Shortly after dinner, I head upstairs to the guest bedroom I'll be sharing with Willow. She said it'd be easier than sharing a room with Janie, whose mood has drastically gotten worse over the course of the night, or with the two other girls I don't know—who have been giving me wary looks since I met them—so I agreed.
Willow is still downstairs in an intense and secretive conversation with Marcus, so I take the opportunity to call Davey. He picks up on the second ring and answers breathlessly, "Hey."
"Um, hi." I settle on the edge of the bed, one leg curled beneath me. "How are you?"
I hear his panting for a few seconds. "Sorry, I'm winded. Had to get Carson up three flights of stairs in this dingy motel. Otherwise, I'm doing okay. Can't say the same for him though."
My brow furrows. "What happened?"
"It's nothing new, but he's been giving me a hard time today. He refused to eat breakfast and lunch. He'll swallow but sometimes he'll refuse to chew, which means I have to shovel soft foods down his throat or he'll starve to death. I try not to get too close to his teeth, so I'm always using a fork or spoon, and that just makes things even harder."
Is Carson aware of any of it? Has he been insentient for the last eight months or is he trapped inside his own body, forced to suffer and watch the suffering of his loved ones? I promised I'd save him, but what have I done for him so far? Instead, all I've done is chase my own tail and get nowhere.
"I miss him," I say softly.
"I miss him, too. I take back all those times I wished as a kid that he wasn't born so I wouldn't have to share my toys with him." Davey tries to add humor to his voice, but all I hear is his pain and it tears at me. Nothing I feel could ever compare to how much he's hurting. He sighs in an exhausted way before continuing, "How are things on your end?"
His voice is soft, with that slight southern lilt, and it makes me feel comforted. I don't know if it's because it reminds me of Carson or because some part of me that I've lost thanks to Willow recognizes a deeper connection with him. "It hasn't been a great day," I admit, sliding back on the bed until my back is pressed against the wall. I brush a hand through my disheveled locks and try not to visualize the image of Matthew strung up on that tree.
Davey listens while I recount my day and whistles at the end. "Damn. That's brutal. Why would the Shroud kill him like that?"
"He was a message for us, I'd bet. Willow told me earlier that this has never happened before. Sometimes we find the flippers in time, other times we get there too late and find their bodies. They're usually shot or stabbed to death, not hanging from a tree. This murder feels . . . deliberate. It takes a lot of forethought and intent to carry someone out into the middle of a dark woods and tie a noose around his neck."
"So what changed?" he asks.
I start to say I'm the last person who can answer that, but I stop and frown. "Well, the only thing that's changed is that I lost my memories."
"You think the two things are related?"
My heart thuds unevenly at the thought. "It would mean that the Shroud is aware that I can't remember. More disturbing is that it would mean they know me."
"Jesus, that's terrifying."
No kidding. I pull my knees into my chest. The quaint room with its cheery pastel walls and light drapes suddenly feels threatening. "A-anyway, if that wasn't bad enough, Gardiner had to show up and screw things up even more for us. Alec was in charge of them. He's someone we left back at the facility when we got away."
"I know about him. How did it feel to see him again after so long?"
"I wouldn't know. As far as I remember, I saw him literally a few days ago."
"Right."
His silence encourages me to go on. At the back of my mind, I feel unsettled that I'm opening up to a complete stranger, but it feels so normal. "Are you my therapist or something?" I ask him half-teasingly.
Davey chuckles. "Well, I am a psych major. Or was. How did Marcus react when Gardiner took Saige? Knowing how protective he is of her, I can imagine he's pretty shaken."
The unexpected question jars me. So does his unsolicited opinion. Shaken is an apt word for Marcus's reaction. He's been acting all evening like someone turned his world upside down. Thinking of the way my ex-boyfriend is grieving his missing girlfriend gives me serious heartburn, so I answer flippantly, "Pretty much."
He seems to hesitate before saying, "I'm sorry. That was pretty callous of me. Especially, as far as you're aware, things are still good between you guys."
I can't help wondering what his angle is. It makes me feel guarded, the way he's circling the issue of my 'relationship' with Marcus. Like he's digging for information in an indirect and roundabout way. Which I guess he's entitled to, if he's really someone I'm currently with.
"Can I ask you something?" I say.
"Sure."
"Did you steal money from us?"
"Yes," he says, and I'm more surprised by his blunt and unapologetic tone than the answer itself. "Not from you specifically, but from your friends. They were going to kick me from the group and I needed the money for me and Carson. You confronted me about it. I'm going to give you the same answer now as I did then: I'm not sorry I did it. I'd do anything for my little brother, April. We both would."
"Okay."
"Okay?" Now it's his turn to be surprised.
"Yes. I believe you, and I'm not mad at you. Considering how easily we dropped three hundred bucks on lunch today, I think the money was better spent on you guys. Let me know if you need anything. I want to do what I can to make your lives easier."
"Thanks," he says, sounding like he's smiling. "It's good to know you're consistent."
"What do you mean?"
"You said pretty much the same thing the last time."
I digest that, oddly comforted by it. It has to mean I didn't change too much despite everything. "My roommate's going to be here soon, but I wanted to bring up one other thing. How much do you know about this Hermes guy?"
"Not much besides what I've already said. He's pretty elusive and usually speaks in riddles, but his tips are pretty solid. Why?"
"I got this phone today, but he called me literally two hours later on it." Davey is the only other person I contacted, but I texted him after my conversation with Hermes. "I didn't give him my number. There's no way he could've had it."
"I'm not surprised."
"You're not?"
He lets out a short laugh. "You could be stuck in a hole two hundred feet underground and Hermes would still find you. He probably has a satellite programmed to track you wherever you go. We stopped being surprised by his mysterious ways a long time ago."
I'm not sure how to take that, but the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway puts an abrupt end to our conversation. I say a quick goodbye, throw my phone under the pillow, and manage to crawl under my covers before Willow walks in.
Her footsteps stop and I know she's taking in the room. I pretend to be asleep. Before all of this, before I knew her connection to Sam, I wouldn't have hidden from her, but too much has changed between us since. I don't know how to be normal with her anymore. With Sam dead, Marcus hating me, Alec working against us, and Carson's life hanging by a thread, Willow is my only connection to the person I used to be.
I just don't know if that's a good thing anymore.
The lack of air startles me awake. I sit up straight in bed, pawing at my throat and wheezing so hard I barely recognize the noise coming from my throat. Willow is holding my arm tightly, her nails digging into my skin. Her words find a way into my brain. "April, wake up. You can breathe. It's just a dream. You're not actually drowning."
She's wrong. I'm not drowning at all. I feel like I've been buried alive. But knowing this time that I'm having a panic attack helps me calm down quickly.
"What's wrong with me?" I choke out, my throat raw.
Sunlight pours through the thin drapes and lights the room up in a warm glow. Judging by the angle, and the fact that our room faces the east, I'd say it's early morning. Willow straightens up and ruffles her frizzy white-blonde hair in an unconscious, almost nervous, move. Fatigue shadows her eyes. It reminds me of her sleepless nights back at the facility, when Sam would summon her up to his office.
"It's a side effect of blanking," she answers. "I thought once the stress is gone, the symptoms and the actual blanking would also go away. But it seems like neither of us has any control over what happens to you in your dreams. Something is triggering your panic attacks."
"Marcus used to have dreams, too," I say.
She nods, her hazel eyes dark and solemn. I wonder where the cheerful girl at the facility went. "Are you okay now?"
"Yeah, I guess so. Are you?"
She seems to understand that I'm talking about Alec. Her eyes slide away from mine. "I'm good."
Her curt answer makes it clear she's not up for discussing it. I throw off my covers and roll out of bed. "I'm going to use the bathroom first, if you don't mind."
"Go ahead. I've already gone. The Heinrichs had to go to work about an hour ago, so I spent some time with them making sure the hypnosis would hold. They won't remember ever meeting us. And when they get back, they'll just go about their regular business like we're not here."
"Wow," I say, impressed. "You're a lot more powerful than I thought."
"Thanks." Her grin makes her look like her old, mischievous self. "I've had a lot of practice hypnotizing random strangers across the country. Hopefully none of them have been having recurring nightmares of a funny-haired teenage girl telling them to bark like a dog."
I laugh and start to respond when there's a knock on the door. Marcus looms at the doorway, dressed in sweatpants and a sleeveless shirt. Caught off guard, I step aside and gesture to Willow behind me. "She's right here."
"I'm not here for Willow," he answers. "I'm here for you."
The only response I can give him is raised eyebrows. The rest of me has gone completely still. His eyes move over the length of my body, and I resist the urge to tug the edge of my shorts lower. "Get ready and have some breakfast. Then meet me in the basement in an hour. Wear something comfortable."
He's gone before I reply. I look at Willow, and she says, "You should go."
"Why?"
"You want to make peace with him, right? Well, this is as close to an olive branch as you'll get from Marcus."
The basement has a huge state-of-the-art workout room. Treadmills and a rowing machine and a bunch of complex machines that are meant to work different muscle groups. There's a padded mat at the center of it and Marcus is already stretching on top of it. As soon as I take in the room, I know what I'm here for.
"You're out of your mind," I say when he tosses a pair of fingerless sparring gloves on the mat in front of me. "I feel like I've been run over by an eighteen-wheeler, and you want me to fight with you?"
He pulls down the collar of his shirt to show me a red-tinged bandage on one side of his chest. "I got stabbed here a week ago by a very unfriendly Blank who found us in a house we were staying at." He tugs on one pants leg until the white bandage wrapped around his ankle is visible. "I had to escape through a window and jump down to the concrete sidewalk below. Couldn't stick the landing, so I sprained my ankle."
"Isn't there a rule about you guys not telling me things in case it triggers my memories?" Not that I'm complaining, but I'd hate to miss the opportunity to call him out on his hypocrisy. Some of the others are pretty lax about this rule. But this is the first time I've heard anything about the past from Marcus.
"You weren't there for it," he answers flatly.
His tone tells me that he didn't approve of the fact that I was missing. "You were saying?"
"I'm hurting as much as you are, maybe more since I have a hole in my chest, but you know what? Blanks don't care what kind of condition you're in." He jabs his thumb at the ceiling. "One of those servants working around the house could blank at any moment. If you don't know how to defend yourself, you're going to die."
I can't argue with that. I pick up the gloves reluctantly and squeeze my hands into them, careful not to jostle my bruised wrist. This whole thing is surreal. Ten hours ago, Marcus couldn't bear to look at me, and now he's willing to teach me to protect myself? "I haven't learned how to defend myself?"
"You have. You just don't remember. Willow blocked your memories of things that happened, but the brain works in a unique way. You might've forgotten things that happened to you, but your body still remember skills you've learned and practiced hundreds of times. You just need a reminder."
He slips on his gloves and lifts his hands close to his face. "Alright. I'm going to come at you from your right side. Upper-cut. Ready?"
"Ready."
I'm anticipating the blow, already in the process of lifting my arm to block the upper-cut the best way I know how, but it doesn't come. Instead he grabs my shoulder, slips a foot behind my ankle, and trips me to the mat.
The impact rattles my teeth. I shoot up in anger and throw him a furious look. "What the hell was that? You tricked me!"
"Rule number one. Never trust your opponent." He gestures at my hips and legs, ignoring my death glare. "Your form is decent, by the way. You had your feet firmly on the ground and your center of gravity was low. The only thing that got you was your head. Next time, think with your body, too. Don't assume I'm going to strike one way. Read my movements."
The next few times he attacks aren't as bad as the first, but he still gets me. He holds back his full strength but even then he doesn't go easy on me, and in some twisted way, I'm glad. I don't want him to treat me with care. I don't want him to treat me the way I've seen him treating Saige. Like he thinks she'll fall apart if he doesn't coddle her. The new bruises forming on my body are a testament to my iron will, and I relish the release of pent-up frustrations, the way the disarray of thoughts in my head over the past day have honed into laser-sharp focus.
Dodge. Swing. Block. Pull back. Wait for attack. The more I practice, the more my body slides into a rhythm that seems as familiar to me as the sound of my heartbeat. I don't remember practicing with Marcus before, but I know I have. Countless times. I'm starting to pick up on a few tells, too, like the way his chest expands when he's about to throw a punch. Or the way his eyes become narrow slightly when he's deliberating. Little things that help me avoid his stinging blows.
"Nice," he acknowledges as I dart around his wide swing and deliver a quick jab to his kidney. "See? It's coming back to you. The only problem is you're still holding back. You're afraid of putting yourself out there. You're still in your own head. This isn't chess. Stop thinking so goddamn much."
I scowl at him. He couldn't just stick with compliments and encouraging words, could he? So when he attacks again, I go all out. I swing first, hoping to strike him in the jaw and wipe that gloating look off his face.
He sees the move a mile away and slips under my punch. Before I know it, he's around me, his arm moving around my neck for a chokehold. I react on instinct and throw my elbow back wildly.
The startled grunt tells me I got him. He releases me abruptly and I turn to see him pressing a hand over his nose, trying to contain the river of blood spurting from it. My stomach lurches. "Oh my God—Marcus, I'm so sorry!"
He pulls off his shirt in one swift move and presses it to his nose, groaning as he sinks down onto the mat. His words are muffled when he says, "Rule number eleven. Don't apologize to your enemy. Damn, that really hurts though. You've got one hell of a reflex."
He looks up at me, and despite the shirt covering half his face, I see the amusement in his eyes. I don't get him at all. As he tries to staunch the blood flow, my eyes trace his olive-skinned shoulders and well-formed arms, flushing with heat at the confirmation that I'm as attracted to him as I ever was. It seems my hormones didn't get the memo that I'm not supposed to like an asshole like him.
Which begs the question.
"Marcus, what's going on?"
He quirks his eyebrow at me. "What're you talking about?"
"Yesterday you couldn't stand me. And now you're taking time out of your day to train me? Even cracking jokes after I nearly break your nose?" My confusion turns to quick anger. "Is this because Saige is gone? Your girlfriend isn't here, so you think it's okay to play nice with me?"
He shakes his head. "I don't know what you get out of it."
"Get out of what?"
"Acting like that."
"Acting like—" I grit my teeth instead of asking him what the hell he's on about. There's no way he'll tell me, not until I pull all of my hair out. "Look. You know I don't remember anything since that day I woke up in the hospital. That means you're picking a fight with someone who has no idea why you hate her so much. Whatever you think I've done to you isn't my fault. Because as far as I know, everything was fine between us."
Marcus stares at me like I'm speaking an alien language. Finally, he says, "Was it?"
"I—I don't understand you," I say, bewildered.
He stands quickly, shaking his head. "Never mind. This was a mistake."
He wipes the remnants of blood from his face and lowers the shirt, and that's when I see the two tattoos. The old one from the facility is gone, which makes sense since it was fading last thing I knew. In its place are tally marks, like the kind prisoners use to count the passage of time on walls in the movies: two sets of four horizontal lines, one above the other, with diagonal strikethroughs cutting through them. There is one more horizontal line next to each grouping of five, which brings the number up to twelve.
Twelve what? It must be an important number if he has it engraved permanently onto his skin. I don't spend much time pondering on the significance of the tally marks. The second tattoo holds my complete attention.
On the right side of his torso, right on his ribcage and where his heart would be, is a tattoo of an elegant and single red rose, thorns and all.
My heart is lodged in my throat. I stare at it, words he said to me in another lifetime flashing through my head. First, the cocky and antagonistic remark he made on the day we met while explaining why he called me Rose. Easy on the eyes, prickly when touched.
And then the words he said to me much later in our relationship, delivered in a soft and earnest tone. Your thorns are your strength. They protect you.
"Why?" I ask, unable to say more even though I have a million questions.
He rubs his hand across the tattoo, gingerly like it's still tender. He doesn't look so tough and macho standing here now, his nose pink and specked with blood, his gaze vulnerable. "I thought it would change things between us. Consider it a Hail Mary of some sort. But it didn't make a difference." His voice goes cold. "And memory or not, you know damn well why."
Marcus leaves me there alone to contemplate what he said.
SEVEN HOURS AGO
Willow lay awake on her bed in the guest room, staring up at the ceiling and counting the hours until she had to act. She made sure that April was completely out before swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and rising.
The room was completely dark except for the long-necked lamp sitting on her nightstand. She could barely make out April's still form wrapped up in a blanket on the bed across the room. The slim, brown-haired girl was deep asleep by the sound of her even breathing. Willow sat on the edge of her bed and rested a hand on her shoulder, but she didn't shake her awake. Instead, she leaned close to her ear and said, "April. Can you hear my words, April?"
The soft and hypnotic words sank deep into April's conscience. She blinked awake and looked blankly at Willow.
"Yes, I can hear you," April replied in a monotone voice.
She kept speaking in a whisper, knowing that there were more rooms to either side of them. "Good. I want you to stay relaxed, okay? This won't take long."
"Okay."
"I want you to tell me about the shadowy figure you saw at the restaurant. Did you see him again after that?"
"I think so," April said dully.
"Please elaborate."
"I saw more shadows at Matthew's apartment. Two of them that time, but I don't know if one of them is the same figure from the restaurant."
"But you did see them in the past, didn't you?" Willow continued in her soothing tone. "Please look deeper into your mind for the answer."
April paused like she was searching through memories she hadn't been able to access. Willow let her. "Yes."
Good. The memories were still intact. Willow sat back, considering what to say. She leaned close again and whispered, "April. If you see the shadows again, I want you to do something for me."
"Yes."
"I want you to go with them."