Professor Buckingham was the only one who moved, and she leaned closer. “Cameron, listen to me.” Her voice was like granite, and the Circle seemed almost soft in comparison. “What is the last thing you remember?”
“Writing my report and leaving it in the Hall of History.”
Buckingham picked up a bound manuscript and placed it on the table in front of me. “This report?”
It looked different from the loose pages I’d left on top of the case with Gilly’s sword months before, but that was it. I knew it. So I nodded. “I was in a hurry to finish it. I had to put everything down so I could…leave.”
Buckingham smiled as if that made perfect sense. “Do you know where you went?”
As soon as Buckingham spoke, my mother gave her a look. It was nothing more than a glance, really, but something in the gesture made me say, “What? Do you know something?”
“It’s nothing, kiddo.” Mom reached for my hand, covered it with her own, and squeezed my fingers. They were still raw and red, but they didn’t really hurt. “We just need you to start at the beginning. We need you to tell us if you know where you went when you left.”
I closed my eyes and tried to think, but the halls of my memory were black and empty.
“I don’t…I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
“What about later?” Buckingham asked. “Any flashes or scenes…feelings? It could be anything. Any little thing might be important.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Nothing. I left the report and then I woke up in the convent.”
“Cameron, dear.” Madame Dabney sounded very disappointed. “You were gone for four months. You don’t remember anything?”
It should have been an easy question for a Gallagher Girl. I’d been trained to remember and recall. I knew what we’d had for lunch on the last day of finals, and I could tell from the way she was sitting that Professor Buckingham’s bad hip was giving her trouble—that it was probably going to rain. I knew Madame Dabney had changed perfumes, and Mr. Smith had used his favorite plastic surgeon—the one in Switzerland—to rework his face last summer. But my own summer was a total blank.
My head hurt, and in the back of my mind a song began to play, lulling me. I wanted to sway with the music.
“I’m sorry,” I told them. “I know it sounds crazy. I sound crazy. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me.”
“You are many things, Cameron. But crazy is not one of them.” Buckingham straightened. “We believe you.”
I expected them to push harder, demand more. But then Buckingham took off her glasses and picked up the papers on the table in front of her. “The medical staff is expecting you in the infirmary, Cameron.” I’d thought I’d been good at hiding my fatigue, but the smile she gave me said otherwise. “And then I do hope you’ll get some rest. I think you’ve earned it.”
Walking back through the gleaming corridors of Sublevel One, I felt my mother’s hand on my back, and something about that small gesture made me stop.
“I’ll remember, Mom,” I blurted, turning to her. “I’ll get better and I’ll fight this and I’ll remember. And then—”
“No,” Mom snapped, then lowered her voice. “No, Cammie. I do not want you picking at your memories like they’re some kind of scab. Scabs exist for a reason.”
“But—” I started, just as Mom reached for my shoulders, held me tight.
“Listen to me, Cammie. There are things in this life…in this world…There are things that you don’t want to remember.”
The other teachers were on the far side of a soundproof door, halfway down the hall, and I couldn’t help wondering if Mom would have said those things in front of them. Somehow I knew this wasn’t the advice of a senior operative; this was the warning of a mother.
“But I need to know.”
“No.” She shook her head and cupped my face. “You don’t.”
When she touched me this time, I suddenly realized that I wasn’t the only one who was thinner. I wasn’t the only one whose hair had lost its natural shine. I’d seen her look that way only once before—when we’d lost my father. And right then it dawned on me—I had lost my memories, but…last summer…my mother had lost me.
“Mom, I’m sorry.” I could feel myself wanting to cry, but the tears didn’t come. “I’m so, so sorry I made you worry. I was going to come back. I was going to come back so much sooner.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“You don’t?” I asked, certain that I had misheard her.
“I care that you are home. I care that you are safe. I care that this is over. Sweetheart”—she smoothed my hair away from the terrible lump that was still tender—“just let it be over.”
“Rachel.” Mr. Smith was standing in the doorway, waving my mother back into the room. But Mom ignored him and kept staring at me.
“Promise me, Cammie, that you will let this be over.”
“I…I promise.”
She pulled back and wiped her eyes. “Can you find your way upstairs?”
“Yes, I remember.” I didn’t think about the words. “I mean…” I started, but then trailed off, because my mother had already turned. My mother was already gone.
From the moment I’d awoken at the convent, one of the nuns had always been by my side. Since my mother had landed in Austria, I’d barely left her sight. So it felt more than a little strange walking alone through the empty corridor that led to the Gallagher Academy hospital wing.
I was finally alone.
But that was before I turned the corner and saw a boy standing in the center of the hall.
His hands hung loosely by his sides, and his hair was neatly combed. His white shirt and khaki pants were clean and freshly pressed. At a glance I might have confused him with just an ordinary private school boy. But, 1) There are no boys at my school. And 2) Zachary Goode has never been ordinary a day in his life.
I stood motionless. Waiting. Trying to reconcile the fact that Zach was there, standing in the middle of my school, looking at me like maybe I was the one who was totally out of place. He reached out one hand, his finger sliding down my arm as if to check to make sure I was real, and the touch made me close my eyes, waiting for his lips to find mine, but they never did.