Sing Sweet Nightingale (22 page)

I lean closer and whisper, “I gave that to you yesterday.”

Mari jumps, and the amethyst flies out of her hand. I grab it in midair and hand it back.

“Didn’t mean to startle you, but it’s true. The black horse, too.”

A quick, sharp gasp is all the response I get before the mask and the smile are back.

“I know,” she signs.

I shake my head and turn back to my plate. “Don’t lie, Mari. You’re not good at it.”

For the rest of the meal, she glances at me every few seconds, sometimes long enough for me to catch her. Her reactions when our eyes meet are strange, running the entire range from flinching to blushing.

I can’t get a read on what she’s thinking. The longer I watch her, the more I think I’m not the only thing missing from her memory. Maybe I’m just the first thing to pop up out of her forgotten past. Glancing at the amethyst in her hand, I shrug. At least, the first thing that
talks
.

How strange does this have to be for her? Calease took memories from me, but I never realized it until the night I saw through her lies for the first time. Until the last day, I was never faced with living proof something was missing from my mind. “Disorienting” doesn’t begin to cover it. Finding one hole would make me start questioning the rest of my memory, too, poking through it and trying to find more. How far back would I have to go before I was satisfied nothing else was missing? And what the hell do you do if you figure out more
is
?

Reminding myself that this is harder for her than it is for me, I let her adjust and leave her alone. At least until she leaves the table after dinner and I can have a moment without her parents overhearing what I have to ask her.

“How much time are you missing, Mari?”

She looks up at me, frozen instead of trembling.

“A few days? Do you remember what happened Friday?”

A deep breath and a shudder. Mari shakes her head.

“A week?”

Mari brings her arms up and hugs herself. She won’t look at me.

“I know you don’t remember me, but you can trust me.”

She doesn’t move her head, but she glances at me, her warm brown eyes meeting mine for an instant. I don’t know how I should play this. Hint at what I know like I did before, or lay it all out? I might scare her off if I tell her straight up. She’ll probably tell her demon everything, and I’ll get another visit. But a little scare might get me the information I need. And if her demon wiped her memory for what little interaction I’ve had with her, she probably won’t remember what I’m about to say tomorrow.

What the hell—here goes nothing
.

“I know where you go at night, Mariella,” I whisper.

Mari gasps and backs away, her eyes doubling in size and the tremor reappearing.

“You visit a dreamworld no one else knows about, and there’s someone waiting for you every night, someone who made you promise to never speak about what happens there.”

She looks around like she’s about to run. There’s nowhere to go.

“They’re lying, Mari. If they’re so benevolent, why are you missing more than a week of your life? Why can’t you remember meeting me or where we went last night?”

Her eyes narrow, and she signs, “Where?”

“Your friend K.T. invited us to a party. The entire senior class was there, and you didn’t remember any of them. People you’ve gone to school with since kindergarten, Mari.”

Palms facing up, she slaps the back of one hand down on the palm of the other. Proof. She’s asking for proof.

I take out my phone and show her a picture I took a few minutes before we left the party. We’d moved closer to the house, and she was standing in a pool of light, looking up at the sky. The lights from the house made her hair more golden, and with her face turned toward the moon, she looked like a star trapped in human form, longing to return to the sky. It was an impulsive moment when I snapped that picture, but now I’m glad I did.

In the background, you can see the other kids and the party, proving we weren’t alone. And we weren’t in her backyard.

Mari takes my phone and stares at the screen, examining the picture like she’s determined to figure out how I faked it. The longer she stares, the less she shakes. Her expression is shifting so fast I almost can’t keep up, but I can guess what she’s thinking. Wondering how much she can trust me and what else I might know. Wondering what her demon might be lying about. Wondering what the hell else she’s forgotten.

I’m amazed at how calmly she’s taking this. She must’ve known time was missing before I got here, but she had it under control. Most girls—hell, most
people
—would be on the edge of losing their minds already, but not Mari. She seems determined to figure this out, to solve the problem and do it herself if she has to.

I’ve been avoiding examining Mariella with the filter that showed me as a white knight—the one that shows me people’s inner selves or their souls or…something. I should’ve done it the first time we met, but it was hard enough to concentrate around the electric sparks running across my skin. And I couldn’t know what I would see. I’ve already seen her burning alive and chained to a table. What if this is worse?

Doesn’t matter. I can’t put it off any longer. While she’s occupied, I bring up the filter. I look at Mari and have to lock my jaw to keep it from dropping open.

She looks like a goddess. Literally. Mariella is bathed in golden light and dressed up like Athena in a golden robe with one hand clutching a spear, the other a scroll, and what looks like a lyre strapped to her back.

The image reminds me of statues kings and emperors would commission of themselves, but on her, it’s somehow not as pretentiously overblown as those things always were. This is who she is—benevolent and decisive, a leader people would follow to the ends of the earth. One with a talent for music, I guess.

That shining beauty only lasts a second before the image shimmers and shifts, going from what she
should
look like to…

Her golden light is wrapped up in chains that look like they’ve been heated in a forge. The metal glows like hot cinders and sears her skin wherever it touches. Her dress is ragged and torn, her arms are trapped across her chest, and she’s screaming silently while tears stream down her face.

Physical strength is one thing—I have that, and it’s rarely done me much good—but Mariella has been fighting against the demon’s hold for years. That takes willpower and a level of perseverance I’ve never seen. That strength, the kind of strength Mariella has? That will last a lifetime. It’s the kind of strength that will earn people’s respect and help her weather all the storms life will throw at her.

As long as she can make it past her eighteenth birthday.

I blink and shudder, taking a deep breath and wishing I could unmake that last decision. Jesus. That was like walking into a room to see someone you know being tortured. My stomach turns and my fists clench. I want to grab Mariella and run for it, anything to get her out of the reach of the monster that’s doing that to her. How could anyone do that to her? To anyone?

I try to shake the image out of my head, but I know I’ll never be able to forget what I saw. Fucking demons and their side effects. I
can’t
forget. Even the things I wish I could.

Something pokes me in the arm, and I look down. Mari is handing me back my phone.

I take it, knowing I should say something, but my throat is closed and the words won’t come. I want to hug her, to hold her and try to make her see that I understand what she’s going through, but right now she wouldn’t thank me for it.

Swallowing, I force out something I hope is coherent.

“How much time are you missing, Mari?” My voice is as soft as I can make it. I stuff my hands in my pockets and concentrate on what I need to know. “A week?”

Her eyes flick up to meet mine, and she shakes her head, holding up two fingers.

“
Two
weeks?”

That doesn’t make sense. Why would he take that much time away from her in one fell swoop? Did he think she wouldn’t notice? Did he think I wouldn’t come back and poke at her memory to see if I could stir anything up?

When she goes back tonight, he’ll be pissed. Especially if I warn her what he’s up to. But if I don’t try now, I might lose my one shot at getting through to her.

“Mari, I don’t know what whoever you meet in that world has told you, but you can’t trust it.” Her face flushes red, but I press on, leaning closer to her to make sure my voice doesn’t carry. “You have to get out and stay out or it’s going to take a lot more than your memory. It—”

Her hand moves so fast I hear the
smack
before I see or feel it. She’s not strong enough to do damage, but I can tell she tried to put more than a little power behind that slap.

Yep. Should’ve been expecting that.

Before I can react, her hands are flying, the gestures so angry I can almost feel the heat of the emotion rolling off her in waves.

“Liar! You don’t know anything. It’s not possible. You wouldn’t be allowed inside!” her hands tell me.

The tirade lasts a few seconds before she shoves me backward, turns, and runs upstairs.

I watch Mariella disappear, and my heart clenches. She’s going to run straight to her demon and tell him everything. And he’s going to wipe her slate clean again. And unless I come up with a plan quick, there’s nothing I can do to stop it from happening over and over again until she goes to sleep on her eighteenth birthday—eleven days from now—and never wakes up again.

When Horace and I get home, K.T. is sitting on the porch waiting for us.

“Sorry,” I say as I run up to unlock the door. “Have you been here long? Are you okay?”

K.T. picks up a backpack and shrugs as she follows me inside.

“I’ve definitely had better days.” She looks around, and her eyes widen. “So has this house. Wow.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Horace mutters as he passes. “Piece of shit property.”

K.T. giggles—a surprised little laugh—and relaxes as we show her around. Given what happened last night, all three of us will be spending the evening in Horace’s room where the stones are set up.

“And these will really keep us safe?” she asks, her eyebrows raised.

“Hey, don’t knock it. They’ve already saved my life four times.”

“This was almost his head.” Horace tosses the burned-out cell phone at K.T., and she squeaks when she sees the fried circuitry inside.

“Where do your parents think you are?” I ask while she pokes at the insides of my phone.

“I don’t know. I told them I was going to stay over at a friend’s house. They actually didn’t ask. Might not be as easy on a school night, but I’m fine for now.”

That’s good, I guess. “What about your boyfriend?”

“What?” Her eyebrows furrow, but she doesn’t look up. “Don’t have one.”

“Oh. Sorry. I thought Danny was…” I trail off, trying not to shove my foot any deeper down my throat.

K.T. flushes a little and shakes her head. “No, we’re just friends.”

After a few seconds of awkward silence, I tell her, “I saw Mariella tonight.”

That finally pulls her attention away from the phone.

“Is she okay? I worried after she left last night that it might’ve been too much for her.”

I laugh, but it sounds more like choking. “Oh, no. She’s fine. She doesn’t remember going. Or you. Or ever meeting me before tonight.”

K.T. flinches but doesn’t look surprised. “Welcome to my life.”

“That’s not all.”

I tell K.T. and Horace everything I learned and saw tonight—everything except for the image of Mariella wrapped in burning chains as she screamed in agony. I don’t think anyone else needs to be burdened with that picture.

K.T. is quiet when I finish, but she’s biting her lip, and her eyes dart back and forth like she’s reading something in the air in front of her.

“She reacted to the picture, right? Did she remember anything?”

“She seemed to believe what I said, but I don’t know if she remembered anything.”

K.T. purses her lips and falls into silence again, twirling a lock of her dark brown hair around her index finger. “Maybe it wasn’t a night she had any attachment to. What if we pulled from further back? Before she met this creep?”

“Don’t know. It might work, but I don’t know anything about her childhood.”

“I do. And I can talk to her mom.”

K.T. keeps talking, and we outline a plan. We’ll create a scrapbook of pictures. If we pull in enough missing moments, we might be able to convince Mari we’re telling the truth.

“But what do we do after that?” K.T. asks.

I groan and rub my hand over my hair, letting my head
thunk
back against Horace’s footboard. “I don’t have a goddamn clue.”