Light.
Dark.
Light.
Remember.
“It will be August, again. Maybe we’ll meet then. Maybe we’ll meet later. But no matter what, you’ll always…end up…here.”
Boone extinguished the flashlight and tucked it into his back pocket, staring at the two of them with an inscrutable expression. Ellory couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. She could only watch as Hudson stepped back, her Taser in his hands, and smiled a smile that didn’t reach his hollow eyes.
“Goodbye, Ellory.”
Light erupted between them. Someone screamed.
And then there was nothing left.
39
She dragged herself closer, close enough to reach out and touch—
The room went black.
***
So this was how it felt, to tear herself in two.
When Boone had done it that day at the newspaper office, she hadn’t even noticed them walking away from their bodies to have a conversation of the spirit. When she splintered herself now, her body collapsed and surrounded in one world and slumbering peacefully in another, her spirit floated between them like a swirling air current. She was aware of the conversation—stall them—and the need to escape—wake up—but it felt like she was soaring through layers of the atmosphere, fighting against the gravity of the spell that had kept her yoked until now.
Even while as insubstantial as a thought, she could feel the weight of that magic against her soul. She could soar as high as shewanted, but, inevitably, it would pull her back down, her memories erased, her timeline reset, her school year beginning anew. Her power was their power.
Again
And again
And again
Until.
***
“When was the last time you saw sunlight?”
***
“You just want to get your hands all over me.”
***
“I want you. And I’m tired of pretending I don’t.”
***
Memory by memory, Ellory dragged her spirit toward the light. Every time she tired, she felt a jolt of sizzling energy—the magic of the Lost Eight, carrying her, strengthening her—and she climbed further out of the fog.
***
“What if you don’t remember? What if you never do?”
