Every other day(70)

It was another thing to think she’d never loved you in the first place.

Almost finished, baby.

We’re going to play a game, Kali.

Mommy’s secret girl.

The memories came faster and more violently into my mind. I choked on them. My eyes burned, worse than they had in the sun, and I realized that I was on the verge of tears.

They hung there, unshed, in my eyes, and I willed something calm and cool and animal to take over my body. I wasn’t going to cry.

I wasn’t going to remember.

You’re all right, Kali. Zev’s voice wasn’t gentle; I couldn’t have taken it if it were. He was matter-of-fact, and I accepted his words at face value. I’m here. You’re all right. You’re going to be all right.

“You do your job, Paul. Let me take care of mine. Keep your daughter on her leash, and we’ll all be just fine.”

The words rhymed, making the ultimatum sound like some kind of sick nursery rhyme and threatening to send me back in time—to lying on my bed, while she brushed my hair out of my face.

She sang me to sleep, I thought dully.

And then she was gone—not just gone from my memories, or gone from my life, but gone from this room. The woman in heels—Rena Malik, my mother—followed Paul Davis out of the room, leaving Skylar and me hidden behind the hard drives, neither one of us willing to say a word out loud.

Seconds crept into minutes, and finally, I let out a long and jagged breath.

“You okay?” Skylar asked quietly, and I realized I was still holding her hand, still squeezing it.

“Sorry,” I said, letting go.

“Sorry you’re not okay?” Skylar asked, eyeing me with concern.

“Sorry about your hand,” I corrected. She looked down, surprised, as if she’d forgotten she even had a hand. Then she smiled.

“Don’t worry,” she said, wiggling her fingers. “I have two.” To demonstrate, she held up her left hand, and I smiled—or at least, I tried to.

The simple motion—my lips curving upward—brought bile into my throat. How could I smile? How could I do anything except lie there and hurt?

“Kali?” Skylar’s voice was very small. “If this is about what I saw, when we were looking at those files—I won’t tell anyone. Ever. I mean, we all have our things, right? I talk too much, and I look like a third grader, and I’m only a little bit psychic.” She blew a wisp of white-blonde hair out of her face. “I don’t care if you’re a you-know-what.”

“A vampire?” I suggested. It was the first time I’d said the word out loud, but worrying about a thing like that seemed so stupid all of a sudden. It was just a word.

And that woman was just my mother.

“It’s not about that,” I told Skylar. “It’s …”

I couldn’t form the words, physically could not do it.

Skylar nodded. “It’s okay, Kali. I may not be significantly psychic, but I know that it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to work out, and you’re going to be okay. I’m going to make you okay. Okay?”

The repetition of the word made me want to smile. Smiling made me want to puke. This wasn’t okay. I wasn’t okay.

Moving on autopilot, I dug something out of my pocket. The cell phone I’d stolen from Davis’s office was in even worse shape now than it had been when I’d snapped it in two. The plastic casing was pulverized, assorted keys hanging off it like a loose tooth dangling by a single thread of gum. It looked like it had been run over by a semi.

I ran my thumb over the broken, jagged surface.

This phone looked how I felt.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that isn’t your phone,” Skylar said, hooking her thumbs through the pocket of her jeans. “Am I right?”

I nodded, unable to take my eyes off the broken, mangled frame. “It used to be Bethany’s dad’s. Now, it’s nothing.”

Nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

I used to have a memory of my mother—smiling, soft.

Now I had nothing.

Nothing.

Nothing.

“Reid could probably pull some data off the phone,” Skylar said, a look of comic concentration on her elfin features. “He’s got guys. Lots of guys. One of them could reassemble the memory card, and then pull the incoming calls.”

“There were some numbers on there,” I said, like that mattered. Like anything mattered anymore. “Incoming calls.”

Quick as a whip, Skylar slipped her own cell phone out of her pocket and hit the speed dial. “Hey, Gen? It’s Skylar. Quick question—if you have a cell phone number, can you track the location a call was placed from?” Skylar paused. “Not you specifically, but like, somebody-you? With the right equipment?” Skylar fell into silence again, twirling a stray piece of blonde hair around her index finger. “Okay, and say I wanted to keep tabs on the person who was running the number. And say that this person totally wouldn’t expect me to be doing that, because he still thinks I’m five years old. Do you think …”