“Don’t worry, baby. They won’t get you while there’s breath in my body.”
I leaned up on my elbow to kiss him one more time. “Which body?”
“You’re funny. A regular comedian.” He stroked the side of my face, and I shuddered. We couldn’t make love tonight, not really. Touching, kissing, it was all fine. An actual joining would go too far the night before we went back. Our nine-year-old selves couldn’t handle our last memories to be sexual. Loving, yes. Physical, not really.
“I love you.”
He kissed my lips. “Go to sleep. Stop obsessing. When we’re back there, we’ll find each other. I’ll hold your hands just as I did before. Best friends and then more. We’ll beat them back. In the meantime we’ll have a million first memories together again.”
His words were true, and I loved hearing them. Still, he hadn’t said what I wanted to hear. “Say it.”
Malcolm raised his dark eyebrow. “No.”
“Come on.” I pressed down closer to him, kissing his side. “Say it.”
“Nope. You can’t force me. I say it when I say it. Not on demand. Doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
He was forever teasing me. I closed my eyes.
Grasping the blanket, I sat up straight, panting. Sweat covered my body. That hadn’t been a dream; it was a memory. Or at least I thought it was. God, I really loved him. Or I had. I groaned, falling backward on the bed until my head hit the pillow. Where had we been? We were grown, just as we are now, not children. How and when had that happened? Or maybe more importantly, where had we been when we’d been those people?
My dream had been wrong in one way. I could hear my own voice in my head. I’d never called him Malcolm back then. No, he’d been Menkaura. Everyone else called him Malcolm. He’d changed it, but to me, he’d been Menkaura. The same name he’d had when he’d been alive the first time.
Only he wasn’t that anymore. These days he was solidly Malcolm, and I wasn’t the Kendall who knew we’d be eternally together. Something had happened, and I’d chosen to forget. What could have done that?
I wasn’t Levi’s anymore, and I didn’t belong to Malcolm. I was Kendall Madison Yates, a new version, but not necessarily a better one. From now on, I’d do things on my own terms or not at all. My brain tingled with the thought. The question was, why had I chosen to forget him to begin with? How had we gone from that night to me not knowing him at all?
Lying back down, I closed my eyes. I would have fallen asleep if my phone hadn’t started ringing. I sighed, rolling over. It was my regular cell phone, not the one Malcolm had given me. Levi’s name appeared on the screen, and I quickly answered it. He didn’t call at three in the morning for no reason.
“Hello?” My voice was hoarse from not using it for several hours. “Are you okay?”
“It’s possible, you know. I’ve been thinking about it.” He slurred his words. I closed my eyes. Levi hardly ever got drunk but, man, when he did, he hit the ground running into intoxication.
I steadied myself. This didn’t sound like a happy-drunk Levi either. “What did you drink tonight? The whole bottle of vodka?”
He snickered. “Tequila.”
“Wow. You really wanted to get yourself loaded.” I shouldn’t be surprised. I had dropped the whole I’m dead thing on him.
“It’s possible.”
I closed my eyes. “What’s possible?”
“We’re all simply energy. Can’t create or destroy energy. Therefore, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that you were sucked in somewhere and then put back into another body. The questions are how they regrew you, so to speak, and who has the tech to do it.”
It was going to be a long night if I let this go on. I sat up and switched on the light, which hurt my now aching eyes. “Listen to me, carefully. I want you to get a bucket. You are going to puke at some point, and if you don’t want to have to clean up a huge mess tomorrow when you have the hangover from hell, please make it in the bucket. Also, sleep on your side.”
“You’re so considerate.” It took him a couple of tries to get the last word out. “I love you. I’m sorry you got shot and died. I’m glad you’re here now.”
“Goodnight, Levi. Go to bed.” I disconnected the phone.
I got out of bed and padded to the window. Another day had made the moon full. I stared at it. I believed in the moon. I could see it with my own two eyes just as I’d always been able to see ghosts, before and after my own death.
The night called to me, and I pushed open the window to poke the top half of my body outside. The cool air helped me to breathe.
In the distance, the shadows on the ground from the glow of the moon moved. I stepped back. I’d seen them do that in my dream-slash-memory and here they were doing it again. The shadows were alive tonight.
I shut the window, not that it would help. If they were moving outside, they could just as easily start bouncing around inside of my house. I crawled back onto the bed and grabbed my phone.
The shadows are moving tonight. I hope you’re sleeping and you don’t see it. In fact, I should not send you this message because it’s bound to wake you up. But I’m going to be selfish and send it anyway. You promised me you would never let the shadows get me. I don’t know how to defend myself or anyone else from this. I’m going to expect you to keep your promise. If you don’t want to tell me things, that’s fine. Starting tomorrow, you’re going to show me how to survive the shadows. You promised me. I remember it.
I hit send and let the text travel to Malcolm. Before I could overthink it, I shut off my phone. I wouldn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Watching the shadows, I wondered how many other things were alive that I didn’t know about. I’d thought I understood how the world worked beyond the scope of most people.
It turned out I only knew a small portion of anything.
****
A pounding on the door the next morning caught my attention. At five in the morning no one else was awake. In my pajamas, I ran to see who needed my attention. A harried looking Malcolm stood on my stoop. His hair appeared completely disheveled, and his usually flawless clothing was untucked. He looked wrinkled.
I swung open the door. “Are you okay?”
“You send me a text like that and then turn off your phone?” He stormed past me into the house. “What is the matter with you?”
“I said what I had to, and then I tried to go to sleep. I said I was being selfish. I knew it.”
He stormed at me until I backed up into the wall of my dining room, his body boxing me in. “What exactly did you remember?”
“Our last night together, wherever that was. Lying in the bed. You refusing to tell me you loved me.” I don’t know why I said that particular part first. Or maybe I did know, and I couldn’t deal with it. I kept going. “The promises you made.”
He pressed his forehead to mine. “I was teasing you. It was what we did to one another. I had this grand plan. We’d wake up together, nine years old, and I’d say it. Only when I opened my eyes, I was in Egypt and you were apparently in Missouri with your parents. We were twelve not nine. Everything was wrong. Took me forever to get here, longer to find you, and you were married with no memory of that time at all. Tell me you didn’t do that because I didn’t tell you I loved you. You know how I …”
I placed my hand over his mouth. “I only remember that night. Nothing else. I don’t know anything about how you felt nor should I at this point. Don’t tell me. Victoria said you can’t.”
He raised his brows, and I removed my hand. Malcolm exhaled loudly. “Why do you wear such dowdy pajamas? You’re so sexy. Silk. Or at least something less frumpy should be all you put on to go to sleep.”
“I’m a mother. My kids don’t need to come into my bedroom and find me in lingerie.”
If he had any thoughts on my statement, he didn’t express them. Instead, he did the Malcolm diversion thing and changed the subject. “I’ll teach you about the shadows, but I’m af
raid I can’t help you defeat them until you’re back in your right head. You need to remember things first. Some basic skills will help, but if you encounter the shadow man again without me or Victoria or one of the others, you’re still going to be royally screwed.”
Well, that sucked. I steeled my spine. “I thought Victoria couldn’t see them. Or was she lying about her inability to see them, too?”
“She can’t see ghosts. She will be able to see him. We all can. Consider it a gift or a curse or whatever.”
We stared at each other, neither one of us speaking. His gaze bore into mine with the heat of a thousand suns shining back at me. I knew what he wanted—my soul—but I couldn’t give it to him. I didn’t know him, not really, and even when I had, I’d obviously decided not to follow the plan he and I had laid out on the night I could recall. I had to know why before I progressed any further down any path. Everyone was going to have to be patient.
“Why are you carrying our murderer around with you?” I stroked my finger down the side of his face. I shouldn’t touch him, and yet doing so settled an ache in my bones I couldn’t otherwise get rid of.
His mouth hardened. “Because he killed you.”
“He killed you, too.” I could almost see it. Not the way I could my own bullet wound, more like a distant echo of noise, a faint stir on my memory.
“I don’t care.”
Chapter Sixteen
I breezed through Victoria’s store with my mother in tow. As Victoria had predicted, my mom needed scarves.
When I’d finally examined all of her new stock, I stopped to stare at the woman who had been my best friend and might still be for all I understood about what had happened in my own life. “Do you bespell the customers? Get them to buy what you want?”
She made an exaggerated sigh and rolled her eyes at me. “Have you ever seen me, quote unquote, bespell the customers? Don’t you think I’d be rolling in dough if I did so?”
“You make a good point.” I rocked back on my heels. “Did you bring back my memory? When you did whatever in my backyard with the energy?”
She touched my back, and when I didn’t flinch, I guess she decided it was okay to hug me. I let her. My mother hummed to herself, browsing through the clothing, and smiled when she saw Victoria and I embracing. If she had a clue about how strange and unnerving my life had become, she didn’t indicate it.
“I wish I had the ability to give you back your memory. Even if I could do so, I wouldn’t. I promised not to interfere. I’ve already done more than I should have. All I enacted the day in your backyard was to give you a little extra energy. Did I hope your body would use the boost to work on your memory loss? Of course.”
I took her hand in mine. “Come with me to the back. I have to talk to someone … about Malcolm.”
Her eyes brightened, and the door rang a welcoming jingle to indicate more customers arriving. One of her sales girls greeted them, and Victoria and I made our way to the back of the store.
“You and I haven’t done boy talk in so long.” She sounded giddy.
“We’re grown women. And you’re married. I was, too, until recently. How much boy talk were we going to do?” The back room of her store was a lesson in organization. If Victoria knew how to do anything, it was how to keep things exactly where they belonged. There was never a box out of place or a shelf not properly labeled. I needed to figure out how she managed to keep things so straight and apply the technique to my own house.
I came to an abrupt stop. Ghosts danced through the air, whipping around and banging into the walls. Near them, every shadow in the room came alive as I entered.
“Oh boy.” Victoria put her hands on her hips. “They’re active today.”
“I’ve been seeing them since last night. You’re also loaded up with ghosts.” I pointed to some of them. She couldn’t see them, and I thought she might like to at least know where they were.
Victoria stepped further into the room. “Can you get rid of them? I hate having my energy sucked with the baby. Bad enough when I’m not pregnant. You would think when powers were being dished out they’d have realized that letting me see the shadows and not the ghosts or demons would be frustrating.”
I waved my hand and sent a surge of energy to all the walls of the room. Like a pinball game, the energy hit the ghosts, taking them out one by one. I grinned at the sight. I couldn’t have recreated the move a second time if I tried.
“Something funny?”
“Yes but you’d have to have seen it.” I shrugged. “Why could I sense them out there in the main room? My mother should have too. It’s like I’m broken.”
Victoria took a seat at her desk, right next to where one of the shadows danced. “We’re all a little broken right now.”
I pointed to the shadows. “Don’t you want to do something about them?”
She looked down and then up again. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, actually. Malcolm says he can teach me some things but not how to beat them until I remember. Is it okay to let them dance around?”
She waved her hand. “These are babies. If one of the big problems arrives in the room, I’ll perform heroics. This isn’t worth the time, energy, or aftermath of involving myself. They can’t touch me.”
“Oh. Okay.” I leaned up against a wall where the shadows seemed to not be in upheaval. The last thing I wanted was to feel one of them move against my skin. I shuddered. Or have it attack me like it had Levi.
“You wanted to talk about boys.” She waggled her eyebrows. “Which ones?”
I wasn’t going to gab with her about Levi. She didn’t like him, at all. I’d always suspected it had more to do than my divorce, and now at least I understood why. Victoria had a one up on me; she could actually remember Malcolm and I together.
“Things got very intense with Malcolm this morning. I was one second from letting him take me up against the wall while my kids slept upstairs. I think it was only my not wanting him to get hurt that held me off. I can’t remember him. I don’t want him getting the wrong idea.”
She looked at the ground for a second. “Because you’re not sure you’d pick him. If it came down to it, you might still go home to Levi.”
“I love Levi. He’s not perfect and neither am I. I don’t have a memory of the last decade that doesn’t include him in it, good, bad or otherwise. We have three children together. I have a week or so of knowing Malcolm and two weird visions of us together otherwise. I think if someone forced me this very second to make a choice, it’s an easy one.”
She met my gaze before she chewed on her bottom lip. “Then I guess it’s a good thing no one is going to force that on you right this second. You don’t one hundred percent trust me right now nor should you. In your shoes, I wouldn’t trust me either. If there’s any part of you that can hold on to the idea that I only have your best interests at heart, please hear me. Don’t decide on Levi until you can remember.”
Easier said than done.
Later, as I walked my mom to my car—I’d still managed to avoid driving in the van—my phone dinged. I looked down to a message from Levi.
Cut off my head.
I snorted. That’s what happens when you take on a whole bottle of tequila by yourself.
Sorry about the drunk call.
I was surprised he even remembered it. Yeah, well. Shit happens.
****
I hid in the bathroom, trying to fit myself in the small space between the cabinets and the tile next to my bathtub. Normally I wouldn’t even attempt such a feat, but my kids, even Grayson, wanted to play hide and seek. They weren’t yelling about their video games. They weren’t fighting with each other.
They wanted to play hide and seek with me. So, damn it, I was going to do a good job at hiding.
I found you. I jolted before I realized I’d slipped into a memory. I had to figure out a way to regulate this occurrence before, God forbid, it happened in the car or somewhere where I might hurt someone
with my distraction.
Looking around, I seemed to be in an auditorium. Rows of seats faced a stage, and I was hidden—or not as it turned out—under one of the seats in the third row. Victoria stared down at me. She was as beautiful as ever … only at least twenty, maybe twenty-five years younger than I’d ever known her.
“Why are we playing this?” She slumped down in one of the chairs. Her accent sounded thicker, too, and she paused before each word, playing like she had to remember it. I pulled myself out of the chair. Although I looked at her through my own eyes, I wasn’t in control of my circumstances. This was a memory. “We’re not children.”
“M says it’s important.” I got out from under the chair. “Sometimes we might have to hide and not get caught.”
“Then you’d better do a better job at it because I followed your aura for the last ten minutes. I let you hide since you were supposed to. Other than that, I could have located you immediately. I’d rather be with G.”
I wondered if we’d actually spoken using initials or if, like Malcolm’s real name, my brain shortened things, altered reality to suit my memory.
I touched her arm. “What are we supposed to do? This went a lot faster than it should have.”
A bubble appeared before us, and Victoria grinned. The bubble danced and spun. “I learned how to do this today. We could play with it.”
She pushed the ball by pointing her finger at it toward me. I laughed. I’d never seen so many colors contained within one circle.
“Did you create this out of thin air?”
“There is no such thing as thin air.”
The bubble burst, and we both jumped backwards. Victoria whirled around, her face turning red. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her really angry before.
“Why would you do that?”
Leaning against the doorframe was someone I had not expected to see. Chase Miller shrugged. “Because it’s a stupid trick and because I can. Come on. M wants us. Your boyfriend got into another fight, Kendall. He’s like a rabid dog, and we’ll all be lucky if he doesn’t get put down.”