Slowly, I opened my eyes and gasped at the brilliance of the light sitting on my palm. I dropped my hand and slid back on the floor, hardly able to believe what I was seeing.
The light hovered in the air, much brighter than Brooke’s small orb, and as my heart began to race, the light grew even more intense, flickering across the walls around us.
“How is this possible?” I asked.
“You are incredibly special, Harper,” she said. “You’re capable of so much more than you realize. I know it’s hard to understand after what they’ve done to you, but the world needs you to get better. The world needs you to reclaim your powers and fight against this place.”
“Everyone keeps saying that, but I don’t feel special,” I said. “I feel lost.”
“Everyone?” she asked.
“There was a girl my first night at dinner,” I said. “Robin. She knew my name. She said that if I was here, the whole world was lost. And then there was a man. In my dreams, after the shock treatments. He had the most beautiful silver eyes.”
“Your father,” she said.
My gaze snapped to hers. “He’s real?” I asked, my lip quivering. “Did I… Did I kill him? In the fire? They told me I killed my family in that fire.”
Her expression softened, and she shook her head. “You should know better than to believe anything they say as truth.”
“But I remember the fire,” I said. “A beautiful white house burned to the ground. I think it was my home.”
“Harper, your father died on the battlefield,” she said. “That was the last time I saw you, actually. You were dying, and he saved you. He sacrificed his own life to heal your wounds, long before your house burned down.”
I closed my eyes, tears streaming down my cheeks. “My life for yours,” I whispered, remembering. “He told me to set them free. What does that mean?”
Brooke glanced toward the door of the basement room. “We’re almost out of time,” she said. “It may be awhile before we can meet again, but if you find the opportunity, you should keep coming down here. Practice your magic. It will help you remember.”
“Don’t go,” I said as she stood. “I need you.”
She turned and smiled. “No, Harper. That’s what you still haven’t understood,” she said. “The truth is, I need you.”
Every Detail
I didn’t see Brooke again for weeks, and I didn’t dare ask anyone about her. What we shared was our little secret, and I understood now the consequences of breaking the rules of this place.
Instead, I did what she suggested and found ways to sneak down to the basement to practice.
I wasn’t sure what she’d said to Nurse Melody or why the woman was helping me, but the injections had stopped. Every night, she marked it off her list, but she never used it. And every night, she gave Judith the same white pill that helped her sleep, giving me the opportunity to sneak away.
I started with simple things: Orbs of light. Picking up objects with my mind and moving them around the room. The more I practiced, the easier it got.
And then one night when I came down, there was a bag of items sitting in the corner: Candles. Gemstones. Stacks of paper. A mirror.
I practiced creating flames out of nothing more than the power that lived within me. I floated multiple pieces of paper around the room, strengthening my ability to move more than one object at a time. I wasn’t sure what the gemstones were supposed to do, but when I focused on them, they began to glow and pulse with light.
A week later, I found a book of spells inside the bag. I hugged it close to my chest and laughed as I flipped through the pages. There were so many possibilities, and I wished I could stay down in that basement all day practicing and testing my abilities.
By the time three weeks had passed, I could easily create flame and light. I learned to create glamours, making one object look like something else entirely. I sometimes held the mirror in front of my face and practiced changing my hair color from blonde to purple or blue. My eyes changed from brown to green.
As I grew better at it, I was able to make myself look exactly like one of the nurses or one of my roommates.
When I wasn’t in the basement, it was hard to keep from using my magic. If I dropped my napkin on the floor at dinner, I was tempted to use magic to float it up to my hand, rather than bending down to pick it up. I had to stay alert, remembering that any use of my new abilities would be deadly for me at this point. I needed to get stronger.
In my therapy sessions, I was quiet. I told Dr. Evers that I couldn’t remember anything about my life before this place. She asked if I remembered the fire, and I told her that sometimes I thought I did remember what I had done, and that I was sorry for it. I told her I wanted to get well, and that seemed to make her happy.
In the mornings when they gave me my green pills, I tucked them into my gums at the top near my teeth, opened my mouth and lifted my tongue to show that I had swallowed them. Then, when I was alone in the bathroom, I spit them into my hand and wrapped them in toilet paper. I washed them down the drain and watched to make sure they didn’t get caught or come back up.
At night, when everyone else was asleep and I couldn’t get away, I whispered what I knew to myself, urging more memories to come forward.
“Jackson,” I whispered, not giving any sound to the name. Only air and breath, wishing with all my heart that he could hear me.
I pictured him there in that field, the light of the full moon shining down on him. Brooke had said he was there watching out for me. He wanted to make sure I was safe. But safe from what? Or who?
I spoke to no one about my meetings with Brooke in the basement, and my loneliness wore on me like a heavy weight strapped to my shoulders.
What was going on while I was locked away inside this place? If Brooke was right and I was important in some way, then the girl who’d recognized me my first day here had also been right. She’d known who I was and she’d said the world was lost without me in it.
I’d spent so many late nights thinking about her words and trying to figure out what she’d meant. What she’d known.
If I really was important, did that mean there were others on the outside trying to find me? Did I have any hope of them rescuing me someday?
Other nights, I wondered if I had imagined all of it. Brooke. The magic. Everything. What if I was crazy and suffering from delusions? I mean, it’s not like crazy people knew they were crazy. They believed it, which was kind of the point. Maybe I belonged here, and my brain had just created these other things to make it seem more bearable. Maybe I was simply holding onto a hope that didn’t exist.
When you’re locked away and told you’re insane, how could you trust yourself and your own mind ever again?
“Harper, did you hear me?” Dr. Evers said, tapping on her clipboard.
I looked up, taking in a sharp breath. It was our weekly Tuesday appointment, and I’d barely said two words to her.
“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I must have drifted off.”
She leaned forward against her desk, setting her clipboard and pen down. “Harper, these sessions are an extremely important part of your recovery,” she said. “What could you possibly be thinking about that would distract you from this important work?”
I searched for some excuse that would sound real, but I couldn’t think of a good enough lie. I was so tired of these fake therapy sessions where she pretended to listen to me and I pretended to care.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not giving an excuse or answer.
She sighed and leaned back. “I asked if you had remembered anything new since we last spoke,” she said. “I want to help you work through what happened, but in order to do that, you need to accept your role in the fire. I need you to remember what you did.”
I glanced up at her, trying to hide my emotions so that she couldn’t see just how much I despised her. The truth was that she didn’t want me to remember anything except her version of events. She wante
d me to remember her lie and call it truth. To give up on myself and accept that I belonged here.
I wondered what would happen if I played her game. What if I fed her lies of my own?
“I was angry,” I said, not meeting her eyes. I looked down at my hands, instead. “I started the fire to get back at them for something, I think. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.”
“So you do remember?” she asked, her eyes widening as she gripped her pen. “Tell me every detail.”
“I think I must have used a lighter and some loose paper from one of my notebooks,” I said. “I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I do remember being so angry that I wanted them to pay for what they had done.”
“And what did they do?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m trying to remember, but it’s all still so unclear. I think my parents wouldn’t let me do something I wanted to do?”
I said it as a question, wanting her to fill in the rest of this fake story. They had told me snippets of what they wanted me to believe, but if I was going to convince them that I had fallen for their lies, I needed to get this right.
“Yes,” she said. “Your parents. Do you remember them?”
“A little,” I said. “When I think of them, I feel regret and pain. I can’t see their faces, but I feel like I did something bad to them.”
“You did,” she said. “You did a very bad thing, Harper. That’s why you’re here.”
“I know,” I said softly. When I looked up at her, I had tears in my eyes. Fake tears, maybe, but hopefully convincing. “Can you help me? I just want to get past this and show that I’m sorry for what I did. I want to get better.”
Dr. Evers raised an eyebrow as she continued to write on her notepad. There was a hint of a smile on her lips, and I knew that she was excited. I could feel it in the air.
I drew in a breath, filling myself with this new energy in the room. I let it flow into me. I let it fuel my anger and my desire to know the truth.
Something deep inside me woke up, and I could almost feel it there, like a beast waking from a long slumber. My hands tingled and my skin felt alive. At first, I tried to push against it, scared I would accidentally cast a spell and she would know the truth.
But something felt different this time. A new ability was trying to get out or reveal itself to me.
Should I trust myself? Or make it stop?
I tapped into it. I pushed this new energy out along my veins, letting the warmth of it flow into my blood and become a part of me.
“I can help you,” she said. “That’s all I’ve ever been here to do, Harper. I hope you know that. I’m on your side.”
I heard her words, but it was difficult to fully concentrate. Energy flowed through me so intensely that it buzzed in my ears, my pulse pounding. I looked at the folder on top of her desk and watched her scratching away at her notepad, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to know what was in those notes. I wanted to look over her shoulder and see them for myself.
I’d been searching my own mind for answers, but like Brooke said, they were carefully locked away by something far more powerful than I could comprehend.
But I knew in my soul that some answers were just a few steps away, written in that folder.
If I saw it and it truly said that I had murdered my own family in a fire and was suffering from severe delusions, then I would know that I’d officially lost my mind and was in denial.
But if the file told a different story, then I would know that Brooke was real. Jackson was real. And that I did not belong here.
Staring at that folder, I felt such anger rush through me. This doctor had all the answers right there at her fingertips and she was keeping them from me. She played this game with me, ordering pills that messed with my mind and asking me to admit to a truth that was never real.
Instead of pushing against it, I gave in to that anger. I plunged into it, losing myself inside it. I imagined myself standing up and grabbing the folder off her desk. I needed to know what was there. My life depended on it.
And suddenly, a heat flowed into me. A power unlocked, and in an instant I was standing outside my own body, looking back at myself.
I looked down at my hands, and I was nothing more than a ghost of myself, my body invisible and not even there. But I was also still sitting in that chair, my face calm as I stared down at the hands cradled in my lap.
How was this possible? How could I be in two places at once?
Dr. Evers kept talking, telling me about how she was going to help rehabilitate me. She said that if I could learn to take responsibility for what I had done, there was hope I could someday leave this place.
She was talking to me, looking directly at my body sitting in the chair across from her. She didn’t seem to notice the ghostly me standing at her side.
I had no idea how I’d done this or how long I could keep it up, but this was my chance to see those files. I moved around the desk and leaned over Dr. Evers’s shoulder.
My folder was open on her desk. Some of the pages were fanned out, and even though I couldn’t read everything included there, it only took three lines to convince me I had found the truth.
A highlighted passage on the first page burned into my memory, giving fuel to my anger and pain.
Harper Brighton, murderer of Priestess Eloisa Winter and traitor of the Order of Shadows, must be purged of all memories.
Do whatever must be done to convince her she has lost everyone she ever loved and that we are her only family now.
Do whatever it takes to break her.
I stared at Dr. Evers, seeing her for the evil she truly was. As I returned to my body, I had one thought. It was going to take a lot more than she was capable of to break me.
Do your best, witch.
A Doll Or A Daughter
I waited until shadows fell upon the house of the town’s Prima. She’d come home at five, just as Kristie had said she would. Her youngest daughter played on the living room floor as I’d watched them from my perch in a treetop just outside her home.
The Prima’s two teenage daughters had come home just before dinner, and the family sat down to a healthy meal, discussing their day as if they were a normal family instead of servants of one of the most evil witches to have ever lived. I wondered if her daughters understood what was in store for them when they came of age. As daughters of the Prima, they would not be forced to enslave a demon until their mother died, and even then it would only be the eldest of the three who would take over as Prima.
Once she had a daughter of her own, her younger sisters would be released from the duty of the Prima, but their lives would never truly belong to them. They’d been slaves of the Order from the moment their mother brought them into this world.
I didn’t want to hurt them, but I would do whatever I had to do to get the information I needed.
We’d been waiting for this night for nearly a month, laying out our plans with acute attention to detail. I hadn’t wanted to waste valuable time, but Mary Anne had been right. With the plan we now had in place, we would catch them all off-guard. One night and everything would change.
Once the three girls had gone up to bed and their lights had gone out, I flew down from the tree and entered the house through a small crack in a second-story window. I kept to my demon form, hiding in the shadows of the home. I stopped by each of the daughters’ rooms, knowing they were the key to this whole thing.
I found the Prima sitting at her desk, alone in her bedroom. Her husband was still downstairs watching TV, although I was pretty sure he’d fallen asleep.
It would be better for him if he stayed that way.
I entered the room silently, but the Prima’s hand stopped moving across the page of her journal the moment I came inside.
“What are you doing here, demon?” she asked. She turned calmly in her chair and searched the dark places in her room. “Show yourself.”
I shifted t
o human form and stepped forward.
“I need information,” I said. “If you give it to me willingly, I promise no harm will come to you or your family.”
The woman was beautiful and young on the outside, but I could see through glamours and illusions. I could see the wrinkles on her aging face even though she hid them from the rest of the world. I guessed she was nearly fifty years old and carried herself as though she had been in control of this coven for many years.
“What kind of information?” she asked. She set her hands calmly in her lap, making no move to grab a weapon or stir her powers.
“Your emerald priestess has taken something valuable from me,” I said. “I need to find her. Tell me where she lives or how I can find her, and I will spare your life.”
The woman smiled and stood, placing her hand on the back of her chair to steady herself. “And what makes you think I will simply betray my priestess to help you out?” she asked. “As if my own life matters more than hers?”
“Doesn’t it?” I asked.
“I would sacrifice everything in service to my priestess, or don’t you know how this works?”
“Not every Prima feels that way anymore,” I said. “A lot of them are tired of being controlled and manipulated by the Order. Many Primas don’t want to see their daughters’ lives controlled by the Order.”
She flinched at that.
“Not every Prima is worthy of her title,” she said. She walked to the window and pushed it open, drawing a cigarette from her pocket and lighting it as she leaned against the window frame.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked.
“I have an idea,” she said. “And I know who you’re looking for.”
“Then you know that I will stop at nothing to find her,” I said.
She took a long drag of her cigarette and leaned toward the open window, blowing the smoke through the screen and out into the night.
“I also know how much my priestess would love to capture you for herself,” she said.
I smiled. “You’re welcome to try if you think you can survive it,” I said.
Forgotten Darkness Page 20
