Burning in a Memory (37 page)

             
She went still in his embrace. Her chest burned when she couldn’t take a breath. Being in his arms would never feel right again.

             
“Let me tell you why I came then. You won’t mind so much,” she whispered and her head felt like it was floating. She felt a thousand miles away from her body at that moment.

             
“It doesn’t matter now. Don’t bother. If the others are coming then maybe we’ll all get out.”

             
He moved and caught her chin between his fingers. Adam’s an idiot, she thought. Almost as bad as she was, in this moment, for letting him kiss her. His lips met hers with a bruising force. He kissed greedily. She opened her mouth and allowed him access. He bit at her bottom lip and she moaned against him. His grip tightened at the sound of it.

             
She gasped when he broke away, cold and empty.

             
“You can’t be kissing me right now,” she whispered.

             
“I can do what I want,” he said back.

             
“What a time to be stubborn. Adam, you can’t forgive me. You can’t care about me. Especially not now,” she explained. Her words strengthened her own resolve and she pushed away from him.             

             
“I want so much to be with you, Adelaide. Let me figure this out.”

             
He was working her over without knowing it. She clung desperately at the resolve she had left.

             
“I tried to kill your brother,” she blurted. She couldn’t see his reaction but it gave her the courage to continue. “I was hired by the Hawthorns to do it in exchange for my own life. But I knew I couldn’t get to him because he was too protected. So I did some research and found out you existed. I knew that meeting you and getting in with you would lead me right to him. I was right. Adam, I picked you up because I thought you were the weakest link. You were the nice guy and you’d fall for my charms.”

             
Something insane possessed her now and she completely broke away from him. More words spilled from her—they were the absolute truth. It felt wild and liberating. The pain in her chest finally manifested into the story.

             
“You were just supposed to be a pawn in my game. Things changed and I thought about staying and living with you as a human. I knew I liked you then, but that stupid shade in the basement was going to out me. So I went upstairs to kill Leon by using the Hawthorns’ poison. I didn’t know at the time that the poison wasn’t intended to kill him. I tried to run away and, well, you know the rest.”

             
The last of the story escaped her and she clutched her heart.

             
“Weakest link?” he whispered.

             
“You know the truth now. All of it. And you won’t forgive me, but you will escape when they take me up there. Now I can die with a clear conscience.”

             
She didn’t know what she expected from her statement, but she wasn’t too surprised when he got angry. His aura flailed dangerously and Adam stood now too.

             
“You selfish prick,” he snapped. The comment took her aback. “I told you not to tell me that!”

             
She lifted her chin in defiance.

             
“You deserved to know the truth.”

             
“I deserve for you to respect me and my wishes for once!” Adam suddenly moved to her and pinned her in a cage between his arms and the wall. She flinched.

             
“Adam, I’m trying to help you. You don’t want to like me because I am not getting out of here and even I’ve come to terms with that. If you can’t listen to me die, then you better start covering your ears now!”

             
He growled darkly but released her from his cage. The metal lid of their prison shifted, surprising them both. The silhouette of shades became visible from above.

             
“Time’s up, I guess,” she announced with much more confidence than she felt. “Now I’m going to fight and create as much of a distraction as I can. If the others can rescue you, don’t come back. Just run!”

             
“Adelaide! Adelaide!”

Adam’s words were sounded out by the catcalls
from the shades above. He grabbed at her but she pushed him away. The shades retrieved her from the pit and her feet touched the basement floor again. The courage that brought her this far wavered when she saw all of the shades’ faces.  They dragged her back up the stairs, back down the halls.

             
“Leon!” she screamed when she saw him again. The shades dragged her through his hallway. He twitched, seeming suddenly more coherent. His slurred voice responded. “Kathy?” he asked.

             
She growled.

             
“Leon, do something. Help! Help your brother; he’s in the basement! Help!”

The shades quieted her with a strike to her head.
Her vision blurred and the shades carried her on from there. Leon never responded as she was taken away. The last ounce of hope slipped from her. A door shut somewhere behind her and they dropped her to the ground. This was it. She had to fight. Adelaide tapped an aura but the shades were stronger. In a short battle, they ended it. Two secured Adelaide by the arms and held her tight.

             
“Don’t cry,” one of the shades said, “you’ll find it healing.”

             
“Let me die,” Adelaide offered instead. “I can’t lose myself! I don’t want to die! ”

             
“Don’t beg. It’s unbecoming of a soon-to-be Hawthorn.”

             
Adelaide thrashed until her energy gave out. Then she looked around the room. It was better lit than she expected and not nearly as dank. This place hardly made up her nightmares. She wondered then if the place they took Mistel was as nice. At least, Adelaide hoped it had been. It wasn’t so bad.

             
“Open your mouth and remember to breath. This won’t hurt a bit.”

             
The shade lied.

Thirty-two

             
Adelaide opened her eyes to see the ceiling. She gripped her elbows, surprised she wasn’t in pain, and sat up. Glass crunched beneath her body and she cringed. Seeking out the source of the debris, she spotted a series of broken windows in the corner. Moonlight slipped in just enough to bathe the serrated sill in a blue glow. The light drew her to her feet and she walked to the window to peer outside. Sparse trees littered the area and stretched out as far as the eye could see. 

             
Remembering the rest of the room, she whirled to take it in and found herself alone. The door waited for her at the opposite side. The door wasn’t locked and she opened it slowly. Then the scent of smoke spread into the room. She took a step outside and found the place covered in soot. The room felt hot as if still burning somewhere. She walked carefully, half expecting the ground to give out from under her.

             
The entire place looked abandoned and partially destroyed. Shadows stained the wall where missing furniture had once spent its lifetime. Carpet had been torn to shreds and the frayed remains coated the dirty ground. Her boots crunched over more broken glass as she headed out of the front door.

             
For the first time since opening her eyes, she recognized where she was. Twenty or so steps from the house were bushes. Behind the thick row of bushes were a curb, a street, and a well-manicured park. She walked there slowly. The place wasn’t as cold as she remembered but the sensation of seeing it again was shocking. She walked beyond the bushes and stopped in front of the park. It still surprised her how close her first home had been to this park. This was the park where her human mother had found her.

             
“Adelaide!”

             
Her head whirled to follow the voice, but it was too faint to pinpoint. She listened for it again but heard nothing but whistling wind. Maybe she’d imagined it. A lap around the park and she returned to the same spot. Her knees felt weak. She wanted to go back into the house but felt nauseated thinking about it. She stood outside with the wind and the faint voices within it. The curb next to the bushes looked more appealing by the second, and caving, she sat down. She sat and waited. 

             
She could have waited forever but something tugged at the back of her mind. She thought of someone, her fingers itched to touch, but whose presence was invisible. It struck her with a sudden migraine headache. She clutched her skull. Adam, she remembered. How could she have forgotten? Her world went black. The odd sensation of waking up seized her, even though she never recalled going to sleep.

              The world changed on her, morphing before her very eyes, until she stared at barren brown landscape illuminated by a fading gold sun. Her fingers rested on the cold sill and she smelled the bitter remains of a fire. She realized after a delayed moment that the sun resetting again meant nearly a day had past. It didn’t soften the blow of the next realization. Her boots clicked over a hard marble floor, as her body walked to a mirror.

             
For the first time since seeing the real world again, she saw it as if only through a pane of glass. She felt her body move but never had attempted to move it. She felt her body’s sensations but through a dulled haze. She felt utterly removed from her body, even while staring out through her own eyes. Her body stopped in front of the mirror.

             
Adelaide’s headache exploded into agony, but she couldn’t look away. Her reflection stared back at her—or its reflection stared back at her. Nothing about her oval face, brown locks of hair, or sideways smile seemed familiar to her. The small rim of crimson around massive pupils in her eyes told the remaining story. She’d dreamed of this moment, had roused from nightmares about it every night. Unlike her dreams though, she wasn’t waking up.

             
“You look beautiful,” the vaguely familiar voice of Zachary commented from somewhere behind her. The shade inside Adelaide took a long moment to agree. It seemed fixated on Adelaide’s windswept hair, the cling of the corset top to her body, the show of skin revealed. All of the filth from the past few days had been carefully cleaned from her and she practically glowed to look her best. The shade’s examination ended after another minute and long after Adelaide wished it would end.

             
Adelaide suddenly wondered if the shade showed her this on purpose now. If reminding her she was nothing but a mind trapped in a box now was some type satisfaction to the shade.

             
“Thank you,” the shade said when she turned to Zachary. His expression lit up when he saw her and he shamelessly sized her up and down.

             
The outfit the shade had chosen for Adelaide’s body wasn’t a type she was unfamiliar with. It hit all of her body’s features just right for a subtle sexy appeal, but suddenly Adelaide felt naked in it. Her cleavage was pushed up too high and her skirt was riding an inch too low. The boot heels gave her height and curves even she didn’t typically have.

             
“I like it,” he said then and his gaze finally lingered on her face.

             
“It’s all right,” the shade concurred modestly. She watched his face now, too. Adelaide couldn’t even tell whoever crossed the room first, but in short seconds, the two shades were in a tight embrace.

             
“Jane,” Zachary whispered the shade’s name into Adelaide’s neck. Could she have shuddered, she would have. Instead, the feeling of excitement snaked through her body’s nerves. A sense of disgust struck her harder than before, but manifested as a worsening of her migraine.

Then her world threatened to fade and she desperately clung to coherency. Even while she stood behind a wall of glass to look in on her own life, she feared leaving it. Zachary’s migrating hands made it difficult to focus. Her body’s traitorous reactions made it worse.

              Then a glorious diversion happened.

             
“Where are the others?” Her body—or Jane, the shade—asked.

             
“The others?” Zachary parroted, for the first time sounding less than smooth.

             
“The other mages from the Colton coven. The brother is in the basement still, correct? What happened to the others?”

             
Zachary shook his head, seeming reluctant to release her body. He stepped back and glanced through the window.

             
“No, they’re moving the brother upstairs. In case Leon doesn’t work out, we might as well keep the back up.”

             
Jane snarled.

             
“You say that until their numbers threaten to overwhelm us. The brother should be turned immediately or put to death.”