“It’s okay, Grace.” Jaxon’s gaze is steady on mine, his grip on my hands as firm and supportive as I could ever ask for. “We’ll figure this out.”
“How can it be okay? I lost four months, Jaxon!” My voice cracks on his name, and I take a shuddering breath and try again. “What happened?”
My uncle reaches over and squeezes my shoulder. “Take another deep breath, Grace. Good.” He smiles encouragingly. “Okay, now take one more and let it out slowly.”
I do as he says, noticing that his lips move the whole time I’m exhaling. A calming spell? I wonder as, once more, I inhale and exhale to the count of ten.
If so, doesn’t feel like it’s working all that well.
“Now, when you’re ready, tell me the last thing you remember.” His warm eyes hold mine.
The last thing I remember.
The last thing I remember.
It should be an easy question, but it’s not. Partly because of the yawning blackness in my mind and partly because so much of what I remember feels murky, untouchable. Like my memories are floating deep underwater and I can see only the shadow of what’s there. The shadow of what used to be.
“I remember everything that happened with Lia,” I finally say, because it’s true. “I remember being in the infirmary. I remember…building a snowman.”
The memory warms me, and I smile at Jaxon, who smiles back—at least with his mouth. His eyes look as gravely concerned as ever.
“I remember Flint apologizing to me about trying to kill me. I remember—” I break off, press a hand to my suddenly hot cheek as I recall the sensation of fangs skating along the sensitive skin of my neck and shoulder before sinking home. “Jaxon. I remember Jaxon.”
My uncle clears his throat, looking more than a little embarrassed himself. But all he says is, “Anything else?”
“I don’t know. It’s so—” I break off as one crystal-clear memory sweeps through my brain. I turn to Jaxon for confirmation. “We were walking down the hall. You were telling me a joke. The one about…” The clarity is fading, being replaced by the fuzziness that envelops so many of my memories right now. I fight through it, determined to hold on to this one clear thought. “No, that’s not right. I was asking you the punch line. To the pirate joke.”
I freeze as another, much more chilling part of the memory becomes clear.
“Oh my God. Hudson! Lia did it. She brought him back. He was here. He was right here.”
I look between Jaxon and Uncle Finn, searching for confirmation even as the memory swamps me. Drags me under. “Is he alive?” I ask, voice shaking under the weight of everything Jaxon has told me about his brother. “Is he at Katmere?”
Uncle Finn looks grim as he answers, “That’s exactly what we wanted to ask you.”
4
Turns out the Sixth
Sense Is Actually
Human Sacrifice
“Me? Why would I be able to answer that?” Except, even as I ask the question, another memory hits me. I look at Jaxon, who is full-on horror-struck by this point. “I got between you.”
“You did.” His throat works convulsively and his eyes, usually the color of a starless night, are somehow even blacker and more shadowed than I have ever seen them.
“He had a knife.”
“A sword, actually,” my uncle interjects.
“That’s right.” I close my eyes, and it all comes back to me.
Walking down the crowded hallway.
Catching sight of Hudson, sword raised, out of the corner of my eye.
Stepping between him and Jaxon because Jaxon is mine—mine to love and mine to protect.
The sword coming down.
And then…nothing. That’s it. That’s all I remember.
“Oh my God.” Horror swamps me as something new, and terrible, occurs to me. “Oh my God. ”
“It’s okay, Grace.” My uncle moves to pat my shoulder again, but I’m already moving.
“Oh my GOD!” I shove the chair back, jump to my feet. “Am I dead? Is that why I can’t remember anything else? Is that why everyone was staring at me in the hallway? That’s it, isn’t it? I’m dead.”
I start to pace as my brain wigs out in about twenty different directions. “But I’m still here with you. And people can see me. Does that mean I’m a ghost?”
I’m struggling to get my mind around that idea when something else—something worse—occurs to me.
I whirl on Jaxon. “Tell me I’m a ghost. Tell me you didn’t do what Lia did. Tell me you didn’t trap some poor person down in that awful, disgusting dungeon and use them to bring me back. Tell me you didn’t do that, Jaxon. Tell me I’m not walking around because of some human-sacrifice ritual that—”