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Sometimes I think I recognize his name, but when I try to remember how, my mind goes blank. Like the memory is there, but I can’t retrieve it. Almost like … there’s a hole where his name should be.
It’s the freakiest feeling. I keep telling myself maybe it’s just that I want to remember him, you know?
Like if I remember him—bingo! We have our bad guy. And the police can arrest him. Too simple, I know. And now I’m just babbling,” she said. Then, softly, “still … I could have sworn …” My bedroom door creaked open, and Mom ducked her head inside. “I’m going to turn in for the night. ” Her eyes traveled to the BlackBerry. “It’s getting late, and we both need our sleep. ” She waited expectantly, and I caught her hidden message.
“Vee, I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow. ”
“Send the witch my love. ” And she hung up.
“Do you need anything?” Mom asked, casually taking the Black-Berry from me. “Water? Extra blankets?”
“No, I’m good. ’Night, Mom. ” I forced a quick but reassuring smile.
“Did you double-check your window?”
“Three times. ”
She crossed the room and rattled the lock anyway. When she found it secure, she gave a weak laugh. “Doesn’t hurt to check one last time, right? Good night, baby,” she added, smoothing my hair and kissing my forehead.
After she backed out, I scrunched under my covers and mulled over everything Vee had said. A shoot-out at Delphic, but why? What had the shooter hoped to accomplish? And why, of the presumably thousands of people at the park that night, had he chosen me as his hostage? Maybe it was sheer bad luck on my side, but it didn’t feel right. The unknown spun through my head until I was exhausted. If only—
If only I could remember.
Yawning, I settled in for sleep.
Fifteen minutes ticked away. Then twenty. Flopping onto my back, I stared slightly cross-eyed at the ceiling, trying to sneak up on my memory and catch it off guard. When that failed to produce results, I tried a more direct approach. I banged my head against my pillow, trying to knock loose an image. A line of dialogue. A scent that might spark ideas. Anything! But it quickly became apparent that rather than anything, I was going to have to settle for nothing.
When I’d checked out of the hospital this morning, I was convinced my memory was lost forever.
But with my head cleared and the worst of the shock over, I was beginning to think otherwise. I sensed, acutely, a broken bridge in my mind, the truth on the far side of the gap. If I was responsible for tearing down the bridge as a defense mechanism against the trauma I’d suffered during my kidnapping, then surely I could rebuild it again. I just needed to figure out how.
Starting with the color black. Deep, dark unearthly black. I hadn’t told anyone yet, but the color kept streaking across my mind at the oddest moments. When it did, my skin shivered pleasantly, and it was as if I could feel the color tracing a finger tenderly along my jaw, tipping my chin up to face it directly.
I knew it was absurd to think a color could come to life, but once or twice, I was sure I’d caught a flash of something more substantial behind the color. A pair of eyes. The way they studied me cut to the heart.
But how could something lost in my memory during this time cause me pleasure instead of pain?
I let go of a slow breath. I felt a desperate urgency to follow the color, no matter where it led me. I longed to find those black eyes, to stand face-to-face with them. I longed to know who they belonged to. The color tugged at me, beckoning me to follow it. Rationally, it made no sense. But the thought stuck in my brain. I felt a hypnotic, obsessive desire to let the color guide me. A powerful magnetism that even logic couldn’t break.
I let this desire build up inside me until it vibrated powerfully under my skin. Uncomfortably hot, I wrestled out of my blankets. My head buzzing, I tossed and turned. The intensity of the buzzing increased until I shivered with heat. A strange fever. The cemetery, I thought. It all started in the cemetery.
The black night, the black fog. Black grass, black gravestones. The glittering black river. And now a pair of black eyes watching me. I couldn’t ignore the flashes of black, and I couldn’t sleep them away. I couldn’t rest until I acted on them.
I swung out of bed. I stretched a knit shirt over my head, zipped myself into a pair of jeans, and threw a cardigan over my shoulders. I paused at my bedroom door. The hall outside was quiet except for the reverberating tick of the grandfather clock carrying up from the main level. Mom’s bedroom door was not quite shut, but no light spilled from the crack. If I listened hard enough, I could just make out the soft purr of her snoring.
I moved silently down the stairs, grabbed a flashlight and house key, and let myself out through the back door, fearing the creaky boards on the front porch would give me away. That, and there was a uniformed officer stationed at the curb. He was there to divert reporters and cameras, but I had a feeling that if I strolled out front at this hour, he’d speed-dial Detective Basso.
A small voice at the rear of my mind protested that it probably wasn’t safe to go out, but I was propelled by a strange trance. Black night, black fog. Black grass, black gravestones. Glittering black river. A pair of black eyes watching me.
I had to find those eyes. They had the answers.
Forty minutes later I’d walked to the arched gates leading inside Coldwater’s cemetery. Under the breeze, leaves twirled down from their branches like dark pinwheels. I found my father’s grave without difficulty. Shuddering against the damp chil in the air, I used trial and error to find my way back to the flat headstone where it had all begun.
Crouching down, I ran my finger over the aged marble. I shut my eyes and blocked out the night sounds, concentrating on finding the black eyes. I threw my question out there, hoping they’d hear.
How had I gotten to the point of sleeping in a cemetery after spending eleven weeks in captivity?
I let my eyes travel a slow circle around the graveyard. The decaying smells of approaching autumn, the rich tang of cut grass, the pulse of insect wings rubbing together—none of it ill uminated the answer I so desperately wanted. I swallowed against the thickness in my throat, trying hard not to feel defeated. The color black, teasing me for days, had failed me. Shoving my hands inside the pockets of my jeans, I turned to go.
From the edge of my vision, I noticed a smudge on the grass. I picked up a black feather. It was easily the length of my arm, shoulder to wrist. My eyebrows pulled together as I tried to envision what kind of bird could have left it. It was much too big for a crow. Much too big for any bird, as far as I was concerned. I ran my finger over the feather’s vane, each satiny barb snapping back into place.
A memory stirred inside me. Angel, I seemed to hear a smooth voice whisper. You’re mine.
Of all the ridiculous, confusing things, I blushed. I looked around, just to make sure the voice wasn’t real.
I haven’t forgotten you.
With my posture rigid, I waited to hear the voice again, but it faded into the wind. Whatever flicker of memories it left behind dived out of reach before I could grasp them. I felt torn between wanting to fling the feather away, and the frantic impulse to bury it where no one would find it. I had the intense impression that I’d stumbled across something secret, something private, something that could cause a great deal of harm if discovered.
A car revved into the parking lot just up the hill from the cemetery, blaring music. I heard shouts and spurts of laughter, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if they belonged to people I went to school with. This part of town was dense with trees, far from the hub of downtown, and made a good place to hang out unsupervised on weekends and nights. Not wanting to stumble across anyone I knew, especially since my sudden reappearance was being splashed across local news, I tucked the feather under my arm and speed-walked along the gravel path leading back to the main road.
Shortly after two thirty a. m
. I let myself inside the farmhouse and, after locking up, tiptoed upstairs.
I stood, indecisive, in the middle of my bedroom a moment, then hid the feather in my middle dresser drawer, where I also stashed my socks, leggings, and scarves. In hindsight, I didn’t even know why I’d carried it home. It wasn’t like me to collect scrappy items, let alone tuck them inside my drawers. But it had sparked a memory….
Stripping off my clothes and stretching out a yawn, I turned toward bed. I was halfway there when my feet came to a halt. A sheet of paper rested on my pillow. One that hadn’t been there when I left.
I whipped around, expecting to see my mom in the doorway, angry and worked up that I’d sneaked out. But given everything that had happened, did I really think she would simply leave a note upon finding my bed empty?
I picked up the paper, realizing that my hands were shaking. It was lined notebook paper, just like I used in school. The message appeared to have been hastily scribbled in black Sharpie.
JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE HOME
DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE SAFE.
CHAPTER 4
I CRUMPLED THE PAPER, FLINGING IT AT THE WALL OUT of fear and frustration. Striding to the window, I rattled the lock to make sure it was secure. I wasn’t feeling gutsy enough to open the window and have a look out, but I cupped my hands around my eyes and peered into the shadows stretched across the lawn like long, lean daggers. I had no idea who could have left the note, but one thing was certain. I’d locked up before leaving. And earlier, before we’d headed upstairs for the night, I’d watched my mom walk through the house and check every window and door at least three times.
So how had the intruder gotten in?
And what did the note even mean? It was cryptic and cruel. A twisted joke? Right now, that was my best guess.
Down the hall, I pushed on my mom’s bedroom door, opening it just far enough to see inside.
“Mom?”
She sat up ramrod straight in the darkness. “Nora? What is it? What happened? A bad dream?” A pause. “Did you remember something?”
I clicked on the bedside lamp, suddenly fearful of the dark and what I couldn’t see. “I found a note in my room. It told me not to fool myself into believing I’m safe. ” She blinked against the sudden brightness, and I watched her eyes absorb my words. Suddenly she was wide awake. “Where did you find the note?” she demanded.
“I—” I was nervous about how she’d react to the truth. In hindsight, it had been a terrible idea.
Sneaking out? After I’d been abducted? But it was hard to fear the possibility of a second abduction when I couldn’t even remember the first. And I’d needed to go to the cemetery for my own sanity. The color black had led me there. Stupid, unexplainable, but nonetheless true. “It was under my pillow. I must not have noticed it before bed,” I lied. “It wasn’t until I shifted in my sleep that I heard the paper crinkle. ”
She pulled on her bathrobe and jogged to my bedroom. “Where’s the note? I want to read it.
Detective Basso needs to know about this right away. ” She was already dialing on her phone. She punched in his number from memory, and it occurred to me that they must have worked closely together during the weeks I was missing.