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But she is not paying attention to my questions. She is shaking her head, the tears pouring down her cheeks. “I don’t even think Charlie wanted me to move in with him really,” she sobs out. “I think he only asked me to make Rachel jealous.”
“India, what man did you see? Tell me!”
But India is shouting now. “Charlie that evil bastard. How could he do that to me? How could he do that to us? She was my best friend! My foster sister! But he didn’t care. I hate him. I hate him so much!”
I grab hold of her shoulders and make her look at me. “India, pay attention. I’m sorry that Charlie and Rachel did that to you. But we need to find the man who killed Rachel. We need to make sure he doesn’t come after you. Who was he? Did you know him? What did he look like?”
She looks confused. “What are you talking about? I told you what he looked like!”
Now it is my turn to be confused. “What?”
“I told you. Dark hair. Glasses. 6 feet tall. I told you yesterday when you took me back to the bar.”
“Me?” I say. “But I never took you anywhere. No one saw who it was. They said the guards were given a potion in their pizza.”
“But that was you,” she says. “You did it. You came to get me. Remember?”
I shake my head. “You’re confused.”
She gives me a funny smile, as if I must be joking. “It was you,” she insists. “You had a black wig on. You were acting really weird. It was you.”
Chapter 26
DIANA
I show India the picture of Hank Lowry on my phone and she is horrified. She confirms it was him who abducted her after killing Rachel. The photo makes her hysterical and nurses arrive to sedate her. I leave her in the care of them and the Agency off
icer, and go to find a bathroom. I make sure all of the toilet cubicles are empty before locking the outer door so that no one else can get in.
I stand over a sink and stare at myself in the mirror. India said it was me. She said I came to get her yesterday. But I had been home. Sleeping. I hadn’t felt well at Agency Headquarters so I had gone home. Hadn’t I?
The thing is that I don’t actually remember going home. All I remember is waking up in my bed late this morning. I had slept seemingly for nearly eighteen hours, and yet I had still felt weary when I awoke. Even now I still feel like someone who has barely slept at all.
“Nemesis,” I say quietly to myself in the mirror.
My memory of yesterday evening is a black hole. There is no memory. India said I came to see her. She said I was wearing a black wig. How could that possibly be? I don’t own a black wig. It has to have been someone else. Someone pretending to be me. But just because I don’t own a black wig doesn’t mean I couldn’t have got one. I have got things before that I never remembered getting.
This whole thing is like deja vu. It has happened to me before.
“Nemesis,” I say again into the mirror.
I know now that she can hear me. Somewhere inside my head she can hear me.
I want so badly to believe that it had not been me who came to the hospital yesterday to take India out. But I can’t deny it. Who else could have got those two amulets that belong to Theo? I feel like I am going mad. It has even crossed my mind that maybe Theo is involved in all this. But I know he isn’t. Not Theo. I would stake my life on it. Not Theo, but me. It was me.
“Nemesis,” I say again. “I know it was you. Answer me. I know you can hear me.”
But even as I say these words I am horrified at what they mean. They mean that Theo’s amulet did not work. They mean that she has learned to take control of my body without me even being aware of it. It can’t be true. And yet I know that it is true. The amulet is still around my neck, the red lavastone glaring at me from my reflection in the mirror.
I should take it off. I should give it to Theo to break apart like he had done the others, but what is the use? I already know that it does not work.
“I know it was you. You stole the amulets from Theo. You gave them to India. You wanted her to forget that it was you. And it would have worked if I hadn’t called Theo. It would have worked if he hadn’t found the amulets in time. I know it was you. How could you steal from him? He’s looked out for me. He’s my friend!”
She does not reply. She is silent. My head is utterly empty, devoid of any little voice, as if there is only me inside there. But I know she is there. Not locked away like I had thought, but free. She is free. And she has found a way to stop me from sensing her. To stop me from hearing her.
Oh what a fool I have allowed myself to be. I had believed the amulet worked on us because I so desperately had wanted it to work. And all the while I have let Nemesis be free.
“God, you must have loved that Theo thought it was little Mozz misplacing the things you stole,” I say bitterly. “You must’ve thought she was such a blessing in disguise. I bet you laughed. You fooled us all.”
