“You ask too many questions,” she said.
Eldon took a seat. “I’m curious by nature.”
“Curiosity killed the cat.”
“I’m not a cat.”
Laura held his gaze, fighting a smile as it crept onto her lips. “Just what are you, then?”
He kissed her again, deeper this time, letting himself float on the moment. Laura was clearly in the mood for more, as her hands led the way, touching his body without hesitation or apology. He squeezed one of her breasts as they shifted back onto the bed and felt a sudden, unwanted conflict.
“Lee…”
He sat up, gently disentangling himself from Laura. It took her a second to calm down, but she rose too, sitting next to him in the loaded silence.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I’m not sure I could explain it if I tried,” he said. “I’ve just… got a lot on my mind. Sorry, it might not be the best time for this.”
“A lot on your mind… about me?”
A thousand different ways to spare Laura’s feelings flickered through Eldon’s head. He decided on the raw truth instead.
“Honestly, it’s been more about my injury,” he said. “And the side effects.”
“Tell me. I’m a good listener, I promise.”
Eldon chuckled. “I don’t even know where to begin. You’d think I was…”
“Crazy?”
“More or less, yeah.”
Laura raised an eyebrow. “I’m bipolar, in case you forgot. I’ve been there before. Fuck, once I had a manic episode in which I convinced myself that I was Cleopatra reincarnated and bought a first-class ticket to Cairo.”
Eldon was speechless, but Laura continued talking, saving him from the need to respond.
“Do you know why our theater group is so tight?” she asked. “Why we’re all such close friends and not just people who show up to read lines and make props together?”
“Peppermint schnapps?”
Laura rolled her eyes. “I’m being serious, Eldon. We’ve all been through this. We understand how much it sucks to have real health problems, to feel like we’re fucking tethered to the hospital sometimes.”
“I’m not sure anyone would quite understand what I’m—”
“Bullshit,” said Laura. “It’s not just about understanding, either, but about laughing at life and our issues. Ask Harold to tell you the story of when he tried to buy weed for the first time and ended up with a gun pointed at his head because of how threatening his tics made him seem. Ask Alex about how careful he has to be about planning his chemo treatments, which keep him alive, around the schedules of all his girlfriends in the cancer ward, most of whom don’t know about each other.”
Eldon chuckled and shook his head. “A gun to his head? Seriously?”
“Seriously. Can you top that?”
“Probably not,” he said. “Most of the time having amnesia is like trying to navigate the Mediterranean Sea without a compass.”
“What?”
“It borders Egypt,” he said. “I figured I’d put it into terms Cleopatra could understand.”
She made a noise and playfully punched him on the arm. “I do understand, though. And I’ll listen if you do decide you want to talk about it.”
Eldon still wasn’t sure, but the words began pouring out as though a deeper part of him had decided for the rest. He told her about the ghost girl and the creature he thought he’d seen outside his apartment. He told her about Bryan and his suspicions about who he really was or was not. He told her everything, except for the encounter with Dr. Susie, which he thought might rub her the wrong way.
“Wow,” said Laura. “That’s the triple threat. Hallucinations, delusions of grandeur, and paranoia.”
“It sounds so much crazier when I actually say it out loud,” he muttered.
“That’s usually how it works.” Laura held his hands and gave him a soft smile. “It’s okay. I don’t think any less of you. That’s the most important thing for you to accept, Eldon. It’s all you. Different facets of who you are.”
He frowned at that. Never once when talking to Tess had it ever felt like she was just a facet of himself, a product of his imagination. He blinked as a sudden realization hit him like a sledgehammer to the face.
“Tess…” he said out loud.
“Uh, no,” said Laura. “My name is Laura.”
Eldon surged to his feet. “Tess!” He shouted her name this time, all but sprinting toward the door. He slid to a stop before rushing out into the hallway, hesitating for a second.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To meet somebody,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s hard for me to express this right now, but this conversation helped with my recovery more than I can put into words.”
He hurried back over to the bed and gave her a quick, parting kiss. Laura blinked, looking completely dumbfounded.
CHAPTER 7
It was raining outside, but that made no difference to Eldon. He sprinted down the street at full speed, cursing the cloudy night sky and the fact that he’d let it get so late. Would she even still be there?
He got an answer to that question as he reached the waterfront. Tess was sitting on a bus stop bench, shoulders slouched, gaze sunken and focused on the ground. She had to pull her legs in as cars passed by to avoid having her dress and slippers splashed with water, though Eldon was surprised such things affected her. He didn’t stop running, not until he was directly in front of her.
“Tess,” he said with a smile.
Her mouth fell open in surprise, and then she was on her feet, throwing her arms around him. The hug was cold and prickly, but its unpleasantness was offset by a well of churning emotion within him.
“I’d hug you back if I could,” he said.
Tess pulled back, her smile evening out as she examined his face. “So you haven’t remembered anything else?”
“Just your name,” he said.
Tess stepped back into the bus stop and gestured for Eldon to sit on the bench beside her, which he did.
“It’s a start, at least,” she said. “There’s so much more to it. I think before, when I first found you, I started in the wrong place. You need proof, actual proof of what you are, Lee.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked. “What am I, exactly?”
“You’re a mystic.”
Eldon’s skepticism nipped at the edge of his thoughts, but he pushed it down, if only for the sake of listening to Tess’s beautiful voice for just a little while longer.
“I’m a mystic, okay,” he said. “What does that mean in practical terms?”
“It means you can see and, using one of your abilities, interact with ghosts,” said Tess. “You called the main one your mystic stream.”
“Seriously? Mystic stream? That’s what I called it?”
“You came up with the name, not me,” said Tess, smiling. “Give it a try! See if you can use it on me.”
“How?”
She hesitated, scrunching her face up and tapping a finger on her lips. “Hmmm. Good question. I suppose I only ever saw you use it from an outside perspective. You would kind of… slow your breathing down, and your eyes would get all unfocused and crossed.”
Eldon nodded, waiting for her to explain more. She didn’t and instead stared at him expectantly.
“Well?” asked Tess. “Go on, see if it works!”
He practically had to subdue the naysaying of his internal voice with an imaginary mallet. Eldon rubbed his hands together, feeling thankful that there was nobody else at the bus stop to observe him. He took a breath, focusing on letting his eyes unfocus as Tess had suggested.
Nothing happened, at least not at first. He could feel it, though, deep inside himself. It wasn’t a switch or a muscle that he could flex. It was more like leaning into a thought, or picturing a vivid scene within his mind. Except more than that, or maybe less? It was intangible, hard to understand, but he stayed with
it and exhaled, extending his mystic stream.
There was no more visual component to it than there was to the wind, but its effect on the world couldn’t have been more pronounced. Tess’s ethereal blue body gained color, presence, and form.
Her face was pale, cold from the rain, and her brown hair hung in wet, scraggly locks. She was grinning, the expression revealing the cutest set of dimples that Eldon had ever seen. Her body was petite, and though he’d already noticed that about her, seeing her now, in a soaking wet dress out of the post-Victorian era, made his heart beat in the strangest way.
“Good work, Lee!” Tess held a hand out in front of her. “See? Proof that you aren’t crazy.”
“Technically, this could just be a new, deeper level of hallucination,” he said. “I’m not sure it proves…”
He trailed off as Tess reached her hand out and cupped his face. Her fingers were cold, but the touch still sent a flush of heat that was mirrored in his face as he, for whatever reason, began to blush furiously. He stared into her eyes, green pools as vivid as a viridian forest, and felt like he was tumbling head over heels.
“Tell me everything,” he said. He put his hand on top of hers, squeezing it and marveling at how real she felt. She slid closer to him on the bench, her smile taking on a playful quality.
“I will,” she said. “But we might as well, ah, you know. Since we’re here at the waterfront, which would appear to currently be hosting a fair, and since it happens to be a Friday night, and since I’m a girl… and you’re a boy…”
Eldon furrowed his brow, shaking his head in confusion.
“Oh, you know what I’m getting at,” she said. “You must know. This was such an easy question to ask on the night we first met. It makes no sense that I’d fumble with it like a middle schooler now…”
She pulled her hand back from his, twiddling her thumbs, face turning an increasingly deep shade of red.
“I’m confused,” said Eldon. “I’m not really sure what you’re trying to say.”
“Lee Amaranth, you can’t possibly be that dense! You’re just teasing me, aren’t you?”
“You realize that I have amnesia, right?” he said. “Are you trying to say that it would be safer for us to talk in the fairgrounds?”
“You know what I’m trying to say!” said Tess, in a huff. “We were… very close. You promised me dates in exchange for favors, and I’d like to redeem one. There, I said it! That wasn’t so hard.”
“Dates in exchange for favors?” Eldon stared at her. “Was I some kind of ghost gigolo?”
Tess’s face was beet-red by that point and she kicked one of her feet into his calf. Her expression was a contrast of a wide smile and a deep glare.
“It was playful, and cute, and I’ll have you know that I plan on being taken on a date tonight, regardless of how foolish you’re being about this.”
Eldon couldn’t hold back his smile any longer. “Did I agree to an allotted number of kisses, too?”
“The allotment will be zero if you keep teasing me like this.”
Some kind, absentminded stranger had forgotten their umbrella under the bench. Eldon took it with him, walking arm in arm with Tess while shielding them both from the rain. He bought a single ticket for the fair, smiling at the convenience of having a ghost as a guest, and headed through the gate.
The rain had heavily discouraged attendance, and only a few other people were walking down the lanes between food stalls and carnival rides. Everything was lit up by colorful lights, from the Ferris wheel to the spinning teacups. There were no lines at any of the vendors, and Eldon took a detour toward one that sold cotton candy, at a nudge from Tess.
“You can eat this stuff?” he asked, after buying a cotton cloud of blue and pink.
“Yes, but only with your help,” she said. She was still within his mystic stream and picked at the cotton candy daintily, licking the sticky sweetness off her fingers after each bite.
“Will you get fat if you eat too much?” he asked.
Tess let out an annoyed sigh. “That joke wasn’t any funnier the first time you told it, back before you lost your memory.”
“I’m serious,” said Eldon. “It’ll go straight to your—”
She caught the hand he’d been reaching down to pinch her backside and sneaked a quick kiss before Eldon knew what was happening.
“Straight to my hips and butt,” she said. “That’s what you were going to say, right?”
He stared at her, still feeling the echo of her lips against his, heart thudding in his chest. She tasted sweet, like cotton candy, unsurprisingly.
“You kissed me,” he said dumbly.
She shrugged. “I’ve decided that there is a minimum kiss allotment, after all.”
The bottle throw game caught Eldon’s eye as they passed by it, and he gave in to the suggestion of the carny operating the stand and gave it a try. His first throw went wide. The second clipped the top bottle without so much as shaking it.
“Why don’t I give you some help?” suggested Tess.
She slipped past the table and into the back of the carnival game, standing with one hand against the bottom row of bottles. Eldon was careful with his last throw, connecting softly with the center of the bottle pyramid. Tess’s timing was off, and she knocked the bottles down a second or two after the ball had already made contact, but it didn’t matter, in the end.
The confused carny manning the game offered Eldon his choice of prizes, which he passed on to Tess. She picked out a small stuffed animal, a squirrel with a bushy tail.
“I would have thought you’d go all out and pick one of the big ones,” he said, as they left.
“I was thinking of you,” she said. “You’ll be the one carrying it, after all. It would look strange to have a plushie floating next to you, Lee.”
They reached the Ferris wheel and waited for one of the booths to come to a stop before climbing in. Tess sat across from him, and neither of them said anything for the first minute, simply staring out at the vibrant, rainy city, admiring the life and lights.
“You keep calling me Lee,” he said. “Why?”
“That’s what you told me your name was,” said Tess. “At some point, I guess you got fed up with the name Eldon. I do personally prefer Lee, but perhaps that’s just because it’s what I first knew you by.”
“Hmm.” He chewed his lip, considering his next question carefully. “I went to Primhaven University, didn’t I? I remembered the name of the school almost right away after waking up in the hospital, but nothing specific about it.”
“In a manner of speaking, you did,” she said. “Primhaven University is a school for mages, Lee. You’re a mystic, so you had no real business being there. Your sister Zoe, however, did have the Potential, the power to cast spells, and she disappeared at Primhaven.”
“So… I went looking for her?” he asked. “How did I get in, then, if I couldn’t cast spells?”
Tess batted her eyelashes and cleared her throat.
“You helped me,” he said.
“It was fun.” She grinned at him. “Yes, I helped you in a variety of ways. The most important of which was that we formed a pact together. I was a mage, when I was alive, and that let you cast spells using my essence.”
The conversation continued on like that for a while, with Eldon asking questions that, more often than not, only left him more confused. Tess was patient and careful with her explanations. It was almost too much for him to take in, especially as she began detailing the battles he’d fought alongside his teacher, Harper—apparently in one case against Zoe, the sister he’d been searching for.
“It’s really hard for me to hear all this and not think that, well, maybe I am just crazy,” he said.
“I thought we’d already moved past that,” said Tess.
“It would be so much simpler, though.”
“How would me being a figment of your imagination be… oh, never mind.”
Eldon smiled and switc
hed sides, sitting down next to her and taking her hand into his. “Seriously, though. What do you think I should do?”
“You want to know what I think you should do?”
He shrugged. “You have a better sense of what I, or Lee Amaranth, has been up to lately.”
She was quiet for a moment. The Ferris wheel began another loop, and the wind blew with enough strength to gently shake their booth from side to side.
“I’m not really sure if it’s right for me to tell you what I think you should do,” she said. “To be honest, I don’t really know. I… saw you at the party you went to, with your new friends. I wasn’t trying to stalk you or anything, and I was only watching for the beginning. After what I told you about your brother earlier, I was worried you might accidentally end up in a conflict with him.”
“Ah,” said Eldon. “So you were watching me?”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “Sorry. My point is, I saw you with your friends. With Laura. She seems very sweet, by the way, and certainly sweet on you. You looked happy, comfortable, content, Lee. Eldon. It wasn’t what I was expecting to find when I came looking for you, but it makes me happy to see you like this.”
“You’re saying I have to make a choice,” he said.
“We always have to make a choice. Sometimes we see it, and sometimes we don’t.”
She squeezed his hand. He didn’t know what to say, so he just stayed with her like that, in comfortable silence, until the Ferris wheel came to a stop.
Eldon surreptitiously helped Tess out of the booth—and almost walked straight into Bryan, who was standing outside the ride, arms crossed.
CHAPTER 8
“Eldon,” said Bryan. “The hospital called after you left. They told me a few things about your condition that made me start to worry.”
Bryan had no umbrella, but he seemed comfortable, despite the rain. Comfortable and concerned. It was hard for Eldon to square the expression on his face with what Tess had told him, namely that Bryan wasn’t his brother at all, but an imposter.
“How did you find me?” he asked.
“I called your theater group, and then the party you went to,” said Bryan. “They said you left in a hurry, and one of the girls there was also pretty concerned.”
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