Blood. Death. Men who became animals.
It was too much.
I opened my mouth and let out a piercing scream. Angela winced and shrank back and moved away from me. She picked up her phone and headed for the front door. “I’m going to try him again,” she said but it was lost to my screams.
The boy in the kitchen gave no indication he’d heard as Angela walked out.
Fine. Go, I thought.
No one can help me now.
My skin heated even more, burning and raging in an attempt to let loose whatever manic energy was trapped inside me.
I fell silent, drawing another sharp breath as I readied another scream. Already, my throat burned, but I couldn’t stop. It was as if someone—or something—else was calling the shots. My body didn’t feel like mine. I was foreign here. In this skin. In this current reality.
The boy from the kitchen watched me.
When my screams had died, I looked at his bloody bandage and pushed to my feet. Whatever odd sort of panic-induced possession was happening to me, it wanted me to go to him. I didn’t have it in me to refuse.
He watched me approach, more curious or concerned than worried.
“I told you I’m fine,” he said.
Angela had done it, I remembered. An accident. And he’d pretended it didn’t hurt. Somehow, I knew he always did that.
“I thought you were staying behind,” I said.
“Thought I’d stop by and check on you one more time,” he said.
I didn’t know why he’d bothered but I was glad he had. Angela didn’t feel safe anymore. None of them did, though I didn’t know why.
“They’re okay with that?” I asked, sarcasm dripping from it. I wanted to poke at his apparent obedience of Tara and Wes and the others, especially since they were the ones doing this to me. Whatever this was.
“They don’t know I’m here,” he said simply. “You did a number on this place.”
I paused and looked around, frowning. I had done this? I had broken everything?
I started toward him again and reached for him. Gently, I pried his hand and the bandage away. He let me, and when I pressed my palm over his wound, his skin was hot underneath mine.
I closed my eyes, drawing on something that didn’t belong to me. Or it did. But it certainly hadn’t been there before. And somehow, some part of me—that part that wasn’t panicking—just knew. And so I moved aside, letting the energy flow.
My palm grew warm and then hot. And then it was like liquid fire pouring out of me. Rushing. A waterfall. Or a broken dam. And no matter how much of it flowed up and out, much, much more remained. I was full of it.
But what the hell was it?
My eyes opened. The boy was silent and still under my touch. If the heat had overwhelmed him, his poker face was excellent. I waited for him to protest or ask what the hell I was doing, but he just stood, watching, waiting. I wondered if he knew what I was doing.
The front door opened and closed, slamming loudly into the momentary silence. I jumped back, my hand falling limp at my side and that strange awareness receding, until once again, panic was at the forefront. I backed away from the boy, stumbling back to the couch as I collapsed, listening as footsteps approached from my foyer.
I didn’t wait to see who it was before I screamed again.
Angela stopped just inside the living room, one hand pressed tight against her own mouth as if the motion would silence me. When a second person walked in behind her, the boy in the kitchen scowled and then turned away to replace his bandage.
I looked at the visitor Angela had brought with her. Auburn hair. Leather jacket. Car keys jingling in one hand.
I knew him. He was Wesley, my friend Tara’s boyfriend.
I thought he’d left when he dropped me off.
Without consciously deciding to do so, I sucked in another gulp of air, convulsed, and readied my lungs to scream again.
Wesley strode in and crouched in front of me, grabbing my hands roughly in his and looking right into my eyes. “Sam, stop it. You’re okay,” he said firmly. Loudly. Like he knew something I didn’t.
“I thought you already fixed it,” Angela said. She sounded detached. Worried, but not for me. For her own anxiety.
“I thought I did too.” Wes frowned. “It’s never taken a second dosing before. Whoa.” He got up and hurried toward the kitchen.
I swayed, and when I blinked again, the people in the room had all shifted somehow. I remembered what Wes had just said about a double dose. His strange words were enough to stem the noise already building once again in my throat. But rather than look back at Wes, I glanced over his shoulder to the boy in the kitchen.
The bloody bandage was gone. In its place was…nothing. Smooth skin, unmarred, unbroken. He pinned me with a look and then glanced at Wes, his mouth thinning.
He knew something. About life or about death or even about me. I wasn’t sure. But eyes like that knew secrets. Lots of them and none of them pretty. He was a boy who had hurt things and maybe even people.
Detail by detail, the information poured into me. I had no idea why or how I knew. But I didn’t doubt its truth. I’d been good with assumptions my entire life. Charmed, my mother said. Intuitive, my guidance counselor had called it. But I had a better word: knowing.
Something in me had always had a knack for knowing.
Except this boy didn’t want to be known. Not by anyone.
Wesley cleared his throat, shaking me lightly to get my attention. I heard him say something about my being too warm and Angela rushed to the kitchen, returning with a cool rag. Wesley nodded and she handed it over before backing away again.
I wanted to laugh at her hesitation. We’d been friends forever. I wouldn’t hurt her. Why was she trying to hurt me?
Rather than continue my screams, the heat inside me wouldn’t let me utter a sound now. I felt closed off, locked up. Still not in charge of my own actions.
Better she stayed away. I was aware of the convulsions, of my own teeth chattering as they wracked my body. I squeezed my hands tightly together, my fingers twisting painfully around each other.
Still, the boy in the kitchen just watched.
“What are you going to do?” Angela asked.
“Tara wants me to help,” Wesley said without looking away from me. “I’m going to make it work. Second time’s the charm,” he muttered.
His eyes were sharp now. Piercing whatever parts of me I had locked away in my own mind. Sifting, I knew. He was inside my mind, sifting and sorting and I couldn’t say a word about it.
Panic rose—this time much different than my fear of the wolves. Panic for my own self-preservation. He could not be allowed to do whatever he was doing. But then his touch turned soft. He’d found what he was looking for.
“I don’t think this is going to help her,” I
heard.
The boy from the kitchen had finally spoken. His voice was rough, pissed. He’d stood up for me.
“Tara says it’s for the best,” Wes said.
“You saw her a minute ago,” Angela added, defending Wes. “She’s getting worse.
“I saw more than you know,” the boy said gruffly.
Then their voices faded.
A fog descended, wrapping around me like the ghost of childhood past. Angela vanished. The boy from the kitchen was barely more than a mirage through the mist. Wesley was only a scent. Leather and woods and unspoken intentions.
Something was happening that should not happen. This was bigger than me. Bigger than the wolves I’d freaked out over. He could not do this. I needed to tell him. To explain all of it to him, to Angela, and especially to the boy in the kitchen.
Forcing words was like straining against a hundred-pound weight sitting on my chest. English was suddenly confusing. My tongue wouldn’t peel itself from the roof of my mouth. But it was life or death. So important. I knew. I Knew.
“You don’t know who I am…” I managed.
But it was too late. Wes had finished what he’d come to do.
He blinked, and the fierce concentration in his eyes vanished. He smiled, easy and unaffected. “Hey, Sam,” he said.
I blinked back at him, my mind clearing slowly.
The coffee table creaked as Wes hopped up and sat on its edge. I frowned, forehead crinkling as I struggled with the déjà vu that wouldn’t quite explain itself.
Wasn’t Angela just sitting there?
I looked around, filled with the strange sensation of company, but the room was empty. Wes and I were alone.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my mouth thick.
I tasted something strange on my tongue and brought my fingers to my lips, running my forefinger over my mouth thoughtfully. The movement felt strange. My body was numb all over, almost as if it had all fallen asleep at once.
“Dropping you and Angela off. Tara had to run an errand with her mom,” he said lightly and then laughed, adding, “You were in a daze the whole ride over. Still hung over?”
Remembrance: (New Adult Paranormal Romance) (Heart Lines Series Book 1) Page 24
