Page 66 of The Forest of Lost Souls

Regis is enchanted and frightened in equal measure, which is a weird feeling, but he understands it.

She understands it, too. She comes to him and stands before him and says, “I realized something after you left my place.”

He doesn’t dare speak, for he is again under her spell. He fears what revelations he’ll make.

“I have long known that I have an important mission,” she says.

He can’t control his tongue. “Youlooklike a person with a mission. You look like an anime heroine.”

“I thought my mission was to save my brothers from themselves, but it might not be given to me to accomplish that. I’ve worked so hard on them. I’ve convinced myself that they can no longer lie to me. But my conviction might be self-delusion. After all, they’re off on this woman hunt with the wicked Galen Vector. But you ...”

“Me?”

“You.” She smiled.

“Me what?”

“For sure, you can’t lie.”

“Nonsense. I’m a tremendous liar. I’ve spent my life lying about everything to everyone.”

“Not to me. When you’re speaking to me, you mean to lie, but when you open your mouth, all the truth spills out of you no matter how much you want to conceal it. That’s what happened at my place. Several times. It just happened again now.”

He shrugged. “Believe what you want.”

“I’ll believe what I know. I’ve been waiting eighteen years for you to show up.”

“Eighteen years ago,” he says, “I would have been twelve.”

“I would have been ten.”

“You didn’t even know I existed eighteen years ago.”

“I didn’t know it was you. I just knew it was someone who could never lie to me and that together we would accomplish great things.”

“What does that mean—‘accomplish great things’?”

“I don’t know. It’s what the fortuneteller said. I guess we’ll find out.”

“What fortuneteller?”

“She operated out of a house less than a mile from here. I paid her with a five-pound block of cheese. Free cheese from the federal government.”

“Cheese?”

“It was symbolic.”

“Of what?”

“Of what I valued least, which was what my mother valued most.”

“Your mother valued cheese above all things?”

“She valued what was free, what she could get for nothing. Momma was addicted to the dole and to defrauding the system as much as she was addicted to her cigarettes, booze, pot, jalapeño potato chips, chocolate-peanut-butter ice cream, and sleazy men, among other things.”

“Why’s a ten-year-old girl going to a fortuneteller?”

“Looking for a way out.”

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