LITMIR.BIZ

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rejection. “I think you’re a really nice person. And pretty,” he blurts out and then looks like he surprised himself with those words. “But I can’t help you.”

      He’s talking again before I can latch onto the word pretty too hard. “I’m just a kid, and I think you seriously need some professional help.”

      My hands are so weak from disappointment that I can barely hang on to the coin. It would be my luck that when we split up supplies, I took the bag of gold coins I made as Rebecca, and Benson got the bag that Quinn made. Or maybe I made them all—I’m a little fuzzy on the details.

      I swallow hard at the thought of Benson—the boy I thought I was in love with … until he betrayed me—but push it away just as I have innumerable times in the last week. It hurts too much to dwell on. To wonder where the Reduciates are keeping him. If he’s being treated humanely. If … if …

      I can’t. Logan. Focus on Logan.

      “You don’t understand, Logan.” I can hear the crazy-laced desperation in my voice, but I can’t stop. I don’t know what else to do. If I don’t pull out something impressive I’m going to lose him.

      “They’re coming after you,” I whisper, trying to sound so serious—and so sane. “They almost killed me last week and they’re after both of us now and I have got to find some way to make you remember and I’ve tried everything and—” I force myself to stop; I’m just babbling. I plead with my eyes for him to believe me.

      “Who’s coming after me?” Logan asks after a second, indulging me as one would a very young child telling an obvious lie.

      “The …” I almost tell him everything—that it’s the Reduciata who are on his trail. That they are going to kill him. Probably in a matter of days, if not sooner. Possibly the Curatoria too, considering Mark and Sammi were hiding me from them. But I know that the specifics will only make me sound even more like I have a couple of screws loose.

      His face is a rumpled mess of emotions. Despite my failed attempts at subtlety, he obviously thinks I’m out of my mind.

      But there’s something else—that pull that made him ask if he knew me the first day we met. That attraction that makes him want to forget all logic and throw himself at something completely unexplainable.

      I understand. I felt that way toward him.

      We stand there, steeping in the silence, and for just a moment it looks like he’ll believe me. Or at least that he’ll listen. But good sense takes over, and he sets his lips in a hard, straight line. “Tavia, I—”

      “I’ll show you,” I interrupt, my hair starting to fall across my eyes in damp strands as sweat rolls down my temples. Even at seven thirty in the morning the heat is so intense I know it can’t be natural. “Watch.” I glance in both directions and then open my hands to reveal a pencil.

      I probably should have come up with something more original.

      Logan just rolls his eyes and starts to push past me.

      “Wait!” I gesture vaguely at the yard to my left and conjure a table and two chairs into existence. Show him what I can do: create something from nothing. He doesn’t know it’ll disappear in five minutes.

      It’s not just any dining set. It’s the hand-carved oak set we shared as Quinn and Rebecca two hundred years ago. Maybe … maybe seeing it will do something. Spark some memory. Maybe not enough for a full re-awakening, but enough that he’ll take me seriously.

      I turn back. “They’re after us because we’re special,” I say with solid conviction, keeping my voice even. “You can do this too, you just don’t remember. And you have to remember. At least try!” I wave again, and the table fills with “our” dishes. A rug that used to sit in front of the fireplace. His favorite coat draped over the chair. I’m ready to recreate the entire house if I have to.

      Each time I make a new item appear, I glance back to check his reaction—to see if I’m stimulating any memories.

      But he just looks confused.

      Then angry.

      Anger does not come naturally to him—never has. I’m not sure who that thought comes from in my tangled web of memories—which one of my predecessors felt compelled to share this tidbit of information—but I know it’s true. Whatever I’ve done—whatever he thinks of me—this has pushed him over the edge.

      “Stop!” he hisses very quietly, but with a harshness that swings me around to face him.

      “Please,” I whisper, and somehow I know it’s the last word I’m going to get in.

      “No,” he says. “Take your hidden cameras and practical jokes somewhere else. I’m done.”

      “Logan—”

      But he puts his hands on my shoulders—firmly, not roughly—and moves me out of his way. “Don’t follow me anymore.”

      I’m gasping for breath as sobs of failure slam into me, overwhelming me like ocean breakers. I can’t … I can’t just—

      An unseen force slaps my back and throws me against Logan as the world ripples beneath my feet. The motion tosses us to the sidewalk, splaying us both on the ground. My elbow stings, and blood drips from a cut across Logan’s eyebrows. I’m staring disbelievingly at the vibrant red when a burst of sound reaches us, deafening me even as I scream at the top of my lungs. Logan’s face contorts into a mask of horror, and I whip my head around to follow his line of sight.

      All I see are flames.

      Flames where Logan’s house used to sit.

      We both scramble up and run toward it, our mutual desperation to see what’s happened so intense that I hardly feel the sharp pain jolting up my leg.

      His house is gone.

      A smoking pile of charred rubble sits in its place. Orange flames dance over its remains, staining the sky. If I didn’t already know, I couldn’t have guessed what sort of structure had previously stood there—everything has collapsed. The flames burn so hot that even from several hundred feet away the waves of heat feel like they might blister my skin.

      This is a fire meant to kill.

      Meant to kill Logan.

      And I know who set it.

      “We have to get out of here now,” I say, whirling and grabbing Logan’s arm, trying to drag him with me.

      I might as well be trying to shove a boulder. He stares, dumbstruck, at the horrifying destruction.

      A column of thick, murky smoke is already rising high. It’s going to attract the attention of everyone for miles around. Reduciata handiwork for sure—subtle is not in their vocabulary. If I have any shot of hiding the fact that Logan survived, I have to get him out of here. “Logan, please!”

      I don’t hear the sound of tires screeching as a car pulls up beside us, but I smell the acrid scent of rubber a second before something comes down over my head, blocking my sight. I fight and tear against the suffocating material, but a sharp jab stings my arms, burns for a second, then blackness.

      

      I’m not sure how much time elapses before I haze into consciousness. My head aches and my throat is painfully dry as pinpricks of light worm through my lashes. I throw my arm over my face—my eyes are so sensitive; I must have been out for a while—and struggle to remember where I am.

      And how I got here.

      The explosion,

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