Conjured

Any time she heard footsteps, Eve veered into a different row. It wasn’t difficult. The library patrons strode through the bookshelves with purpose, often lugging already-full book bags, and they zeroed in on one section of shelves. Sometimes they’d linger there, opening and shutting books, murmuring to themselves, and sometimes they’d strike, selecting a single volume and taking off with it. She watched them through the gaps in the books several rows away, and then she’d continue on, alone again.

As she passed by books, she ran her fingers over the spines. Bits of dust clung to her fingertips, and she wiped them on her jeans. She didn’t open any of the books. It was enough to know that the words were there—that at least someone had remembered enough moments and facts to fill a book. Occasionally she noticed a book that had been misshelved and moved it. Oddly, that act made her feel better, calmer.

If my insides were a bookshelf, she thought, I’d be a jumble of volumes, stacked in random order and filled with blank pages.

She wandered deep into the library, going to the end of every row. Each row ended in a brick wall with a faded print of a cracked oil painting: a garden or a pond or a fruit bowl. Studying one, she decided that it was hideous and that she liked it. The scene was so motionless that it felt as though it were outside of time; there was no past or future to it, just a garden with blurred purple flowers and a too-blue sky.

“Eve?” A woman’s voice.

Eve jumped and then pivoted to face a woman she didn’t know. The woman was dressed in a mud-brown blouse, her gray hair held in a twist on her head. She wore slipper-like shoes that were soundless on the carpeted floor. She didn’t hold a gun or look threatening in any way, but still Eve’s heart pounded wildly.

“Your shift ended fifteen minutes ago,” the woman said.

“Oh,” Eve said.

“Your ride’s outside, and he’s impatient.” She gestured toward the front of the library.

“I must have lost track of time.” Eve winced at her own wording. In truth, she had no idea when her shift was supposed to end. Malcolm must be worried. He was always worrying—it was part of his job description. She was surprised he’d waited fifteen minutes instead of marching in to find her.

“Overachiever. You make the rest of us look bad.” The woman smiled as she said it to soften the words, and Eve attempted a smile back.

She headed through the stacks, past the reference desk, and into the lobby. Eve didn’t see Zach. At the circulation desk, Patti watched Eve with her two visible eyes. Feeling Patti’s eyes on her, Eve walked quickly out the sliding glass door.

She halted on the welcome mat.

A boy with tousled hair leaned against a fiery-red sports car. He raised his hand in a wave when he saw her. She scanned the parking lot, looking for Malcolm’s car or even the SUV that had been parked there earlier. She didn’t see anything that looked like an agency car.

Aidan could not be her ride.

“You coming, Green Eyes?” he called to her.

“With you?” Eve asked.

For an instant, he tensed—and Eve suddenly pictured a different boy, tensed like that, alert and listening, in the darkness. He’d worn an embroidered gold shirt. The image was so vivid that Eve was certain it was a memory, but she didn’t know from when or where. And then Aidan relaxed and smiled lazily at Eve, destroying any similarity to her memory. “Yeah, with me. Unless you want to walk, which I wouldn’t recommend since it looks like rain. You don’t have the right complexion for ‘drowned rat.’”

The memory didn’t sharpen. She could picture the set of the boy’s shoulders, the tension in his legs—as if he were caught between fight or flight—but she couldn’t see his face. He was a shadow, and the world around him was a blur.

“There’s nothing wrong with my complexion,” Eve said. Fact, not arrogance. The surgeries had left her with perfect skin.

“Of course not,” he said smoothly.

She looked at the parking lot again. Still no Malcolm or Aunt Nicki. This could be the routine, she thought. The woman in the brown blouse had said “her ride” as if this were normal.

She continued to hesitate, glancing over her shoulder at the library lobby. From the circulation desk, Patti Langley watched her. Her hands were on the books, scanning them and handing them to patrons, but her eyes were unblinkingly fixed on Eve.

If this was the routine, she couldn’t let Aidan guess she’d forgotten. And she couldn’t let Patti think anything was wrong.

Malcolm’s voice whispered in her memory. Lie to everyone.

Eve walked down the stairs.

Aidan opened the passenger door. “Your chariot, Princess of the Perfect Pores.” He executed an elegant bow. “Get in. I’m starving, and everyone’s waiting.”