The Forgotten Locket (3 page)

I hated that smile. It was the same one he had worn when he had held a knife in his hand. When he had slashed out, cutting across Dante’s eyes and making him bleed. I swore I would make Zo pay for every last drop of blood, every last tear, every last heartache that he had caused.

“How did you find me?” I wheezed, every word a stone I had to force through frozen lips. But I did it. I didn’t want Zo to think he had won.

Zo laughed with honest enjoyment. “How could I not? You light up the river like fire. You always have. Did you really think Dante was the only one who could see the thread of your life?” He looked around the empty bank. “Where is your little hero, anyway? I would have thought he would come running the minute you were in danger.”

“He’s coming,” I ground out, though it was more a hope than a certainty.

“Does he even know where you are? I suspect it’s hard for Dante to see anything at the moment.”

“He’s coming,” I insisted, shoving away the image of Dante’s wounded eyes, the blood that streaked his face. “He promised.”

Zo brushed aside the idea of Dante and his promises as though he were a pesky fly barely worth swatting. “You never cease to amaze me, Abby. You keep holding on—you keep fighting—long after you should know better. I admit, I thought I had seen the last of you when I left you and Dante and Leo trapped in the basement of the Dungeon with the barriers broken and the river flooding through. That evening should have been your last. But then you managed to open the door—a brilliant move, by the way, crazy, but brilliant—and I knew I would have to do something more drastic.”

“I’ll never stop fighting,” I said, my voice a mere scratch in my throat.

“I know,” Zo said sadly. “Which is why you’ve left me no choice.” He flipped his guitar off his back and into his hands.

I tried to turn my head away, but I couldn’t. With my body bound, I couldn’t even cover my ears to block out Zo’s music. Deep down I feared it wouldn’t matter. I broke out in a cold sweat. I swallowed down a lump of panic. My heart fluttered in my chest, straining as though I had been running for an hour.

“Let’s see, where should we begin?” Zo paced in front of me, his long fingers walking over the strings one by one. “I know. Let’s talk about how you killed V.”

The notes started slow and quiet, an alternating rhythm that sounded like rain falling or a tribal chant.

“I didn’t kill him,” I whispered, though my mouth felt filled with dust and my teeth tasted like bones. Guilt was a slippery emotion. I hadn’t swung the knife, but I had faltered when it mattered the most.

“Really? Let’s review.”

A picture formed in my mind’s eye, a moment from my past, recent enough to be considered my present, and yet still far into my future. Strange that such paradoxes had become my life.

Zo’s music picked up speed, a shadow emerging from beneath the harmonies.

I could see that last moment frozen in place, a slice of time as still as a photograph. The blackened ruins of the Dungeon basement. The black door straight as a guillotine. Four men in the room—Zo, V, Leo, and Dante—and me. Leo and Dante were off to one side, almost out of the picture, a haze of red blood blurring across Dante’s eyes. Zo and V were center stage; I stood close by as a knife descended, plunging into V’s leg, the blade winking silver along the slash.

“Do you remember this, Abby?” Zo crooned softly. His words wound through the music, slipping and peeking between the notes. “Do you remember what you did to V?”

The image changed ever so slightly. Now instead of holding onto Zo’s arm, I was holding onto V, trapping
him
in place.

This was wrong. I knew it in my breath and in my blood.

I let the words flow unchecked, forcing myself to remember the truth even as I spoke it. “No.
You
came to the Dungeon that night. You provoked V, insulting him and taunting him. You tricked Dante into chasing you along the river in order to weaken the barriers. And then you cut him; you hurt him.” I felt tears slide from my endlessly open eyes down my cheeks at the memory of Zo’s blade cutting across Dante’s face, at the sound of Dante’s cry. “But I trapped you. I held
you
in place so V could . . . so he could . . .”

“Kill me?” Zo suggested. “He wanted me dead. And he wanted you to do it, didn’t he?”

The music was so loud in my head I could barely think. It would be so much easier to let go, to let myself drift away on the rising tide of sound. It would be so easy. It would be so wrong.

“Yes. No.” I struggled to keep my thoughts organized. “He was going to kill you, but then you were behind him.
You
forced the blade into his leg. That’s how he died. It wasn’t me.”

I could feel the memory weaken, change into something new.

There was the Dungeon. The door. Dante and Leo. V. And a knife—in
my
hand.

“It wasn’t me,” I gasped, struggling against the music that seemed to be growing louder the longer I listened to it. “It wasn’t. I didn’t do it.
I remember.
”

“Are you sure?” Zo’s voice whispered in my ear even though he was nowhere near me. “Are you so sure you can you trust your memories?”

I set my jaw and forced myself to breathe, to count my heartbeats, to find that place of stillness where it was easy for me to slide between, to find my balance. The music that enveloped me seemed to grow quieter as the world around me slowed.

I felt a crack along the edge of Zo’s compulsion and seized it. I managed to turn my head and look Zo directly in the eye. “Yes,” I said. “I can.”

Zo raised an eyebrow, apparently unimpressed by my declaration or my movement. “What about this memory?”

The music changed between one note and the next, and so did the picture in my head.

Valerie sat on the edge of a stone fountain. The conservatory room was locked from the outside. She wore a threadbare bathrobe with a tattered hem. Her eyes were bright, but with something other than sanity. She looked thinner, hollowed out, as though the essence of her had been scooped out and tossed aside. She looked hungry for attention, desperate and alone.

It was bad enough to have seen my friend wasting away in a mental hospital. Seeing her the way Zo wanted me to see her was worse.

“You put her there, you know,” Zo said conversationally. “It is your fault she lost her mind.”

“No,” I said again. “You took her to the bank. That’s when it happened. I didn’t do it. I tried to help her.”

“Obviously not hard enough.”

“Where is she?” I demanded. “You left the Dungeon with her that night. What did you do to her?”

“I couldn’t very well bring her along on this particular trip. Don’t worry; she’s safe enough.” His eyes narrowed. “But this isn’t about her.”

Zo’s music twisted and Valerie was replaced with Natalie.

“What do you remember about her?” he asked with a hint of legitimate interest in his voice.

How much did he already know about Natalie? I suspected not much. I remembered the first night I’d met Zo. That cold January night when he and Tony and V had played as Zero Hour in the Dungeon. That might have been the only time Natalie had ever met Zo in person. I was glad that I had managed to keep her out of his orbit for so long. Glad that the photograph Dante and I had taken of her kept her safe and stable. I wished I could have done more, but I hadn’t brought a camera with me back through time and it would be hundreds of years before such a device would even be made.

I found the crack in Zo’s compulsion—the place where the music didn’t quite line up—and pushed. I felt it bend, weakening to the shattering point. I could feel my freedom returning, like a limb slowly waking up from numbness. I shook my head, my body prickling with pins and needles. I pushed harder, shoving with everything in me, until it snapped under the pressure and I fell to my knees.

“My memories are my own,” I ground out through gritted teeth. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Zo smiled, but not kindly, and paced closer to me. The music cut off as he crouched down by my side. “Why are you fighting so hard? You’re only making it worse for yourself.” He smoothed back a curl of my hair, his fingers lingering on my cheek. They were slick with sweat and warm from the heat of the guitar strings. “Don’t push me, Abby. You won’t like what comes next.”

I jerked away from his touch, my eyes narrowed. “Nothing I say or do is going to stop you from doing whatever it is you have planned. We both know that. So why do you keep pretending you care what happens to me? It just makes you look stupid.”

Zo’s body stilled. The expression on his face turned as flat as the landscape around us, but I could see the anger moving behind his eyes. The air surrounding him turned cold, thin and pointed as fractured ice.

“I wanted to do this gently, effortlessly. But now . . .” He stood up, towering over me, his eyes dark and hard as obsidian. His tone was as sharp. “I can’t promise that you won’t feel pain. And I can’t say that it won’t make me happy if you do.”

He stepped back, his hand curling around the neck of the guitar like it was my throat.

The music he unleashed hit me all at once. A wall of noise and sound overwhelmed my senses, feathering my vision with black, coating my skin with a slick film.

Memories stretched in my mind, elongating into tight, spiraling threads woven with each other into a vast, colorful, living tapestry of my life. The pictures thrummed with power, each one passing through my mind in a blur.

First there were the memories Zo had summoned: V, dying in front of the black hourglass door I had asked him to build. Dante, the darkness from between the doors still clinging to his lean body and his eyes weeping blood. Leo, turning to protect his brother, his sad eyes watching me walk away.

The music intensified. Zo hunched over the strings, his fingers striking as fast as lightning.

Other memories: Natalie, smiling while I took a picture to save her. Valerie, handing me an invisible key, telling me stories with a heart of truth.

Sweat lined Zo’s brow, a drop sliding down past his closed eyes.

Painful memories: Jason, leaning close for a kiss. Mom and Dad, dancing in the kitchen when they didn’t think I was watching. Hannah, painting her toenails and singing along to a song playing in her headphones.

Conflicting memories: Jason, still in love with me when he should have been with Natalie. Jason’s house occupied by a different family. My parents, divorced and bitter. Hannah, unborn and unremembered. They had been part of my life—they were still part of my life—and yet, Zo had managed to redirect the river and change them, erase them. Saving them was one of the reasons I had chosen to pass through the time machine door. I tried to hold on to my memories, tried to make them stay.

The river rushed by; I could almost hear the sound of time passing, could almost feel time slipping through my fingers like water.

The memories started to fray along the edges, unraveling into individual threads instead of the taut tapestry they had once formed. And as each thread snapped off, torn out of me by Zo’s music, a thin tendril of darkness took its place, an emptiness that felt like a scream and sounded like a fading echo.

I knew Zo was a liar. I knew it. And yet, in this he had told me the truth.

It hurt.

A lot.

Chapter 2

The music was everywhere. The music was everything. The notes burrowed inside of me, wriggling and writhing and eating away at the darkest parts of me. More and more notes poured into me, gathering together into a solid mass, rising up in a wall of noise. A curtain of black covered me. I was consumed by the music.

Underneath the music, a sound rose up like words, a primal language of pain.

I heard someone scream. I felt the echo of it rattle in my throat.

Had that noise come from me?

I closed my eyes, hoping I could blot out the sight of the man with the guitar who stood before me, hoping I could escape into the darkness.

Eventually the screaming stopped, but I still heard the music.

Eventually the music stopped, but I still felt the pain.

Eventually the man left, and I was alone.

• • •

“Don’t move.”

The voice entered my ear like a needle. I remembered another voice, a darker voice, dripping with confidence and command. That voice had said the same thing to me, piercing deep. And when I had obeyed—when I had been
forced
to obey . . .

My mind shied away from the memory. I could feel my heart beating faster as pain sank sharp claws into me. The salt from my dried tears felt gritty on my lips and tasted bitter.

“Can you hear me? I need you to stay still.”

Confused, I tried to open my eyes, but my body didn’t want to cooperate. I didn’t want to stay still. I had been frozen in place for what seemed like a long time, like forever. I wanted to move, to run, to fly. I wanted to leave behind this place, this empty prison that had locked me in endless pain. I pushed myself to my feet, lashing out at the darkness in my mind, at the voice by my ear, searching for something to hang on to. Something to hit. Someone to hurt.