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Okay, now she was seriously making zero sense at all. Things I wouldn’t let myself remember? Guilt so powerful it could form itself into a curse? She was off her rocker.
Even as I was shaking my head she leaned close and pressed a palm to my forehead. It hit me like a bolt of electricity and sent me staggering back onto the floor, right on my ass.
Then everything went dark.
I knew I wasn’t in Memere’s tree when I opened my eyes and the edges of my sight moved and churned like ink on water. I must be dreaming, because everything had a surreal vibe to it.
The strong smell of smoke wrinkled my nose, and brutal heat licked my cheeks. Wherever I was, there was a fire nearby.
I got to my feet and pushed down a hall that looked like it belonged in a hotel. There were several identical doors on either side of me, and the carpet under my feet had an innocuous pattern that would hide high traffic wear and tear.
A glass light fixture next to me popped, debris flying everywhere. The creamy wallpaper peeled back, its edges blackened and melting.
The scene had a vaguely familiar feel, and yet I couldn’t put my finger on why I knew it. My heartbeat pounded and I swiped at my eyes, which were running thanks to the choking black smoke that roiled overhead.
When I emerged in an elevator lobby, I froze.
I’d come upon a tableau, frozen in place. It wasn’t just that everyone was still, it was as if time itself had stopped.
I stepped closer and inspected the scene. A lean woman with a dark bob haircut was aiming a gun at a tall, handsome man with blond hair. He was leaning into the empty opening of an elevator shaft. I knew him immediately.
Lucas.
Lucas Rain.
Memories of him crashed into me, sucking the breath from my lungs, and I suddenly knew exactly where we were and what moment this was. Secret, my sister, was also near the elevator shaft, her hands lifted as if saying hold on a minute, even as Lucas stared into the darkened abyss of the open door.
My memories of this moment were fuzzy at best.
I’d been sent to Lucas’s hotel during the undead invasion of New York to help take out a necromancer. My group had succeeded, but I’d ended up stuck in an elevator on the brink of falling to the basement with me inside it.
Lucas had gotten me out.
I didn’t remember this part though. I inched forward, confident they couldn’t see me, since this was just a memory and not really happening. As I got to the dark haired woman, I could see over her shoulder into the elevator shaft.
And there I was.
Me, all of eighteen or nineteen, an expression if panicked terror on my face and my hands outstretched reaching for Lucas, for Secret, for anything.
She pushed me, my memory provided. Morgan pushed me.
That was her name, the dark-haired werewolf who was pointing the weapon at Lucas. Bits and pieces were coming back now as I watched the scene unfold.
Then, inexplicably, while everything else stayed frozen, Secret began to m
ove. She knocked the gun out of Morgan’s hands, sending it flying into the open pit below my mid-air body. God, this was so weird.
Secret, foolhardy idiot that she was, climbed down into the open shaft and seemed to be assessing the best way to drag me back in. She grabbed my shirtsleeve but couldn’t quite maneuver my frozen form, so I floated back into place mid-shaft.
She swore.
I came to the edge of the door so I could watch her work, utterly engrossed that I was being granted an opportunity to see this moment unfold, even if I wasn’t sure why.
The second time she tried, she was able to get hold of my body, drag it back up to the ledge, and push me over so I was near Lucas’s feet. I moved my dream self away as if I might be in her way as she clung to the edge of the elevator shaft. She looked younger, this version of my sister, but she also looked like she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
Secret, now, had a lot more reason to smile than this version had.
The scene unfroze.
