Zodiac (Zodiac, #1)(25)

“Rho, I don’t want to pry. It just seems like what she did had an impact on your ability to manipulate Psynergy . . . and knowing what it was could help me Guide you.”

I shut off the Wave and stuff it back in my band. It’s not that I disagree with him—it’s just that I hate remembering. I don’t know how most people’s memories work, but mine is merciless. The moment I pull a thread from the Mom years, the whole yarn unspools. And I can’t afford to let her to distract me now. Not when Dad and Stanton are still missing.

Mathias starts to reach for me, and I know he’s going to pat my back or squeeze my shoulder or do something else that should be comforting, only it won’t be. I don’t want his pity. So I twist my Ring, and I disappear into the shadow world. An instant later, a new silhouette pops into existence, and immediately I feel Mathias’s presence.

Somehow, it’s easier to talk in here, where I don’t have to hear the words out loud. I don’t like to remember. It’s not that the training was traumatic, exactly. . . . It was exhaustive and endless, but you can’t call it torture. It’s just . . . it’s because I . . .

You miss her.

He’s right, but I don’t say so. Instead, I try to catalogue some of the things Mom and I studied, careful to stay in the shallow end of my memory pool, without digging too far into any particular moment. So I won’t have to see her bottomless blue eyes or hear her storytelling voice or smell her water lily scent.

First it was memorizations. Ever since I was a baby, she would read to me about the Zodiac, until it became all I knew. What each constellation looks like, the name of every star and planet, the operations of the different Houses—all stuff that’s in the Acolyte textbooks. Then when I was four, she started teaching me Yarrot.

In the murky and abstract surroundings, it’s easier to make the memories feel like stories Mom told me once, rather than real things she did. By the time I was five, I could Center myself, and I was seeing things in the Ephemeris. I was . . . terrified. I didn’t understand how I was doing it, and I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. I would get nightmares from the visions every night. I stayed awake at all hours to avoid sleep. I was a kid, and I was afraid to be inside my own head.

I’m so sorry, Rho, whispers Mathias softly.

The nights I woke up screaming, Stanton would come into my room to calm me. He’d tell me stories until I fell back asleep, stories he’d make up on the spot. Whenever he ran out of plot twists, I’d join in, and we’d keep going until our hero either got married or died. That’s how we’d know we reached the end: Deaths we declared tragedies, weddings comedies.

I open my eyes and take my hand off the Ring. Mathias joins me back on reality. “My mom had this theory that people can see more when they’re younger, when their soul is purest. She said that’s when we’re most susceptible to Psynergy, and that if properly trained from an early age, a person could develop a natural ability to commune with the stars.”

I take in a deep breath and exhale a sigh. “I guess it halfway worked because I’m faster at Centering than the other Acolytes, and my reads are right a lot of the time. But since Mom taught me to use my instinct, I’m way behind with an Astralator, and I can’t always distinguish between the Psy and my imagination.”

He looks away when I say the word Astralator, probably thinking of his sister. “Well, you’re a pro with the Ring. The more often you use it to communicate, the more familiar you will become with people’s Psynergy signatures, and that will help you identify anyone misrepresenting themselves.”

It sounds like another version of Trust Only What You Can Touch. “Why do people manipulate the Psy so often?”

His eyebrows pull together, and he pauses for a moment. “Think of it this way: In this realm, the rules of science govern us. If you throw a ball at the ground where there’s gravity, the ball will bounce.”

I nod.

“In the Psy, there are no rules. You’re floating through people’s minds, and we don’t work in black and white. In the brain, everything is relative. Most of us don’t intentionally try to misrepresent anything—but the lies we tell ourselves, the truths we repress, the things we conceal in the physical realm . . . they inform reality in the Psy. Even in an abstract dimension, ideas built on flawed foundations will fail.”

I get the impression the only way I’m going to understand what he’s saying is with more training. “Let’s go again—”

Mathias tilts his head, like he’s listening for something far off. “Sounds like we have to cut this short,” he says, his lips twitching. “You have more important business to attend to before tonight’s ceremony.” Then he walks off without another word.

“Mathias!” I call after him. “What business? Who was just talking to you?”

“Hello, Holy Mother.”

I turn to see Lola and Leyla, their hands locked in front of them and wide smiles on their faces.

? ? ?

Back in my room, Leyla sits me down in the desk chair, facing the dusty round mirror. “Makeover?” I ask for the fifth time. “You’re telling me this trumps my learning how to communicate in the Psy?”

“Today it does, Holy Mother,” she says, wresting my curls from the hairband they’re twisted around. “Representatives from every House are coming to see you.”