I nod, relief surging through me. That makes sense.
“Mama—”
“I wasn’t sure when I’d see you again,” she interrupts softly. “You were quite upset.”
“I’m not here to change your mind,” I say. I’m surprised how normal I sound, even as my heart beats erratically against my ribs.Yes, not here to change your mind. Just here to lure you into a trap that could very well lead to your untimely death.“I thought you might want a treatment before your meeting.”
“I have an hour or so,” she says, glancing at the clock above Vera’s desk.
“Perfect. I can make that work,” I say. “It should at least mute the discoloration for a bit. Get you through your meeting.”
Mama doesn’t smile now. Her eyes water, and her mouth parts. But rather than say a word, she turns for her office, leading me down the cluttered halls. I study the artifacts as we pass, mentally cataloguing them. Without consciously deciding to, I’m making note of anything that could be useful to Secora and her vampires in the future.
Traitor, my heart taunts.
Justice, my brain returns.
I sit in the chair across from Mama’s desk and settle the messenger bag over my lap. I pluck the ingredients from the side pockets and line them on the desk, mentally tallying my timeline. I’ll need to start acting sick within the next ten minutes. By thirty, Mama will be encouraging me to?—
A sharp click cuts through my thoughts.
I turn toward the sound, shoulders tensing. Mama stands at her office door, faced away from me. Her hand is still on the doorknob, still clutching the lock.
“Mama?”
“You ungrateful, insolent child,” she says. The words come out choked, broken by heaving sobs. Mama faces me, her cheeks lined with tears, her lower lip trembling. “After everything…how could you be such a fool?”
I don’t respond. I try to regulate my body the way Secora so easily does, but it doesn’t work. I can feel the humiliation burning through my skin, sending blush all the way to my ears.
“I told you to stay away from that woman,” she says. Her entire body trembles as she walks around her desk, unlocking the topmost drawer. She lines a set of herbs to mirror mine, and my stomach twists as I realize what she’s planning.
“How did you—Mama, I don’t know what you think?—”
“Donotinsult me,” she says. The words are a growl, a sob, acurse to the sky. “I’ve been worried for weeks, but after our last meeting, Iknew. All it took was a simple detection spell, and I could see your fingers all over this office. Whatever this woman has told you, she is lying, Elliot. You were ready to burn our realm to the ground for her manufactured lies.”
“Perhaps the urge to burn runs through my veins,” I snap. “Perhaps I’ve learned from the best.”
Mama doesn’t respond. Her teeth are visibly clenched as she undoes one of the vials in her lineup.
“You can’t take my memories, Mama,” I say. “I’m not going to let you.”
If Secora has taught me anything, it’s that stealing memories is not simple. She only had mine because I opened to her, and that’s the same reason Mama couldn’t get mine from Secora. My mind may not be as powerful as Secora’s, but I’ll die before I lose that woman again.
“Foolish,” is Mama’s sharp reply. “A foolish child. Everything I’ve done was for you. A simple, pretty face and you’ve forgotten who you are.”
Remembered, I want to correct. A complicated, vicious, beautiful face…and I’ve remembered exactly who I am. Who I’m not. Who I’m desperate to become.
“Mama,” I repeat. Harder. “I’m not going to let you.”
She doesn’t respond now. She doesn’t even look at me. She knows exactly what I’m capable of—exactly what happened to the last person who tried to take Secora from me. And still, her guard is down. She doesn’t think I’ll hurt her, and I hate that she’s right.
Even when I wanted to save the vampires, I never wanted her to suffer. I was going to do everything in my power to keep her from harm, and I can’t imagine inflicting pain on her now. Not Mama. The woman who knows my favorite meal and the surgeries I like best and the coworker I can’t stand.
I keep my eyes on her, because though I know she won’t physically hurt me, I can’t trust her with my mind. I watch her every movement as she places the ingredients of a forgetting spell in a shallow bowl. Dismemrate, it’s called. I’ve never taken it, but I’ve studied it. On a small scale, it can wipe a person’s memory for the past few minutes or hours. With the quantities she’s using, a child would likely forget his entire life.
I’d lose a year, if not more. I’d lose every second I’ve had with Secora since we were teenagers.
But like taking memories, Dismemrate only works on the willing. This alone won’t make me forget, which means there’s more to Mama’s plan.
