My finger shot up to my temple and tapped, hard. "In here, where she will stay if you do not give me my flower."
He studied me for a long moment, his brilliant mind turning over the logistics of what the vine had said and assembling what it had not, building the complete picturefrom the available evidence with the intelligence of a man who had spent his entire career doing exactly that.
He stepped forward and gripped my chin before my companion had a chance to move away, tilting my face up to his. His eyes moved over mine with an examination so thorough I wondered if he could see me inside.
"Can she hear me?"
I threw myself forward with everything I had.Nicholas! I am here! I am right here!
My companion jerked my head away and shoved him hard with both hands. He barely moved, absorbing the impact with the smallest step backward.
"Do not speak to her." The vine pressed my palm briefly to the side of my head, and lunged for the flower.
He shifted left. My grasping fingers closed on air.
"Give it to me!" The voice tearing from my throat was mine and entirely alien at once. My hands reached again, and again, and Nicholas simply waited, holding the flower above his head with an equanimity that would have been amusing under other circumstances. My lungs constricted from the effort, my breathing labored. The vine pressed its borrowed palm to my sternum as it struggled to draw sufficient air.
We stared at each other—Nicholas with one brow lifted and the ghost of a smile at the corner of his mouth, my own lips peeled back in a snarl that I had never worn on my face in my life.
"If you are quite finished," he said, "I need to collect another flower for Hawthorne."
"No." The vine's voice dropped to something low and furious. "There is no time. I want my flower now."
"I am afraid you do not have a choice." He glanced at the specimen in his hand. "Unless you would like to try to take it from me again."
A sound of raw frustration vibrated through my chest, rattling my ribs from the inside. My companion turned my feet and began walking without another word, Nicholas's measured footsteps falling in behind us on the path.
The cemetery stretched on either side—headstones tilting in the moonlight and casting phantom shadows, the flower’s glow in Nicholas’s hand haloing around us.
I felt my companion's awareness of it, moving through me like the vibration of a tuning fork, resonating with the vine in my throat.
The urge to turn and reach for the flower was overwhelming, sending hot surges of frustration through my muscles with every step. I felt my companion considering it, the impulse building at the edges of its control, and leaning toward the decision.
Do not,I said, from somewhere soft and tired.Please.
I knew it did not care what I demanded. I knew there was nothing I could do if it decided to try again. I added nothing more, hanging onto the small hope that some part of the companion I had spent months with, the dark familiar presence I had taken for my own thoughts, might feel something for the person it had been living inside.
Be quiet,it replied.
But the tension in my muscles eased just barely.
I took what I could get.
"It occurs to me," Nicholas said, his voice cutting through the cemetery quiet, "that if you had allowed my wife to keep her memories, all of this might have been resolved considerably sooner."
My feet stopped.
My body turned.
I crossed the distance between us in several quick steps. My companion rose on my toes to bring my face level with his, pressing my palms to either side of his jaw as it forced our eyes to meet.
"But that would’ve ruined all my fun. I vowed revenge and that’s what I got. It doesn’t feel very good to be the one separated from the one you love, does it, Nicholas?”
He stared at my face and I watched understanding filter through his features. “That is why you took her memories? For revenge?”
My head nodded slowly, and I felt the sting of tears threatening behind my eyes. It swallowed them back without another word, turning my body with a jerking motion and sending a wave of nausea rolling through me. My legs stalked forward toward the eastern wall where the second flower waited.
I retreated from the backs of my eyes.
