For the hundredth time, she felt like crying. She forced the tears back, refusing to show them any weakness. “My aunt—”
“Thinks you’ve been taking winter and summer classes. Your calls with her have been short, vague. You’ve been more effusive by email. Soon, she’ll be told you’ve gotten a job far away from here.” Artie O’Connor chuckled, his voice like the rasp of a serpent. “Or perhaps we’ll tell her you’ve died. It doesn’t matter, in the end.”
Boone nudged Hudson’s shoulder until he took a step toward her. Ellory raised the Taser again, and Hudson stopped, his face brightening with the arrogance she’d once hated him for. That last, small part of her that doubted he was really a part of this curled up and died at the smirk that crossed his face. Beside his father, he’d been a lifeless puppet, waiting for direction. Standing before her now, he had come alive, and all she saw was a monster.
“You’re not going to hurt me, Morgan,” he drawled.
“Are you sure about that?” Her thumb flicked the button, feeding current between the two points of the Taser. “Come closer, and let’s find out.”
“You’re not going to hurt me, because we’ve been through too much together for that. I’ve seen the way you look at me. I know you’ve begun to remember.” His hand covered her wrist, lowering the Taser until it was back at her side, and she let him because he was her weakness, a vulnerability she could no longer hide. “We were in love, once.”
Ellory bit the inside of her cheek, refusing to give him the satisfaction of confirming that she knew. Their gazes locked, and Ellory could see it then, everything she couldn’t recall but had subconsciously been searching for. The way his eyes softened when he looked at her. The visions of intimacy that had plagued her all year. The way she was drawn to him like a moth to a forest fire, ready to die just to be close to him.
It hurt worse than his betrayal. Seeing him with the Old Mastershad stung because she had finally allowed herself to trust him. The painfully slow restoration of her feelings—a love three lifetimes strong—had made her soul cleave in two.
She hated him. She’d missed him.
“Every time we reset your school year,” Hudson whispered, “you always end up here. You always remember.”
His thumb traced her wrist in gentle circles. The dissonance between his tender touch and his cutting words was too much to bear. She looked down at their linked hands, and her body relaxed under the familiar gesture. Every time he did this, a shard from their old life together cut through the fog of her mind, forcing her to focus only on what was true. Her eyes widened with realization.
This was no simple affection. This was a spell. One he’d been casting all year.
But a spell for what?
“I need you”—his voice dropped even lower—“to remember.”
Wake up.
Ellory’s head snapped back with a gasp. Her brain flooded with memories, each slotting into place like they’d always been there. She saw their first meeting in the classroom, a different conversation with the same competitive vibe, the way Hudson followed up on her answer to a question with reasoning that undermined her, the way Ellory followed up on his follow-up by citing an obscure case that proved her point beyond reasonable doubt.
She saw their first kiss at a frat party, half-drunk and wild with desire, a moment that ended with her riding his thigh on the very balcony on which they’d almost kissed in her dreamworld. She saw the awkward aftermath in which they tried to ignore the heat between them only to end up making out in library stacks and empty hallways, hooking up in her dorm room or his.
She saw his tea grow hot in his hands, the first small sign of magic that drew her suspicion, and the investigation that unfurled afterward. The same clues in different places. The same books in different stores. The same realizations in different contexts. She saw herself receive a formal invitation to join the Old Masters, her furtive conversation with Hudson. Ascending the stairs she had just climbed before her world had gone black, Hudson’s name the last thing on her lips.
Her eyes burned with a new wave of unshed tears as she lowered her chin to stare at him. “I remember everything,” she said, lashing the words like a whip. “You knew the whole time. You lied to me and set me up. You basicallydeliveredme to them.”
“Despite all his excellent work, Hudson is not yet a full member of our society. He has a pedestrian weakness for you that we’ve had to stamp out.” Nathaniel Graves placed a hand on his son’s shoulder and squeezed in a facsimile of parental fondness. Hudson’s eyes briefly closed, and Ellory remembered with a pang how much his father’s good opinion meant to him. How rare it was. He had lied about forgetting his own magic, but he hadn’t lied about that. No matter what happened next, this waskillinghim. “We wanted you sooner, but there were…concerns about how Hudson was handling things that forced us to pull him out.”
“I still think we should have let Hammond finish her off,” said Chip O’Connor, scowling at her. “Whatever hold she has over the boy is too strong. Let Hammond kill her, and bring Hudson to the lodge for further correction.”
“Seconded,” Gaia said, lifting two fingers like she was at an auction.
Ellory glared at her. “Fuck you, Greer.”
“Who the hell is Greer—”
“It would be awaste,” Nathaniel Graves shouted over them all. “Her power is too strong. Hudson has come to his senses. He has returned for his graduation. He will put her under himself, and he will not disappoint me like his brother has.”
Behind them, Miles Clairborne snorted. She didn’t know whether the version of him she’d met had been real or invented, but it was clear there was no version of him that cared for Hudson. Boone began to click the flashlight on and off, making dots dance before her eyes.
Through it all, Hudson didn’t let go of her wrist, didn’t stop the steady glide of his fingers against her pulse.
“Incantations aren’t as you see them in the movies,” he said. “You don’t say some special words and watch the magic happen. You have to set an intention, surrender a memory, and from that loss, you have to build. This is my creation.” He tugged the Taser from her grip. “When I’m finished talking, you’ll go back under, and you won’t remember any of this.”
Light.
Dark.
