Why are there so many wretched holes in my mind? I have asserted that most likely the abilities and deterioration are dependent upon one another. Is this the cost of what I’ve conditioned myself to do?
Is that why you cannot seem to find me? I know you are hunting me. I’ve felt you elbow your way into my mind a time or two. Did it frighten you when I attempted to grab your elbow when it interrupted my thoughts? Is Westfall with you, too? Are you even trying? Surely if you gave it your all, you’d be waltzing through my door at this very moment.
I wish for that.
I am aware of the threat these written words may present. What else could be so binding, so incriminating? I do not want to forget the road that I’ve traveled both dead and alive. Mainly, I cannot forget that you are my purpose. I realize that without you, without these words, I irretrievably forfeit my sanity, but regardless, when the time is right I must dispose of your letters. You are already a target. You believe you are the hunter, when really you are the hunted.
Do you know what I’ve learned? That we make our own way. We make our own fate. I’ve been chasing things that were already mine before the journey. I’ve built what I intended, finally, but I sacrificed my mind. I sacrificed you. And I sacrificed time. That is the most valuable thing.
And time isn’t on my side. I cannot find enough room to accommodate the memories of others in addition to my own. I once reveled in the fact that I was finding gift after gift, strength after strength. But now something is harming my mind. Can you see it? Perhaps if you are willing to open your thoughts to mine again, you would see what is
Alex gasped as the ink on the page rippled and then vanished. What happened? Where did it go? She flipped over the letter. Bare. She snatched up another letter. Bare. And another. And another. What was going on? She frantically thumbed through the box until she was back to the beginning.
November 1865
Dear Sephi,
Professor Melbourne is late for the morning session as usual …
She snatched up a letter in the middle of the stack. The ink remained. Why were only some of the letters now blank? She glowered at the box, which now had its back to her. Seriously? Was it punishing her for trying to share the letters with Chase?
And then it occurred to her that if the ink didn’t reappear, she would never know the ending. This was all she was going to get to read. She had been hoping for Eviar to have a happy ending, to prove that true love really can conquer all.
But her hope for him had vanished like the words on the yellowed page.
27
Alex was desperate to read the rest of the letters, but that stubborn black box had zipped its lips tight. She figured there was one person who might be able to help her. The next morning, Alex perched on a desk with Skye, waiting for their ABC assignment. Duvall cursed under her breath, squinting at the bottom of a list.
“What is it?” Skye asked, setting down a large white stone the size of a human skull.
“I forgot to tell Matthew to add bathroom mold to his list.”
“He’ll be just thrilled about that,” Skye remarked, and Alex thought she caught a tinge of amusement flicker across Duvall’s face.
“Skye, could you please chase down his group and inform them of my little addition?”
Skye didn’t look like she wanted to be the bearer of bad news. “Uh, sure.”
Alex focused on the shelved jars, eavesdropping over the room like birds on a wire, and pretended not to see Skye’s signal for her to follow. She waited a few moments and then sidled closer to Duvall. “Professor?”
“Hmm?” Duvall didn’t look up.
“I have a question.”
“Obviously.”
“It’s about a kind of ink.” Above her head, the hanging test tubes clinked and clanked. “Have you ever heard of writing that can disappear?”
“My dear, I believe that toy is older than you are. You can find it at any joke store, I’m sure.”
“No, this would have been long before joke stores existed. And it’s weird because, well, not everyone can see it … ” Alex stopped speaking when a look of warning clouded her teacher’s face.
Duvall used a pair of tongs to hold a crucible over a green flame. “Sounds like make believe.”
“If Thymoserum tricks the mind into forgetting something, I just inferred there’d be something counteractive, something that could make things appear to the mind.”
“That sort of magic isn’t something spirits can create. A mind must be trained to open up to such extensive levels of visibility.”
Alex eyed the murky goo inside the bowl. “Can someone who isn’t a spirit create it?”
“Do I have to say it, since you already know the answer?”
Alex shook her head, knowing full well this was witchcraft, yet she supposed a part of her had hoped that Eviar wasn’t involved with that. Was witchcraft the reason why he was so powerful? She longed to ask Duvall but avoided bringing up the name of someone whom Duvall had despised. “How could one person see something that another couldn’t?”
“Because of you. If the writing is meant for you to read, only you can see it.”
“But it wasn’t written for me. It disappeared right in front of me.”
“All of it?”
“No.”
“It’s a glitch, then.” Duvall placed the crucible on a ring and stared down at the contents. The silvery substance levitated as one large mass and then broke into a dozen globs, each of which landed in a vial.
“A glitch? Can that happen?”
Duvall’s face twisted into a hint of a sneer. “Only if the person who wrote it didn’t know what they were doing.”
That evening, when the door to her room swung open with a resounding bang, Alex wondered whose presence needed to be announced so violently. After spending most of the evening staring daggers at the unyielding black box and cursing the blank paper inside, she didn’t feel like having company.
She stepped out into the hallway and faced the engraved caption of Kender Federive. In place of the mirror, the large frame displayed an image of Kender fighting the banshee in the clearing. It had appeared to Alex after the night of the attack. She glanced downward, and the last person she expected to see was curled underneath the empty copper frame of Sonja F. Rellingsworth.
“Jonas? What are you doing here?”
He looked up, and when his eyes reached her they seemed to soften. “Hey,” he murmured. “I just wanted to see you.”
Alex was blunt. “Why?”
“Why not?”
She was too distracted to care about tact. “Because you’re Jonas. And you haven’t really spoken to me in weeks.” She took a seat on the floor beside him. “Why is that? Why do you always have to put on such a tough act?”
He remained quiet for several moments. “I’m not so tough. I just don’t wear my heart on my sleeve.” He leaned his head against the wall. “Like some other people.” He reached for her hand and flipped it over to run his finger along her palm.
Alex stared down at it, remembering how she used to analyze the lines, wondering why her life line was so long if her future was so bleak. Seeing it now, she knew it was only a projection her mind had created, but it was funny how the lines of her palm were frayed, a warning that life would try to rip at her seams.
“Do you remember that day we skipped school and went to the carnival at Earleigh Heights?” Jonas asked.