Wicked Like a Wildfire (Hibiscus Daughter #1)(42)

?i?a Jovan closed his eyes for a long moment. When he finally opened them, they were bleak as quarry water. “It’s not a quarantine any longer. It’s a different secret they’re keeping now.”

“Why?” Malina whispered, the question like a wince. “What’s happening?”

“They don’t know, my girls. She’s gone. Someone stole her away from them. Apparently the hospital’s too godforsaken to afford security cameras, so they have no trace of what happened to her. The nurse maintaining quarantine swore up and down that no one slipped by her, that she saw nothing.” He hitched his shoulder at an attendant hovering several feet behind, hands clasped tight in front of her bleached-out scrubs. I recognized her from the last time: the same sallow-faced woman who had let Mirko pass with us in tow. “She’s the one I spoke to.”

“And nothing? She can’t remember seeing anything at all?”

His jaw worked beneath the muscle of his cheek. “That’s what she says, though I can’t fathom it. They had our Jasmina here, and now she’s gone. Someone must have taken her, by God. She certainly didn’t walk out of here on her own! So I’ve railed at all of them, my girl, all the way up to the hospital director; Mirko was here earlier, too, to interrogate them in turn. None of them have a thing to say for themselves.”

I could feel myself swaying from the inside, like some rickety stilt hut in high winds. Could Mama have somehow left by herself, in the state she was in? A shudder tore through me at the thought of her dragging herself out of the bed, eyes half lidded and twitching blindly, tubes trailing from her slack limbs, her chest concave beneath the papery hospital gown. But how could the nurse have possibly missed it? Lina and I exchanged frantic looks, and I could see her come to the same conclusion.

Someone would have needed to have been there with the nurse, to lure away her memories.

Someone like Sorai.

I squeezed Jovan’s shoulder. “Let me talk to her, Jovan. Before we leave.”

He nodded once, and held an arm out to Malina. “Why don’t you stay with me, sweetheart. I need someone to lean on for a spell.”

The woman’s narrow face folded in on itself as I approached her. Her gray-threaded dark ponytail was loose and scraggly, and her fingers flitted up to pluck nervously at it as she struggled to meet my eyes. I glanced at her name tag. “Jelena—it’s okay if you don’t know what happened. Really. I don’t think this was your fault. None of us do.”

She snorted a little, weakly. “Thank you for saying so, though it’s not true—they’re going to be rid of me for sure now. Someone has to take the blame for this. I was the one outside that door, how could I not have seen anything? It’s—it’s impossible. There’s only one way in and out of that room, and I was there, I swear I hadn’t left for a moment. I’d checked in on her just an hour before, and the next time I went in—gone. Vanished like a ghost.”

I pressed my lips together, pulled them through my teeth. “This might sound strange, but do you remember anything else at all? Something like a smell, maybe? Perfume, even?”

Her brown eyes flashed up to mine. “That’s—yes! I smelled peaches, strong, very sweet. Almost like there was a fresh-cut plate of them tucked somewhere close that I couldn’t see. I even looked around for it first, and then I was nervous that maybe I’d had a small stroke or the like. Phantom smells can happen after that. But I could see just fine, and move my hands properly. And there was another smell, something like flowers, then it faded completely too. I thought maybe . . . the vents here can be strange. There wasn’t any other explanation.”

Except for Sorai. She’d taken this woman’s memory, just like she’d taken ours years ago, siphoned out with the power of her scent.

And now she had stolen our mother whole.

BACK AT ?I?A Jovan’s, the three of us collapsed in the living room, Jovan in his massive, hand-carved rocking chair, Lina and me on the couch. “I don’t understand what’s happening here, my girls, I swear on my heart,” he said heavily, massaging his temples. “It’s beyond me. How could they have lost her, and why are they lying? Because it must be lies. Human beings don’t simply disappear into thin air.”

Malina shifted uneasily beside me. On the way out of the hospital, I’d quietly shared with her what the attendant had told me, and we’d both agreed there was no need to tangle Jovan in whatever spiderweb Sorai, or whoever else, was weaving around us. Involving Luka and Niko was already dangerous enough, given how little we knew of anything.

“In any case, we’re all worn out,” Jovan said. “If you’ve eaten already, it might do us all good to make an early night of it. Could be we’ll hear something in the morning.”

“I’m going to sit in the studio for a while, I think,” I said. “I’m not ready to sleep yet.” Or to be alone with Malina, especially now. I didn’t have any spare comfort to lend her, or the inclination.

In the studio, I sat on the little wooden bench across from the furnace, my back against the stone wall, breathing in the familiar, lingering tang of molten glass and wood shavings. It brought me back to the first time I’d slept over at Jovan’s. Mama had made me cry that night, two years ago. By then I almost never let myself cry in front of her, but I’d been so furious that it couldn’t be helped. Lina had been playing for us before it happened, and for once our living room was almost peaceful with the warm contentment of her song, a sleepy-sweet melody like a heavy-eyed pup curled by a fireplace.