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My brow furrowed. "Dolled up?" I started, but the line was dead.
I stared at the phone for a moment, then smiled as I closed it and tucked it away. Listening to the quiet house, I ate my pink hearts, saved for last as always. Slowly my mood returned to melancholy. Someone had killed Kisten. That same someone had tried to bind me to them so I wouldn't tear their freaking head off. I had worked so hard to live with Ivy and stay unbound, and then a faceless monster killed my boyfriend and nearly bound me to it. Just that fast, my life could have been changed beyond my control. Damn it all to hell. I can't do this. I can't risk it. I can't…I can't let Ivy bite me again. Ever.
The thought settled into me like lead. I had been living with Ivy for over a year, and now that we finally got it to work, I get smart? A shiver went through me, rattling the spoon against the bowl. I couldn't play this game anymore. I had briefly lived thinking I had been bound, and they had been the most terrifying moments of my life, turning me from a confident woman into a terrified plaything with no control over the degradation her life was to become. That the fear turned out to be baseless didn't make the lesson any less real. I could not let a vampire break my skin again. Would not. And I didn't know how I was going to tell Ivy.
Worried, I ate the last spoonful of marshmallows. I listened carefully to the silent house, and once I was sure my mom wasn't coming, I picked the bowl up and drank the sweet milk. My spoon clattered into the empty bowl and I sat back with my coffee, not yet ready to move from the security of memories that muffled my thoughts of the future. There was a small red cloth bag at the back of the table that held the charms my mom had deemed necessary for my Halloween costume. It didn't seem to matter anymore. Unless David's lead pa
I sipped my coffee and stared at my phone, willing it to ring. I wondered if I should call Gle
My hand was reaching for the phone when the comfortably familiar pace of my mom's steps came from the front of the house. I pulled back. No need to worry her more than our coming conversation would. I still had to ask her about reversing a forget potion.
"Thanks for breakfast, Mom," I said as she bustled in and headed for the coffeemaker. She'd been looking for a coat for me, and I could hear it tumbling in the dryer to air out. "I really appreciate you letting me crash here this morning."
She eased herself into the chair across from me, setting her coffee mug gently on the linoleum table, whose pattern was faded by time and scrubbings. "I don't get to be Mom much anymore, especially when you won't tell me what's wrong," she said, her eyes on my two red-rimmed bites, and a stab of guilt made the sweet milk on my tongue go tasteless.
"Um, sorry," I said, shifting my empty bowl away from her sharp gaze. I felt sick. Memory potions were illegal because they didn't break cleanly. Unlike amulets and ley line charms, they created a physical change in the brain to block the memories, and physical changes couldn't be reversed with salt like chemical changes could. I needed a counter-spell.
Gathering my courage, I blurted, "Mom, I need to reverse a memory potion."
Eyebrows high, she looked at my neck again. "You want a Pandora charm? For who?"
She wasn't nearly as mad as I'd thought she'd be. Heartened by that as much as her knowing there was an actual name for what I wanted, I winced. "Me."
My voice had been pensive, and hearing my guilt, my mother's face grew almost scared. "What do you remember now that you had forgotten?" she demanded.
Cradling my coffee in my hands, I tried to warm my soul. The furnace was on against the cold afternoon, but it wasn't able to touch the chill at the pit of my being. My fingers traced the lines of Kisten's bracelet. It was all I had of him—that and the pool table. "Being bitten by the vampire who killed Kisten," I whispered.
Her entire posture melted, and sighing with forgiveness, she reached to take my hand. Her frumpy dress made her look middle aged, but her hands gave her away. I wished she'd stop living like she was nearing the end of her life. It hadn't even started yet.
"Sweetheart," she said, and I pulled my gaze to hers to see it pinched in compassion. "I'm so sorry. Maybe you should forget about it. Why do you even want to remember that?"
"I have to," I said, wiping my eye and pulling out of her reach. "Someone killed him. I was there." I blinked fast, trying to rein in my emotions. "I have to find out. I have to know."
"If you made yourself forget, then you won't like what you find," she said. An old fear unrelated to me simmered in the back of her thoughts, showing in her face. "Let it go."
"It was Jenks—" I started, but she took both my hands, stopping my words.
"Tell me," she said suddenly. "What were you doing when you remembered? What triggered it?"
I stared at her. A hundred dodges flitted through me, but nothing came out of my mouth. And as I sat there, it suddenly occurred to me that I had been spending so much time with my mother these last three months not because of her, but because of me, fragile after Kisten's death. I lost it then, dropping my head onto my folded arms on the table and choking the tears back. This was why I'd come ru
I couldn't look at my mom, but there was the scrape of her chair on the linoleum, and an ugly bark of a sob escaped me when her hand landed on my shoulder. Damn it, I had to grow up and be safe, stop reacting when I should be acting. I had to live with a vampire without even the cushion of pretending there would ever be a bite between us, which just might send Ivy away. I wouldn't blame her. But I didn't want her to leave. I liked her. Hell, I probably loved her. And now it was done. We couldn't go back and pretend that there was anything ahead of us.
"Rachel, honey," my mother whispered, close and gentle, with the scent of lilac soothing me as much as her voice. "It's okay. I'm sorry you're confused, but sometimes souls are meant to be together, and the gears just miss. Ivy's a vampire, but she's been your best friend for over a year. You'll find a way to make this work."
"You know?" I warbled, lifting my head to find a shared sorrow in her expression.
"It would be hard to miss those bites," she said. "And if anyone other than Ivy put them there, you'd be in the morgue identifying a body, not sitting in my kitchen pretending nothing is wrong." I blinked up at her as she shifted my hair and made a worried face at my neck. "Jenks called this morning and told me what happened. He worries about you, you know."
My lips parted and I drew out of her reach. Great, who knew what he told her? "Mom."
But she only pulled out a chair to sit beside me, her hand still on my shoulder. "I loved your father with all my being. Don't take potions to forget. It leaves gaps, and then you don't remember why you feel the way you do. It makes things worse."
I hadn't administered it to myself, but that my mother had taken a memory potion was news to me. "You used one?" I asked, wondering if this was why my mom was so nuts, and she turned her lips in, biting them, clearly trying to decide what to say.
"Oh, hell, who hasn't?" she said, then grew sad. "Once," she added softly. "When it got really bad. They never last forever, and there is no charm to bring it all back. The spell to reverse it was lost before we migrated to this side of the lines. Trent might have it, but getting an elf to share spells is like getting a troll out from under a bridge."