Conjured

Chapter Twelve

Inside the lobby, Eve shook out the umbrella. Drops spattered on the carpet and the wall. Near her, a man seated on a bench lowered his book to frown at her umbrella and wet shoes. He wore a suit and had sunglasses tucked halfway into his coat pocket. She wondered if he was a marshal. As she wiped her feet on the mat, he raised his book, but she felt as if he were still watching her.

She expected to feel better once she was inside the library, but she didn’t. I’ll feel better once I find Zach, she thought. Talking to him, or listening to him talk, always made her feel better. She crossed to the circulation desk.

Two librarians were working the desk—an older woman with bobbed hair and a man with a tattoo on his neck. The woman clucked her tongue. “You’re late, Eve.”

The man was scanning returned books and adding them to a book cart. He didn’t look up. “Patti is pissed. Very, very pissed.”

Eve wished she knew their names. She was supposed to have known these people for weeks, but they seemed less real and less familiar than the antlered girl. “Have you seen Zach?”

“Not today,” the woman said. “But he’s probably in the stacks, where you should be.”

Eve eyed the door to Patti’s office. It was cracked open, and the light was on. She didn’t want to be delayed by a conversation with an irate librarian. With her umbrella dripping by her side, Eve hurried out of the lobby and into the main library.

The reference librarians scowled at her umbrella—or at her. She didn’t know their names either, though she thought they looked familiar.

Eve ducked into the stacks. She ignored the book carts full of books to be reshelved, and she steered around patrons. Systematically, she combed the aisles: reference, nonfiction, memoir, audiobooks, fiction, mystery, science fiction and fantasy … She checked the children’s room and the teen section. She looked in the presentation rooms, the reading room, the staff room, even the men’s room.

She didn’t find Zach.

He’s not here, she thought. Her heart thudded fast and hard in her chest. He should be here.

Maybe she’d missed his shift. Or maybe he’d stayed home sick. Or maybe that had been him in the interrogation room … Her hand reached for her phone and then stopped. If Zach had been there, then Malcolm had lied. And if he had lied … Standing in the middle of the stacks, Eve felt as if she were crumbling.

Stop, she told herself.

She didn’t know that Malcolm had lied to her. Zach could have left to run an errand or taken a break. Or she’d simply missed seeing him as she’d scurried through the library.

Patti would know, Eve thought. Patti Langley was obsessed with security. She’d know whether an employee was here or not. Clinging to that idea, Eve walked out of the stacks … and then jogged … and then ran.

Reaching the lobby, she stopped cold.

Aidan leaned against the circulation desk. He waved to Eve and aimed his dazzling smile at her, as if the sight of her filled his day with delight.

“You,” Eve said.

“Me,” Aidan said. “And you.”

She noticed that a line had formed behind a woman wrestling a toddler. If Zach were here, he would have been recruited to help at the desk. “I don’t have time to talk right now.” Eve started to march past Aidan. The man in the gray suit, she saw, was still there. He watched her from the bench.

“I know. And that’s why we need to talk.” The flirting lilt vanished from his voice. “We don’t have the luxury of time anymore.”

Halting, Eve stared at him. “Do you know where Zach is?”

“Zach? Ahh, Zach. So that’s his name.”

She felt her hands ball into fists. “Did you … take him anywhere?”

Aidan spread his hands to show his innocence. “I’ve never met him. I don’t even know what he looks like. Besides, why would you think that of me? I’m wounded, Evy. Truly.”

Eve couldn’t say why she didn’t trust him—and even if she could articulate it, she couldn’t say it out loud with the librarians listening. And they were listening. The closest librarian feigned interest in her computer screen, but her eyes kept darting to Eve and Aidan, especially Aidan. Another librarian stared openly, as if watching a TV show.

“I have to talk to Patti.” Eve brushed past Aidan. He caught her arm.

“You have to talk to me. And Victoria and Topher, of course. C’mon, we don’t bite. At least not often. And never in public. I swear we’ll be the model of decorum. We’ll only talk.” He tightened his grip.

“Let go of me,” she said quietly.

The other librarians ceased typing. She didn’t hear any pages rustle or books being stacked. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the patrons were watching also.

“I saw the photo on the bulletin board,” Aidan said, just as quietly. “That girl … She was Victoria’s sister. We need to talk to you.”

Eve felt as if her blood were freezing, crystallizing in her veins. She shook her head. “You’re lying,” Eve said loudly. The antlered girl belonged to her memories, deep in the past and in another world.

One of the librarians piped up. “Want me to fetch Patti?”

Aidan released her. He took a step backward and raised his hands as if in surrender. “You can trust me, Green Eyes, even if you don’t know it yet. I have your best interests at heart. We all do.”

Keeping an eye on him, Eve skirted around the circulation desk. The other librarians kept their eyes on Aidan as well. He didn’t vanish or even budge. She felt shivers on her skin. If he was telling the truth … She couldn’t think about that right now. She had to find Zach. Zach first, then she’d face Victoria.

She pushed open the door to Patti’s office and stepped inside. “Patti …”

Patti’s desk chair was swiveled to the side. A sweater was draped over the armrest. She’d just stepped out, Eve guessed. Her computer hummed softly, and her desk lamp was on.

On the desk under the lamplight, in the center of a semicircle of books, was a small box. It had gilded edges, jeweled faces, and an ornate clasp.

Eve took a step backward slowly, carefully, as if her knees weren’t fully functional. Her heart thudded so hard and fast that the sound of it filled her ears. She felt it beat through her chest and into her skull. Her lungs tightened, as if her rib cage were constricting. It was hard to breathe, and the air felt thick.

She’d seen this box.

In a vision.

It had a silver clasp in the shape of a tree. Rubies clustered like glittering apples in the silver leaves. It was the size of her palm and had slats on all sides. There was also a hook on the top so it could hang from a rope—or from a silk ribbon inside a wagon between feathers and painted skulls.

It couldn’t be real.

And it couldn’t be here.

She backed against the door.

As her back touched the door, she screamed, and she shoved her hands forward as if she could shove the box and all it meant away.

Books and papers blew off the table in a blast. The box flew against the wall and smashed into it. It crashed down, falling over stacks of books, end over end, and rolled onto the carpet. It lay on its side, and Eve kept screaming.

Behind her, voices were shouting. And then she heard shouts change to screams as magic poured out of her like water through a broken levee. Books flew from the shelves, and the computer monitor shattered into shards of plastic, glass, and metal.

Eve plunged into darkness.

Dangling from a silk ribbon, the boxes sway as the wagon bounces over the road. I am tossed against the painted wood walls, and I feel my skin bruise.

Eyes in the boxes watch me, and I watch them.

Bottles clink together on the shelves. Skulls snap their mouths open and shut. The skull of a mouse, of a bird, of a cat, of a man. Across the wagon, the Storyteller knits a ribbon of red and blue and gold. It coils around her feet already. Still, she knits it longer and longer.

“Once upon a time,” she says.

I want to speak, but my lips won’t move.

“A man and a woman wanted a child …”

I touch my face with my fingers. My skin feels soft and pliant, but my lips are sealed shut. I tug at them, and then I tear. My fingers gouge my cheeks and chin and lips. My mouth will not open.

Across the wagon, the Storyteller continues to knit. “So they made a child out of clockwork parts.”

I have blood on the tips of my fingers and under my fingernails.

“And when it was older, it killed them.”

The pain in my fingers feels exquisitely sharp, like tiny needles, and I see the droplets of blood form perfect spheres that plummet toward the wood floor of the wagon. But they do not hit. Instead, I hear rain on the top of a tent. I am no longer in the wagon. I am in the tattered red carnival tent. Rain seeps through the holes in the fabric so that it seems as if the tent itself is crying.

The rain slides down the paint on the face of the clown who contorts himself in the center of the tent. He is alone, and his dance is beautiful, a slow ballet that crosses over the floor of wood shavings. There is no music except the rain.

“Choose a card,” a voice says behind me. It is the Magician, and when I turn, I see he stands at a table of red velvet. Cards spin in the air around him as if they were birds. The cards float, twist, and then land in his open hand.

Four fall to the table, facedown.

One card flips over without the Magician touching it.

It’s the image of a sword in a disembodied hand. “The Ace of Swords,” the Magician says. Another card turns over on its own. “The Wheel of Fortune.” A third card flips, showing a man in a robe with a chalice, a sword, and flowers on a table before him. “The Magician.” And then the final card. It is blank.

I look up at the Magician for him to explain, but he is gone, and so is the tent around me.

I am outside, and the stars are spread close and thick in the sky, so many little pieces of brightness that I suddenly understand the word “stardust” because it looks like the blackness has been dusted with specks of light.

I smell burned caramel and popcorn, and I hear the ring and clatter of carnival games. The prizes hang above the booths—delicate clockwork birds in golden cages, masks made of curved horns, a flute that plays by itself. And I realize that I am perched like the prizes, high above the ground.

From here, I can see the carousel. Its horses are wooden mermaids and winged cats, and its riders are as strange and magical as the mounts—men, women, and children who have wings of their own or clawed hands or faces streaked with feathers. I watch the carousel for a long time, until the mounts detach from their golden poles and ride across the carnival grounds, rising and falling as if they were still connected to the mechanism. The riders are laughing with delight as they are carried into darkness. I stare after them into the darkness—and then realize I am looking into a darkened audience.

I am within the tent again, on the stage. Streaks of moonlight filter through slits and holes in the fabric. The stage is ringed with candles. They shed their light upward, twisting the Magician’s face into grotesque shadows, which he has highlighted with makeup.

“You are the blank card, of course,” he says.

Behind him is a silver mirror as tall as he is. It’s warped, and the curves elongate his reflection so that he stretches into a skeletal figure. His hat narrows into a slit.

I walk toward the mirror and stop in front of it. It is metal, not glass, and the candle flames flicker in it. I look into it, and a girl with brown hair and antlers looks back at me. I raise my hand toward the girl’s face. She raises her hand. I stop. She stops.

It’s me. She’s me.

But I have green eyes, I think.

And then I am pushed into the mirror.

I melt into the silver. It swirls around me, and coolness sweeps through me. In an instant, it’s over. I emerge from the mirror into a meadow. I am beside a lake that glitters in the sun. A wagon waits for me. On its steps is the Storyteller, knitting a red ribbon.

Eve sucked in air, and her eyes popped open. Harsh white light filled her vision and flooded her mind as if it wanted to sear away every thought. Her eyes watered as she tried to see shapes in the whiteness. She couldn’t move her arms or legs. She felt straps bite into her skin as she strained. She was lying flat on her back. She smelled antiseptic, and the smell triggered a memory—tubes in her veins, pain flowering over her skin, eyes burning. She heard a steady beep, shrill and insistent.

Hospital, she thought.

She remembered in a rush: The tubes. The pain. The voices. The dreams. The way her muscles had seemed to stretch until they snapped, the way her skin had felt peeled from her body like the skin of an apple, the way her blood had seemed to burn through her veins as if it were gasoline that had been lit on fire.

Last time, they had taken her old body and reshaped it into this new body, this stranger’s body. She had woken with only emptiness inside.

No! Eve thought.

She couldn’t lose herself again.

She tried to flail, but the straps held her down. She arched her back, and alarms began to wail. She heard footsteps race toward the hospital room.

Out! she thought. Out through the windows. Out into the world. Out. Away. Far away and never come back. Never be found. Never be unsafe. Never be lost. Never be broken again. She strained to the side and threw her magic at the hospital bed bars, the straps that held her, and at the windows with the drawn shades.

All the windows in the room shattered at once.

Darkness claimed her again.

I am sitting in the wagon, and the Storyteller’s arm is around me. “Shh, shh,” she tells me. “Hush.” She strokes my hair. “It won’t hurt. Not one bit.”

The Storyteller smells of Vaseline and greasepaint. Her cheeks have been painted with red circles, and a clown’s smile stretches over her real lips. The paint has cracked where her skin is wrinkled. I lean against her and let her comfort me, a child in a mother’s arms.

I think perhaps I sleep.

When I wake, she is gone.

The Magician squats in front of me. He doesn’t wear his felt hat or his cape or stage makeup, and without them, he seems costumed—as if the ordinary pants and shirt of an ordinary man were a disguise.

I shrink away, and feel the wood slats of the wagon at my back. Behind him, the scarves from his magic act are strung on a line of silk ribbon, as if they were laundry drying. Between each jewel-colored scarf is the wing of a dove, pinned to the ribbon. On the wagon wall, he has skulls as well, bird skulls and mice and snakes. He’s painted them in bright carnival colors. The boxes are stacked in a corner, all empty. I know I am looking everywhere but at him, and I know it will not matter in the end.

He smiles at me.

“Come now,” he says. His voice is soft, soothing, even beautiful. “Whisper sweet nothings to me.”

I cannot run.

He leans close. His lips are nearly touching mine.

I scream, and he steals my breath.