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And first on that list was remembering me.
I rose and walked across to the mirror attached to the small dressing table. My reflection was thin and sunburned. My face was pleasant enough, and there was a sense of familiarity about it - though why this surprised me, I'm not entirely sure. I mean, it was my face. What did I expect? Surgical changes?
My hair was the same red-gold as Evin's and cut into a short, elfin style. That felt different. I touched it lightly, feeling oddly bereft. It should have been longer. Had been longer.
There were fading bruises and cuts over my cheeks and above my eyes, and one earlobe looked as if someone had taken a knife to it. Weirdly enough, that apparently didn't prevent me from wearing earrings. They were overly large stud earrings with a blue stone in the center, and really ugly. I tried to take them off, but the damn things seemed to be attached to my flesh and would not be budged.
I frowned and undid the shirt instead. The bruises over my torso were as bad as they'd felt, and the gunshot wound looked puckered and red. It wasn't infected, but it had been. If I'd been able to change before the accident with the roo, why hadn't that healed? Surely I would have taken steps to heal my own flesh?
But then, if I'd been depressed, maybe not.
Maybe not remembering anything was a good thing, not bad.
I stepped back, then caught sight of the wallet sitting on the bedside table. I opened it up and dragged out the driver's license tucked into the one of the side pockets. The picture was crappy - as they always were - but the face on the license matched the face in the mirror. And the name listed was Hanna London. I was who Evin said I was.
Even if I didn't feel like a Hanna.
I shoved the wallet back onto the dresser and headed out the door to find Evin.
It turned out the villa apartment wasn't very big. There was a second bedroom next to mine and, next to that, an average-looking bathroom. The main room was one big space comprised of a kitchen, a dining area, and a TV
area. The furnishings were a basic, durable pine, and the curtains and cushions consisted of an almost garish blue and yellow flower print. There wasn't much in the way of decorations, but I guess you didn't need them when one wall was glass, and the vista beyond was all white sand and blue ocean. Even at night, it was a sight to behold.
Evin was sitting at the table under the small front veranda reading a newspaper. I followed my nose to the coffee machine, made myself a drink, then grabbed an apple and headed outside to join him.
He looked up as I sat down, and there was a decided wariness in his gray eyes. "How are you feeling?"
"I'd be great if some uncaring bastard hadn't cracked my head open earlier tonight." I took a sip of coffee and winced at the sharp, bitter taste. Definitely not to my liking, but it was hot and strong and better than nothing.
"Hanna, you were acting rather weird - "
"You'd be weird if you could see souls, too." I glanced at him over the rim of my mug. "Why don't you know about that?"
"Maybe because it was never mentioned?" He shrugged. "We may spend a lot of time together, dearest sister, but we don't tell each other every single thing that goes on in our lives."
But we do ... Or at least, I thought we did. I bit into my apple, enjoying the juicy sweetness, then said, "So what secrets are you hiding from me? Aside from the fact you're apparently moon-sworn."
"That's not a secret. You just can't remember it." He picked up his cup, and I saw with surprise it was tea rather than coffee.
When did my brother start drinking tea?
"How long are we staying here? And how long was I out?"
He raised his eyebrows. "What, sick of the place already?"
Wary was more like it, but I didn't say that. I simply shrugged. He folded the paper and put it on the table. "You slept through the entire day. And we paid for seven days, and we won't get a refund if we leave early. Neither of us can afford to lose that sort of money, so we're stuck here until then."
So I'd wasted a day. An entire day.
"And after the seven days are up?" I couldn't help tensing as I said that, because the words of that stranger still echoed in my mind.
"After that, who knows?"
If he was a part of whatever was going on, why wouldn't he know? There again, if he did know and this was a plot rather than the imaginings of a sick mind, why would he tell me?
I munched on the apple and watched him watching me. It felt weird, like we were strangers rather than brother and sister.
"What happened to the doctor you were going to call?" I tossed the apple core into the tussock grass lining the veranda. The birds and the ants could feast on what remained.
