Shadow Scale: A Companion to Seraphina(44)

“At the end. What happened prior to that?”

I racked my brains. I remembered one other thing, but it made no sense. “I scratched the cover of the book with my oud’s plectrum. Why did I do that?”

“You were angry with me. Or someone was.” His mouth flattened into a stern line. “Someone who didn’t like being rebuffed.”

“Rebuffed for what?” I said, a slow-burning dread in the pit of my stomach.

“You kissed me,” he said evenly. “On the mouth, to be precise. It wasn’t like you. In fact, I’m quite certain it wasn’t you.”

My throat had gone completely dry. “That’s not possible. I’d remember.”

He removed his spectacles and cleaned them with the edge of his sleeve. “How long has she been moving you around, using your body as if it were her own? Or did you not realize she could do such a thing? She apparently makes you forget afterward.”

I ran a hand over my face. “I’ll talk to her. I’m sure she didn’t mean to—”

“She meant to,” he said. “She would not have stolen your memories if it were innocent. What happens when she usurps your body and decides not to give it back?”

“She wouldn’t do that!” I whispered vehemently. “She’s my friend. My only—”

“No,” said Orma with surprising gentleness. “She is no friend to you at all. Could she make you kill your father, or hurt your little sisters?”

“She would never—” I began, then remembered hitting my father with the tea tray. It had seemed good fun at the time.

“You don’t know what she might do, or what she really wants,” said Orma. “I suspect she wants to be you. While her body is trapped in prison, you’re her chance for a better life. You have to evict her.”

“I’ve seen how she suffers,” I said, pleading with him now. “It would be cruel to kick her out. And I don’t think I could, even if—”

“You are not helpless,” said Orma.

He’d spoken those words to me before. They hit me hard, and for a moment I hated him. Some quiet, sensible part of me, though—a part I had been paying very little heed to for quite some time—knew he was right. Now that I knew how far she had gone, I could not keep letting her do what she liked with me. I buried my face in my pillow, mortified by how easily I’d handed over the reins.

He made no move to console me, but waited until I showed my face again. “We need to free you from her,” he said, “and we need to do it soon, lest she glean your intentions. Can she hear all your thoughts?”

“I think so, when the garden gates are open.” They’d been open a long time. If I closed them, she’d know something was wrong. Could I use my thoughts to fool her?

The lines by Orma’s mouth deepened. “You can’t simply release her, I suppose?”

I took a shaky breath. “I think she’s holding on to me as tightly as I’m holding on to her. If I let go, she wouldn’t return the favor.”

“Could you wall her off in some sort of prison?” he asked.

“Maybe,” I said, feeling a sick, regretful pang. The irony was not lost on me.

We spent more than an hour planning; after he finally left, I stayed awake a few hours more, preparing. I knew I had to act now, while my resolve held and before she figured out what I was doing. I crept through my own mind, into Jannoula’s part of the garden, and opened the door of the ornamental cottage, which I now named the Wee Cottage, because my garden’s functional places must be named. I created a space inside it, then reinforced the walls and door, imagining them impenetrable, incorruptible. I circled the cottage seven times, chanting ritual words of my own invention. All the while, her avatar slept nearby.

Jannoula would surely wake soon. I hastily tidied up my mind and put a big padlock on the cottage door.

She was certain to notice it; I was counting on that.

I gazed down at her sleeping form among the flowers, curled up the way she’d been when I’d first met her, and my heart brimmed with pity. With a thought, I caused a toadstool the size of a table to grow beside her head and give her shade. She awoke, stretching sleepily, and smiled to see me there. “Good morning, sister,” she said, sitting up. “You don’t usually visit this time of day.”

“Look,” I said, pointing at the distraction I’d created. “I made you a toadstool.”

“It’s our favorite color!” She beamed with a childish innocence that reminded me painfully of early days. “I’d like a whole garden of them.”

“Why not?” I said, a purposeful note of desperation beneath my cheer. Speckled toadstools began popping up all over.

She picked up on my anxious undertone at once; her green eyes darted, quick as minnows, to my face. “You’re misdirecting me. What’s going on?” She flicked her tongue out quickly, like a snake. I wondered what guilt tasted like.

“Don’t be silly,” I protested too vehemently. My nerves sang with tension.

She stepped closer, her brow furrowed, cocking an ear as if listening to my rapidly knocking pulse. “What have you done?”

The padlock on the Wee Cottage popped into my thoughts, as if by accident. I struggled to suppress the thought, and the struggle itself drew her attention. She was at the cottage door in five strides, her gown swirling around her ankles. I hurried after.