Page 14 of A Seer and Present Danger

There was a brighter flash, just the quickest of images:

A beautiful golden box.

“A box? Really?” I huffed. “We need to work on what ‘useful’ means, future.”

“Piper?” Jean cleared her throat and sounded stronger on the second try. “Piper, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill him.”

“Of course you didn’t! I never thought you did. Don’t you worry. Delaney is so good at this stuff. She’ll figure it out. Just hold on, then you can tell her everything.”

Jean made a sound between a choke and a laugh. “No, I can’t tell her everything.”

“Hey, now. She’s your sister. Of course you can talk to her.”

“I know I can talk to her. I just can’t tell her everything. Because I don’t remember any of this.”

“Any of what?”

She held up her hands. “Being out here. Him, whoever he is. Why he’s dead. Why there’s blood on my hands. I was at the booth—I did sit in the diner, didn’t I? You brought me water?”

“Yes. That happened.”

The distant wail of a siren, no two, coming closer cut through the stillness of the night.

“I don’t remember walking out here. Just the diner, then I was here—you were here. I saw you and you saw me.”

“Shock? I think you’re in shock.”

“Listen to me. I’m not in shock—okay, fine I probably am—but my memory is gone. It’s missing.

“I remember the diner, I remember you coming out the door. I don’t remember this,” she pointed at Hugo, “at all. My doom-twinges were off the charts when I was in the diner. Someone or something messed with my memory.”

“Magic?”

“It could be.”

I turned a circle, trying to sense if there was magic here.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, magically speaking.

“We can tell Delaney about your memory. Oh! Maybe you have a head injury? That’d be good. Well, not good, but concussions can knock the sense right out of you. Did you hit your head?”

She reached up to check her skull and grimaced at the blood on her hands. “I really want to wash this off.”

“As soon as Delaney gets here. She told me not to mess with the crime scene, so we just have to hang on a couple more minutes. Tip your head, easy now, I’m going to feel the back of it.”

She followed my instructions, and I carefully felt the back of her head.

“Ow! Yes. Ow.”

I pulled my fingers away. “That’s an injury. It’s bleeding. Did you fall?”

“Can’t remember.”

“Are your hands scraped?”

“I—” She turned them over and back. “No? I don’t think so.”

The siren was loud enough to be almost at the parking lot.