The Forgotten Locket (13 page)

I swallowed and looked down at my empty hand. “No, I . . . I gave it to Zo.”

“What?” Dante asked in horror. “Why?”

I remembered the sound of Zo’s music crashing into me, the twist and pull as he slammed that black block into my memories. “He was in my mind, changing things, taking things from me. He made me forget.” I closed my eyes, remembering the music Zo had brought with him to the cathedral. That song hadn’t hurt, but it had left its mark on me all the same. “He made me think he was someone I could trust. I thought I loved him.” I turned my fingers into a fist. A sour taste filled my mouth, coating my tongue with acid.

At the thought of Zo and his music, a corner of my mind turned to shadow and I swallowed hard. Had a ghostly taint of Zo’s touch remained like a stain I couldn’t erase? A drop of poison that had resisted the antidote of Dante’s poetry?

“I’m sorry, Dante. I’ve wished for the locket back ever since I gave it to him.”

Dante was still and quiet. A deep line furrowed his forehead, and the muscles tightened in his jaw, along his arm, and across his shoulders.

“You’re worried about the fact that Zo has the locket, aren’t you?” I asked quietly.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, but the line in his forehead didn’t go away.

“Why is it so bad if he has it?”

Dante didn’t say anything for a long time.

“Are you mad at me?” I ventured.

My question seemed to rouse him from his thoughts. He turned immediately to me. “No, it’s not you. This is my fault. I did something without thinking it through and now it looks like I’ve made things worse. I should have known better.”

“What did you do?”

Dante sighed. “Zo used his guitar to hurt you, so I used it to hurt
him
in return. I destroyed it right in front of him.”

“You destroyed Zo’s guitar?” I repeated. “I thought I had just dreamed that.”

“When?” Dante asked. “When did you have that dream?”

“Last night, I guess.” I smiled wryly. “Time is a little slippery these days.”

Dante didn’t laugh.

“Why? When did it happen?”

“After I found you on the bank and sent you back through the river, I immediately hunted down Zo. I found his guitar and broke it. I thought that would be the end of it, so I turned my attention to figuring out how to restore your memories.”

“Is it bad, do you think? Me dreaming about events so close to when they actually happened?”

“I don’t know—maybe.”

I shivered. I had felt Zo’s touch in my mind and on my body and I had no desire to repeat either one. The idea that he could somehow be in my dreams too made me feel oddly exposed.

Dante squeezed my hand with his, sweeping away his worried frown with a swift smile. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll get the locket back. Everything will be fine. You’ll see.”

I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure he believed it himself.

• • •

We walked back along the river, carefully avoiding the thin threads that were spooling out in new directions.

“This is the last thing I wanted to see,” Dante said with a heavy sigh. “The river shouldn’t be doing this. Any of this.” He pointed to a silver thread that had separated from the main river, the shimmering line coiled around in a tight spiral like a spring. “And listen to it. It even sounds different. It’s like there is this odd echo—I can’t quite make it out.” He cocked his head, listening.

I concentrated as well, hearing the familiar chimes of time and the melody of the river. But this time I could also almost hear words mixed in with the music.

“And it seems
softer
somehow,” Dante continued. “Like it’s blurred along the edges, or feathered, like an angel’s outstretched wing.”

I swallowed, remembering Lorenzo standing over the cracked statue of the angel in the cathedral, how the wings had been bent and broken in his fall. I didn’t think they were connected, but I felt now like I had felt then: sad and small and helpless.

“Though this appears to be a little beyond
feathering,
” he continued. “I wonder how many of these threads are spooling off the main river?” He crouched down and skimmed the flat of his hand over the surface of the river, close but not touching. “No wonder it’s been harder to keep track of the time, with the river this unstable. Sometimes it feels like it’s slipping away and I can’t hold on to it. Other times, it feels as heavy as a stone and I can’t make it move, no matter how hard I push.”

“Can you fix it?”

Dante stood up and weighed his answer in the stillness between us. “Maybe. But I’ll need to study the currents of the river in order to see the possibilities of how we might be able to cleanse it and stabilize it. And that means I’ll need to stay on the bank—at least for a while.”

“Can I stay with you?” I gestured to the barren landscape around us. “I’m already here, after all.”

“I wish you could. But it’s too dangerous for you to stay. You haven’t found your balance yet. You haven’t had time to. It took me nearly a year to find mine once I had passed through the door. You’ve only had a couple of days.”

I frowned. I hated to ask my next question, but I had to. “And you’re sure your eyes will be okay? You can still see downstream the way you used to?”

Dante nodded with a small smile. “Yes and yes. I will be fine. Besides, if we are going to restore the river—and restore your family, I haven’t forgotten about them—then I need to know what’s going on, and for that, I need to study the river.”

“I still don’t like the idea of you being here alone. I want to help.”

“I know. And that’s one of the things I love about you.” He touched his forehead to mine. “You can help by staying with Orlando. By staying safe. And staying whole.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew Dante was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

“You did meet up with Orlando, right?”

“I’ve been with him ever since I arrived here—in this time, I mean. He was at the courtroom with me. And at the cathedral. He was even here—on the bank—right before you showed up.”

“He was?”

I nodded, remembering that with Dante’s limited sight, he hadn’t been able to see his brother. “I think he recognized you, but he fell into the river before he could reach you.”

A small furrow of worried thought creased Dante’s forehead.

“What about Zo?” I blurted out. “He said he could find me wherever I was—the way you can.”

“Let me worry about Zo. You concentrate on finding your balance.” He slipped his hands around my waist and pulled me closer. “Do you trust me, Abby?”

“Always,” I answered without hesitation.

“Then
trust
me,” he said with a smile.

“I will.”

A glimmering flicker of light in the distance caught my attention. As I turned toward the main flow of the river, I saw a series of flashes like a heat mirage that made the land ripple. I paused, squinting in hopes it would bring the strange images into focus.

“Abby? What do you see?” Dante asked. He angled his face in the direction I was looking, but I knew he couldn’t see the shimmering light that had appeared on the bank. Not with his blind eyes behind his bandage. My heart seized up a little. We had to find a way to heal Dante. He couldn’t live like this.

“It’s a light,” I said, knowing it was too general a description to be helpful. “It’s across the river, and it looks like . . .” I rubbed my eyes. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. “It looks like my mom.” Terror clawed at my stomach, turning it into a seething mass of acid.

“Your mom?” Dante asked.

She stood motionless, her face turned toward me, a glittering veil of mist hanging between us.

“She can’t be here,” I moaned. “Why is she here? How?” I clenched my hands into fists, feeling my knuckles tighten with the strain. Then I shook my hands loose and bounced on the balls of my feet, wanting to race across the river and into my mom’s arms.

Dante touched my shoulder, holding me in place. “It’s not her, Abby. It can’t be her.”

“How can you be sure? What if she came looking for me? What if she managed to follow me?” I gasped. “And Dad! He’s there too.” I rose up on my toes, craning my neck for a better look. The light resolved into a third shape. “Hannah?” My voice cracked and bled away from me. My family stood on the far side of the split river. All of them. Together.

But I remained apart, separated from them by the vast expanse of time.

“Abby, no, listen to me,” Dante stepped in front of me, blocking my view. He moved his hands from my shoulders to my arms. I tried to shrug him off, but he was too strong.

“Let me go—”

“They’re not really here,” he said, his voice loud but calm. He stepped aside again. “Look at them, Abby. Really look at them. Tell me what you see.”

I took a deep breath and narrowed my eyes. It was hard to see past the emotions that sprang to life inside me, but what I saw made me catch my breath.

My mom looked pale white, ghostly and transparent. The outline of her body wavered, seeming to bleed away into nothingness as I watched. Her hair moved slowly in a breeze that wasn’t blowing. Her eyes were soft; it looked like she had been crying.

The images of Dad and Hannah floated nearby, their bodies the same ghostly white and thin. I could see where they were holding hands, but their individual fingers were lost in a hazy cloud of white. Hannah’s skirt ruffled around where her ankles would have been had she had any feet. The edges of her outline rippled like water.

Dante lifted my chin with his fingers, pulling my gaze back to his face.

In my heart, I knew Dante was right. My family wasn’t really there. It was impossible. “How did you know? Can you see them?”

Dante shook his head. “Not now, but I saw them like that once before, when I tried to restore your family to you the first time. When Zo erased them from the river, it was like they became ghosts, cut adrift. They are just images, Abby. Shadows seen through the mist of time.”

“We have to save them,” I said, quiet but firm.

“We will,” Dante said, equally firm. “We won’t let them be lost forever.”

I glanced back to my ghost family, desperate for another look, even knowing they were just fragments, just memories.

As I watched, a brighter light cut through the flat sky. The ground trembled under my feet like a minor earthquake. I hung on to Dante for balance.

Another figure materialized in the distance. A tall girl with short black hair, the ends ragged and choppy. She barreled forward, running on bare feet straight through the wisps of my family, scattering them into a tattered oblivion. Her worn bathrobe covered a dirty gray sweatshirt and loose pajama pants. Her familiar face was twisted with anger and madness.

“Valerie?” I whispered, confused.

Even though she was some distance away, she lifted her head as though she had heard me. She fixed me with an intense gaze, and then she smiled.

But it wasn’t a smile of reunion or welcome.

It was the grin of revenge, with teeth extended and ready to bite.

Chapter 10

I told you I would fix it!” Valerie’s voice sliced through the air like a blade. “I told you so!”

I stumbled backward a few steps, tripping over Dante’s feet. He caught me and helped me stand. “Abby? What is it?”

“It’s Valerie,” I managed. “She’s here. Really here. Not like my family. She’s really here. On the bank.” The words fell out of my mouth in clumps of disbelief.

On instinct, Dante twisted to look in the direction of Valerie’s voice, but I knew he couldn’t see her. He couldn’t see the cruel light in her eyes or the hot spots of color in her cheeks. Such visions were reserved for me.

Valerie ran in a straight line, never taking her focus from me. I thought for sure the river would slow her down—she would have to stop or else risk being pulled back into the flow of time—but the moment her toes reached the line where river met bank, she simply jumped, her momentum propelling her across and over the narrow track of unstable time. She landed hard and fell forward onto her knees, her arms shooting out to brace herself against the soft sand of the bank.

Crouched on all fours like an animal, she twisted her head around to pin me with her hooded eyes. “What the Pirate King is not, is the Pirate King’s lot, and we all will be bound in the Pirate King’s knot.” Her singsong voice rose in pitch the longer she chanted, while at the same time her body seemed to collapse in on itself, folding into a tight ball.

“How did you get here, Valerie?” Dante demanded, angling his body toward the sound of her voice and stepping in front of me.

She whipped her head up and grinned. “How does anyone go from place to place?” she said. “Through the door.” Her voice was almost back to normal, but her eyes were not. “You should know that better than anyone, darling Dante.”