Page 145 of Every Shade of Shadow

“Fuck.”

And then Ava stops. She stops shaking, moving, making sound… She sits up, eyes returning to their regular non-fucked-up position, and gives a light cough before looking towards me and laughing. “You, my friend,” she whistles, “you and Darkwood? That’s some shit right there.”

I just can’t fathom how she’s perfectly okay when a moment ago I was about to dial up an exorcist. “You’re okay?”

She shrugs. “Never better.”

“Did you find anything?” Lily asks.

She pokes herself in the chest. “Me? No. I still couldn’t see under that hood. And you,” she points to Lily, “I’ve heard the term airhead, but wow.”

Lily gives her a push. “Oh, fuck off.”

“But no,” Ava goes on, her attention moving to me. “Ana here, however, she’s an interesting one.”

I swallowed, wondering what she saw.

Ava nods. “Someone put a lock on you.”

“A what?”

“It’s pretty archaic stuff,” Ava says, “and totally illegal, but it’s there alright. Someone has locked one of your memories—a sliver. The signature is there, and it’s not Darkwood. I won’t even get started on all the kinky control spells he’s tied you up with, because that’s your thing, but this is something else.”

I look down, thinking.

A lock? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

It seems Ava’s still in my head, because she replies, “It was originally a way to make people forget—a kindness. We’re talking way back in the Age of Renewal, but it was unpredictable. You didn’t know if you were going to get a locked memory or a lobotomy.”

“Now you tell us,” Lily says, incredulous. “How do you even know about this?”

“Call it a family secret.”

Ava blows out a punctuated breath. “I’d prefer something a little more vanilla, like incest or a pervy uncle.”

“Can you undo it?” I ask, more concerned with myself. “The lock?”

“I can try,” says Ava, “but this isn’t really my area.”

I reach for her hand. “Give it a go.”

She breathes in. “Okay, but you asked for it.”

“Wait…” Lily says, but Ava’s already whispered the spell.

There’s a twinge somewhere inside my head, like something snapping. Instinctively, I reach for my head.

The hell just happened?

“Well?” Lily demands.

An image comes to the front of my mind, clear as day—a flash of color in a hallway, the hallway I was moving past just before I discovered the second murder.

But no, not green, emerald.

A very specific shade of emerald, of fabric.

“Holy shit,” I say aloud.

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