Conjured

She lowered her hands from her ears and opened her eyes. Malcolm was standing before her. He thrust the tablet at her. His hands were shaking, she noticed. Hers shook too as she accepted the tablet. She sank into one of the leather chairs and stared at her glossy reflection in the smooth surface.

For an instant, she couldn’t remember how to activate it. She swiped her finger over the surface, but it stayed dark and blank. She tried pressing the button. The screen blossomed to life, and a face appeared. Looking out at her, the face filled the screen: a boy with black eyes and skunk-colored hair. She scrolled to the next face. And then the next.

A boy with pale skin.

A girl with piercings.

A yellow-eyed boy with gills in his neck.

A boy with blotches on his face, or tattoos—elaborate tattoos on his forehead and chin in swirls so dense they blurred into blotches—who stared straight out of the tablet.

No, she thought. Not you. Or you. She wondered if she was wrong. Not you. No, no. She could have imagined it. Or maybe seeing the photo had influenced her visions. No. No. Maybe her memories were warped or faulty. Not you. Maybe …

There.

There she was. The girl with the antlers. She smiled out at Eve with her crooked teeth and her round cheeks with freckles and her six-prong antlers and her brown curls with strands of blond. “Yes,” Eve said out loud.

Malcolm sank into his chair. “Tell me about her.”

Eve pictured the antlered girl in her vision. She’d reached out her hand for the flowers … Eve shook her head. She didn’t know the girl’s name or where she was from or why she was there or why she was in Eve’s mind …

But Eve knew one thing.

“She’s dead,” Eve said.

* * *

Several doctors scurried in, took Eve’s temperature, took her blood pressure, and took a blood sample. Aunt Nicki fielded phone calls. Malcolm typed furiously on his computer. Other marshals shuttled papers in and out of the office. A bulletin board was pulled into the office, and a photo of the antlered girl was pinned to it, along with a collection of numbers.

Eve didn’t move from the leather chair.

She didn’t look at any of them. She continued to stare at the face of the antlered girl. She felt as if the office were tilting and rocking around her. She’s real, Eve thought.

“She liked flowers,” Eve said out loud, suddenly certain. The girl had had them in her room, daisies and peonies and flowers that Eve couldn’t name shoved into vases and cups and jars on the dresser, bookshelf, and windowsill. She’d braided them around her antlers and worn dresses with patterns that mimicked vines and leaves.

The typing paused. “What else?” Malcolm asked.

Eve shook her head. Her fingers traced the shape of the girl’s antlers. Six prongs. Exactly like in her vision. Exactly like in her memory. Eve pictured her with flowers … and on a hill. Yes, Eve thought. I remember a hill. The girl had been silhouetted, blue sky behind her, as if she’d been waiting … and then she’d run down the opposite side of the hill, disappearing from sight, her antlers the last bit of her to vanish behind the rocks and grasses. “There was a hill. But I don’t know where. And I don’t know why she was there or why I was there. Why do I remember her? Who was she?”

“Keep trying,” Malcolm said.

“You said they were cut into pieces. Was she?”

Aunt Nicki let out a sharp hiss. “Malcolm!”

Malcolm didn’t respond to Aunt Nicki. “You have to remember on your own,” he said to Eve. “Your testimony won’t carry weight if the jury thinks we fed you false memories. Forget what I said, okay?”

Her hands started to shake hard. Carefully, she laid the tablet on her lap, and she folded her hands together. “You think I saw … that?”

“We can’t lead the witness.”

“That isn’t a yes,” Aunt Nicki put in. “Keep it together, girl.”

Hand still trembling, Eve picked up the tablet again. This girl. She’d been someone’s daughter, sister, friend, niece, cousin. She’d had a name … but the knowledge of that name slipped away from Eve as if it were a minnow in a stream, bright and shiny in the sun but flashing by so fast that it was only a glimmer, then gone.

“Malcolm …,” Aunt Nicki began.

Malcolm cut her off. “It was necessary.”

“It wasn’t in your report,” Aunt Nicki said.

“It doesn’t change the result. Agent Gallo, do I have your support? You know what Lou’s reaction to this morning will be.”

Aunt Nicki was silent.

Eve’s eyes flickered up. Aunt Nicki was rubbing her face as if she were tired. Her shoulders sagged, and she looked older than Eve had ever thought she was. “Yes,” Aunt Nicki said. “She cares, you know. About the boy. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”