“You okay?” I asked.
“I remember this face…” Kallie murmured as she clutched the photograph. “It was in a memory.”
“What, one of Amalie’s?” Charlie asked.
“No,” Kallie said, and her features lightened with clarification. “Frommine.I was Amalie. It’s all so clear now… she was one of my past lives.”
The revelation was huge. A weight dropped into my stomach as I asked, “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I can’t believe it. But I’m certain that I was her. No wonder I was able to access her memories so easily… she’s me.”
Kallie put a hand on the wall to steady herself. “It’s flowing through me now… I remember being an assassin and working for the crown. And I remember aligning myself with Dante in order to get the key out of Atlantis.”
She shook her head, appearing sorrowful. “He put so much on the line. His whole life was at risk. His title, his position on the council... but he wanted to help me, because… he loved me. And he paid the ultimate price for it.”
“Let me see that photograph,” Marcus asked, and he reached out for it. Kallie placed it into his hands, and he looked at the photo of Dante.
Once his eyes connected with the photograph, Marcus let out a strangled gasp. His eyes gave that pearly sheen Kallie’s had, and he launched into a worse set of seizures. He toppled backwards onto the floor, rolling around as his body launched into convulsions.
“Marcus!” Kallie screamed. She dropped to her knees to shake him, but he didn’t come out of whatever trance held him captive.
Rishi hissed loudly and bit his leg. Marcus gave a strangled yell as he sat upright, glancing around like he’d been suddenly woken from a bad dream. When his eyes landed on the photograph again, he let out a shrill scream. Outside, the menacing laughter of the ghosts grew louder.
“Fucking hell, Marcus, it’s not going to bite you,” I said crossly.
“It’s not that!” he yelped. “That Dante guy… I was him!”
“What?” Charlie asked. He sounded both astounded and skeptical.
“I know it sounds like I’m making it up, and usually, I would think I did, because I don’t trust my powers. But that vision was so intense,” Marcus blurted.
“Of course,” Kallie breathed. She tilted her head and moved toward Marcus slowly, as if seeing him in a new light. “Itisyou. I recognize it now. You both look so different, but I’m sure you were once Dante.”
“And Iknowyou were Amalie,” Marcus stuttered. “The resemblance… it’s uncanny.”
“This is crazy,” Charlie stated. “You can’tbothbe Amalie and Dante. It’s too ridiculous.”
“It isn’t that unbelievable,” I argued. “Hemlock told us about past lives, how they’re all connected. What if the four of us have been going through the centuries, searching for keys and attempting to put them in the right places for our future selves to find right now?”
“Oh, gods, Marcus,that’swhy the one ghost tried pushing you off the balcony earlier,” Kallie exclaimed. “They knew who you were, and were trying to recreate your death for some laughs.”
“These are some sick fucks around here,” Charlie mumbled.
“You can’t talk me out of it. I know that I was Dante, because I remember dying here,” Marcus said, and he shuddered. “My death wassopainful. But I considered it a relief, in the end. I couldn’t really protect myself. The other inmates picked on me constantly. Now it makes sense why I beat up one of Mad Dog’s guys on my first day here. It was so unlike me, but somehow I justknewwhat prison life was like. I knew I had to win my first fight so they wouldn’t mess with me. I told Charlie to do the same thing the day he got here. It must’ve been some sort of residual memory from my past life.”
“Do you guys know where you hid the merfolk key?” I pressed.
“I remember that we got the key, but the time between us leaving Atlantis with it and us getting caught is foggy,” Kallie said.
“I don’t remember how we fled Atlantis, either, or how we got arrested. That part’s still a blank,” Marcus noted.
Kallie wound a lock of hair around her finger as she thought. “I think that I gave the key to Dante. They were looking for me primarily, not him, and I figured if we didn’t manage to escape, he’d have a better shot of keeping it safe.”
“I had the key on me. I was the last person to have contact with it,” Marcus said, and he bent down to pick up the file.
“Do you think the authorities who apprehended you took the key after you were caught?” I asked.
“No.” Marcus shook his head furiously. “I’m certain that key is safe. The recollections are… sporadic… but I… I remember walking to my execution knowing the only comfort I had was that no one was ever going to be able to find that key.”
