His features looked more human than ever before. “I did. And Angelus destroyed her.”
“I’m so sorry, Xavier.”
He nodded. “She was a powerful Telepath before she went mad from Angelus’ experiments.”
A mind reader. Suddenly I understood.
“Are you saying Angelus can read minds?”
“Only Mortal ones.”
Only Mortal ones. Like mine and Liv’s and Marian’s.
I needed to find my page in The Caster Chronicles and get back home.
“Don’t look so sad, dead man.”
I watched the hands on Xavier’s clocks turn in different directions, marking the passage of time that didn’t exist here. I didn’t want to tell him that I wasn’t sad.
I was afraid.
I kept my eyes on those clocks, but I still couldn’t keep track of the time. Sometimes it got so bad that I started to forget what I was waiting for in the first place. Too much time will do that to you. Blur the edges between your memories and your imagination until everything feels like something you saw in a movie instead of your life.
I was beginning to give up on ever seeing The Book of Moons again. Which meant giving up on a whole lot more than some old Caster book.
It meant giving up on Gatlin, the good and the bad of it. Giving up on Amma and my dad and Aunt Marian. Link and Liv and John. Jackson High and the Dar-ee Keen and Wate’s Landing and Route 9. The place where I first realized Lena was the girl from my dreams.
Giving up on the Book meant giving up on her.
I couldn’t do that.
I wouldn’t.
After what had to be a few days or a few weeks—it was impossible to know—Xavier realized I was losing more than time.
He was sitting on the dirt floor inside the cave, cataloging what looked like thousands of keys. “What did she look like?”
“Who?” I asked.
“The girl.”
I watched him sort the keys by size, then shape. I wondered where they came from, whose doors they opened, as I searched for the right words. “She was… alive.”
“Was she beautiful?”
Was she? It was getting harder to remember.
“Yeah. I think so.”
Xavier stopped sorting the keys, watching me. “What did she look like, the girl?”
How could I tell him everything was swirling in my mind, blending together in a way that made it impossible to picture her clearly?
“Ethan? Did you hear me? You have to tell me. Otherwise you will forget. That’s what happens if you spend too much time here. You’ll lose everything that made you who you were. This place takes it from you.”
I turned away before I answered. “I’m not sure. It’s all a blur.”
“Was her hair gold?” Xavier loved gold.