Page 89 of Sinful Palace

“Oh. So I could wake up thinking I was kidnapped by a biker gang two years ago, because I might’ve ‘remembered’ that when I was under, and it would feel like a real memory even though it definitely isn’t one?”

She nodded. “Yes, and like I said, unless there’s corroborating evidence, I won’t have any way of knowing if what you’re telling me is a real memory or not.”

“But if we can back it up, you can be pretty sure it’s real, right?” Logan asked, scratching his jaw. “So if Willow recalls a bunch of stuff from that night that I know definitely happened, we can safely assume it’s a proper memory?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Logan looked at me. “What do you think?”

“I think it sounds good.”

He stepped over to me and knelt near my spot on the sofa. “Are you sure?” he murmured. “I really don’t mind waiting a while longer. You need to grieve.”

“I know, but I want to do it,” I said, boldly lifting my chin.

He nodded and looked back at Myla. “Okay. We’re in.”

“You want to go with the second option?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to remember as quick as possible.”

“All right.” She motioned toward the windows. “Logan, could you please draw all the curtains? The darker it is in here, the better.”

“Sure.”

Myla turned her attention back to me. “Before we begin, there’s a few things we need to go over. After I give you the micro-dose, we’ll start the hypnosis process, and while that’s happening, you need to concentrate very hard on the memory you’re trying to recover. For example, you can think about all the events that you remember leading up to it. The week, the day, the hour… everything up until the point you start to forget.”

“Will that make me more likely to remember the right things while I’m under?”

She nodded. “That’s exactly it. If we don’t do that, your mind could wander anywhere, and then you could remember a whole bunch of irrelevant things.”

“Okay.”

“One other thing. These flashes you say you’ve had… what exactly do you see in them?”

I twirled a strand of hair in my fingers as I thought about it. “The clearest thing is the road I was on at the time,” I said. “And lightning. There was definitely lightning.”

“Try to picture that, then,” Myla said. “The road and the lightning, as well as everything leading up to the part you’ve forgotten.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you ready?”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a second. Then I nodded. “Yes.”

“Great.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, nothing bad is going to happen. It will only last fifteen minutes, and the absolute worst-case scenario is you simply failing to remember anything.”

“Okay.”

She stood and brought the nasal spray over to me. “When I give this to you, you might feel a little sleepy for a minute or so. That feeling will intensify as we go through the hypnosis visualizations. You might also feel a sudden rush of euphoria.”

I smiled thinly at that. Considering the horribly depressive state I’d been in for the last six days, I could use all the euphoria I could get.

“Ready?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

I tilted my head back and let Myla spray the micro-dose into my left nostril, and then I lay down on the couch. Logan had drawn all the drapes by now, and the room was quiet and dark.

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