“Whoa, settle down.” He scratched his stubble with blunted fingernails. “No reason for that to happen. Nasty shitbag had it coming.” He sighed. “All right, then.” He leaned down and, with a grunt, hefted the unconscious man onto his shoulder. He carried the weight like it was nothing. “At least it’s super late. You should be glad. I was just going to work. What’s your name, anyway, Little Miss Remind-Me-Never-To-Piss-You-Off?”
She cracked a smile. “Marguerite. I think.”
“You think?”
“Memory loss.”
“Shit. Well, I’m Harry.” He started walking down the stairs. “C’mon, Mags. If I’m gonna throw a guy behind a dumpster and hope for the best, you’re coming with me. If I get caught, I’m not going down alone.”
Marguerite didn’t know much about the world. She didn’t know much about herself. She had only just been let out of the hospital a few days earlier.
But now she knew real friendship sometimes involved hiding bodies. Or unconscious people. Or whatever. It was fundamentally the same.
She jogged after him. “Wait up!”
* * *
Maggie blinked.She was sitting on a park bench, her sketchbook in her lap. That would have been fine if that were where she wanted to be. That was her plan for the afternoon. But the problem simply was that she didn’t remember getting there. With a sigh, she rubbed her eyes. “Not again.”
Fishing her phone out of her pocket, she checked the time. It was three in the afternoon. She was supposed to meet up with Harry at Emmett’s restaurant at five. At least she wasn’t going to be late. She had no text messages, no phone calls, and no emails.
Every time that happened it made her sad. It was weird that she was more upset that no one had tried to contact her than she was that she had dissociated from reality and got lost in another one of her memories. Who the hell would be contacting me? I don’t know anyone. Just Harry, and he’s still asleep.
Tucking her phone back into her pocket, she glanced at her sketchbook. She had been drawing one of statues in the Public Gardens. She flicked through a few of the pages and furrowed her brow. Most of them were normal for her. But one caught her by surprise.
There was a portrait.
She touched the page with her fingertips. She didn’t recognize the drawing, which meant she had done it during her blackout. The background was shaded a dark black, setting off the man’s features in high contrast. The background needed to be dark so that his stark white hair popped from the page.
It was a portrait of Dr. Gideon Raithe. Sitting in his chair, studying his notepad, a loose strand or two of his white hair hanging in front of his eye. He really was incredibly handsome. She had never seen anyone quite like him. Darker skin as if he or his family was from the Mediterranean or there about, but pale as if he had spent too much time indoors. And the white hair. He didn’t look albino, his eyes would be pink. But…it didn’t look like he bleached his hair, either. It was too consistent.
Why had she drawn him?
Sure, he was attractive. And she saw him twice a week to talk about her “feelings” and her “memories” or lack thereof. That must be it. Just a passing fascination. She shut the sketchbook and leaned back on the bench. It was a beautiful spring day. The sun was shining, and it was just warm enough in the sun and cool enough in the shade to not feel oppressive yet.
She smiled as she watched a pair of squirrels chase each other up a tree and along a branch. It was a territorial thing—chasing one squirrel out of the other one’s turf, but she still thought it was kind of cute. At least from her perspective it was.
She ran.
Ran as hard and as fast as she could.
The grass of the field was long. Too long. She couldn’t see what she was stepping on. She didn’t care. She just needed to get away. She needed to run. She needed to escape. He was there. Right behind her. Calling her name. Reaching out for her. Black claws that shone like onyx in the moonlight.
“Marguerite.”
His voice was a raspy whisper. Like the sound of the wind rustling bare branches in dead trees. It sent a shiver down her spine, and she sobbed. It was hopeless. She knew she couldn’t ever escape.
But she had to keep trying.
“Leave me alone!”
Her foot caught a hole. Maybe it was an old horse path. She didn’t know. It didn’t matter. Her ankle twisted. She felt it crunch as the tendons sprained, and she cried out in pain.
She fell. She couldn’t even stop herself with her hands. Or maybe she didn’t care. She knew what was going to happen. Her head smashed into a rock.
“It does not need to be this way,” came the whisper again.
She sobbed. She wanted to die. “Make it stop.”