March wasn’t there. The image of him was in my head. Just my imagination coming alive from the unholy amount of details I knew about his face.
A blink, and he was gone. A blink and I was there again, in the nothing, falling—no.Reaching for my sister who’d died a long time ago because she was looking at me.
Then she smiled.
It wasn’t a sad smile. It was just…a smile.She smiled a lot, Jinx, and it always warmed me to my core. Right now, it did, too.
“Jinx,” I whispered and reached out to get closer to her again with all of me, with every fiber of my being.
And just like a moment ago, March’s face filled my mind, stopping me again.
By then, Jinx had turned back to the piano.
“Jinx—no!”
No sound came out of me, but when she started to play again, I heard it clearly. The melody was nowperfect,and she played the way she used to before her death. Exactly right, every note merging into the next, the melody spilling like liquid, not a single note late or early or wrong in any way.
I don’t know why I was crying.
I had my arms wrapped around myself and I was crying so hard while Jinx played, and I could almost hear her voice in my head. Soft and sweet, just like the melody she played, she said my name.
But with the seconds, it turned…less sweet. Louder. More urgent.
With the seconds, her voice changed, too.
The more I listened, the more IsawMarch’s face in my mind, the more his eyes gained color, the more Jinx’s voice became his.
She was no longer calling my name at all, buthewas. He was calling for me, and he sounded…afraid.
Jinx continued to play.
At first, I thought I was irritated.Ora, Ora, Ora—he wouldn’t stop, and I just wanted to listen to Jinx, and I wanted her to look at me again. I wanted to stay.
But the more I felt the urgency in his voice, the more I realized…
I wasn’there at all, in fact.
I was up there, with him.
My eyes closed again, and the melody picked up, Jinx’s fingers now moving over the keys like they’d been doing so for years and years. She had become a professional from one moment to the next.
It isn’t real,said a voice in my head, a voice I screamed at internally, told it to justshut up!It was Jinx and she was real and she was here and I was…
Not.
I was somewhere with others. With March. With people who needed me—eight former Hands who’d lost their memories, in a world that was being stolen from, one minute at a time.
The melody faded a little in the background, and then I heard a voice, crisp and clear, as if she was standing right there over me:
“Tick-tock-tea-talk. Wake up, you hairy hare.”
It soothed me, the sound of her voice. The idea that she was about to come force me awake so she could tell me all about her dreams soothed me.
A dream.
Was that what this was? Because I was here, and I knew I wasn’t, and I’d seen and seen and seen…
My eyes remained on Jinx’s face, her stretched lips as sheplayed the notes so beautifully. Maybe itwasa dream, but it was also very real to me.
