The Forgotten Locket Read online

  “Don’t,” she gasps, and he doesn’t know if she is talking to him or to the music or to whatever it was that she saw that caused her to run.

  He stumbles a step trying to keep up with her. “Wait—”

  “We’re almost there.” She increases her pace, lengthens her stride.

  “Where?”

  The music seems to increase in volume, dogging their every step, chasing them. He doesn’t want to know what might happen if it catches them.

  The girl veers to the right, and even though nothing about the landscape has changed, he knows they have reached something different. Something special.

  Skidding to a stop, he looks down. Just beyond his toes is a crack in the world. A deep chasm of light and motion. Fragments of shadow move in rhythm, coming together only to separate in a dance that has no beginning or end. Watching the ceaseless waves, he can hear the faint melody of the past, feel the delicate magic of the future rising up like mist.

  He looks into the unspooling river of time, then down at his hands, at the shadows smudged across his wrists. He will never be free of the darkness. He knows that now.

  The music is closer, heavy and insistent, trying to turn him inside out. The notes are sharp as claws, burrowing and searching and finding and taking. But the attack is not directed at him. The music wants the girl.

  He sees her shoulders hunch under the onslaught. Her eyes fill with tears.

  It is too much. He can’t stand aside and let her suffer. Not if there is something he can do to help.

  He touches her back, her shoulder blades. She trembles like a trapped bird. He turns her to face him. He smooths back her hair, wipes the tears from her cheeks, and covers her ears with his hands.

  She wraps her fingers around the black chains on his wrists. The pain is sharp. He grits his teeth. His blood smears. He shudders as a strange sense of foreboding fills him.

  She closes her eyes as a flash of pain twists her face.

  He can feel a shadow growing behind him, a presence close enough to touch. He can hear someone else breathing.

  He tilts his head to the side, turning to see who—or what—has been pursuing them.

  She tightens her grip on his wrists. “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  And then she falls backward into the river.

  He has no choice but to follow.

  Braced for impact, he falls into the shifting, shining water. But before he goes under, he manages to catch a glimpse of the man they left behind. A man still standing on the bank of the river, a golden beam of light in his hands and a bone-white grin across his face.

  For a moment, the river encircles him, embraces him, welcomes him home.

  And then all is forgotten.

  Chapter 1

  Is this a joke?” Zo stood in front of me, all loose limbs and wide grins. “Did you really think you could escape so easily?”

  I looked down at Orlando’s body at my feet. His first trip to the bank and back had left him unconscious, which was both good and bad. Part of me hoped he would stay that way, at least for a little longer. I had pulled him into the river specifically so he wouldn’t see Zo on the bank. But now Zo had followed us through the river and into a courtroom in sixteenth-century Italy.

  And wherever Zo was, danger followed.

  Zo strolled across the polished wooden floor. “I remember this place,” he commented as though we were on a sightseeing tour. “The judge sat there.” He pointed to a high table lined with chairs; in front of the center chair stood a golden set of scales with a small stone balanced on either side. Zo turned and pointed to a spot in front of the tall, black hourglass door, freestanding in its frame. “And I stood there.”

  I shivered when I saw the dark wooden door. It was still hard to believe what I had done. I had stepped through my own time machine door and walked my way back more than five hundred years to sixteenth-century Italy. I might have doubted it for an instant, but the evidence was all around me. The room where we stood was clearly not from my time or place: no electric lights, no hum from an air conditioner. The furniture looked handmade; each chair had an individual feel to it instead of the uniform look of mass-produced materials. Even the air tasted different.

  I had done it. I was here. Really here. It felt impossible, but I knew it was true.

  I wished Orlando was awake and that we were alone and that we had time to talk. I knew Orlando still had questions; so did I. Like, how had we understood each other on the bank in the first place? Orlando didn’t speak English; I didn’t speak sixteenth-century Italian.

  Then again, maybe it was good that Orlando was unconscious. There were some things I couldn’t explain. I had told him as much of the truth as I could while we had been on the bank—the rules, the warnings—but Orlando couldn’t know the rest. Not about Zo coming through the door. Not about Dante, either. Not yet. Not until I closed the loop and protected the river from Zo’s interference once and for all.

  “Tony and V were over there.” Zo crossed his arms thoughtfully. “You know, they shouldn’t have sent all three of us through together. That was just asking for trouble.”

  “Why did they?” I asked.

  Zo shrugged. “My guess is they were still experimenting with how the machine worked and wondered if it could handle multiple people at the same time.” He looked down at Orlando on the floor. “Though clearly the machine could handle the weak and the useless.”

  “He was your friend,” I snapped.

  Zo shrugged again. “Friends come and go. Enemies, on the other hand, last forever.” He did his flickering trick and was suddenly standing behind me.

  His quickness was disorienting, though this time I managed to follow his travels. I hadn’t been able to last time. Back when we were in the burned-out basement of the Dungeon, he and Dante were flickering too fast to track. Of course, back then, I was different. I hadn’t come through the door yet. I hadn’t traveled through time.

  Zo’s mouth was too close to my ear, his hand too tight on my arm. His breath was hot on my neck. “I have something special planned for you, sweet Abby.”

  “I don’t want it,” I managed to say. His nearness was unnerving.

  “Too bad,” Zo said.

  And this time, when he flickered, he took me with him.

  • • •

  I hated the bank.

  Before, whenever I had traveled here I had been with someone else: Dante, Leo, even V. Or I had been safely cocooned in a dream where Dante’s voice sounded like home. Before, my trips to the bank were anomalies.

  Now I had passed through the door. Now I belonged on the bank.

  But I still hated it.

  I hated the flatness, the emptiness. I hated how much it hurt my eyes to follow the horizon line in the distance. I hated the crushing pressure that squeezed my lungs and crushed my heart.

  I remembered the first time I’d felt that overwhelming weight and how it had been Dante’s kiss that had helped protect me, acclimated me to my surroundings, and taken away the pressure and the pain. But there were no kisses for me now. There was no need.

  The bank was part of my life. No one needed to protect me from it anymore. No one could. If I was going to survive here, it was going to be up to me.

  So as soon as we appeared on the bank, I immediately pushed away from Zo, heading toward where I could see the river cutting a path nearby. I stumbled a step or two in my haste and had just found my footing when Zo’s voice rang out behind me.

  “Don’t move.”

  My body stopped cold.

  “Have you forgotten the rules so soon?” Zo said. He sauntered over to where I was standing. He reached out and touched the back of my neck, and I immediately felt a zing of warmth travel down my spine. His breath lingered on my skin. “Here on the bank you have to do what I say. And I say stay.”

  Part of me chafed against his command, but I had no choice. I couldn’t move a muscle, not to bend or blink. I could barely breathe.

  “You ar
e surprisingly hard to compel, Abby. Even that very first time on the bank, when you crossed the bridge and opened the door for me, I found that controlling you was a bit of a challenge. And it seems like the more you learn, the stronger you are.” He shook his head. “I foolishly thought the music alone would be enough to stop you. But then you ran from me, dragging Orlando with you, and now I see that stronger measures are required.”

  Zo circled around me as he spoke, finally coming to a stop in front of me. He wore the same clothes I’d seen him in last time: heavy black boots, dark jeans, and a long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled back to display the golden chains around his wrists. His dark hair, tipped in white, was slicked away from his face. Slung over his back was a guitar, and the strap crossing his chest was embroidered with a maze of golden circles and crescents and stars.

  Power emanated from him, glinting off his eyes, sparking in his smile.

  I hated that smile. It was the same one he had worn when he had held a knife in his hand. When he had slashed out, cutting across Dante’s eyes and making him bleed. I swore I would make Zo pay for every last drop of blood, every last tear, every last heartache that he had caused.

  “How did you find me?” I wheezed, every word a stone I had to force through frozen lips. But I did it. I didn’t want Zo to think he had won.

  Zo laughed with honest enjoyment. “How could I not? You light up the river like fire. You always have. Did you really think Dante was the only one who could see the thread of your life?” He looked around the empty bank. “Where is your little hero, anyway? I would have thought he would come running the minute you were in danger.”

  “He’s coming,” I ground out, though it was more a hope than a certainty.

  “Does he even know where you are? I suspect it’s hard for Dante to see anything at the moment.”

  “He’s coming,” I insisted, shoving away the image of Dante’s wounded eyes, the blood that streaked his face. “He promised.”

  Zo brushed aside the idea of Dante and his promises as though he were a pesky fly barely worth swatting. “You never cease to amaze me, Abby. You keep holding on—you keep fighting—long after you should know better. I admit, I thought I had seen the last of you when I left you and Dante and Leo trapped in the basement of the Dungeon with the barriers broken and the river flooding through. That evening should have been your last. But then you managed to open the door—a brilliant move, by the way, crazy, but brilliant—and I knew I would have to do something more drastic.”

  “I’ll never stop fighting,” I said, my voice a mere scratch in my throat.

  “I know,” Zo said sadly. “Which is why you’ve left me no choice.” He flipped his guitar off his back and into his hands.

  I tried to turn my head away, but I couldn’t. With my body bound, I couldn’t even cover my ears to block out Zo’s music. Deep down I feared it wouldn’t matter. I broke out in a cold sweat. I swallowed down a lump of panic. My heart fluttered in my chest, straining as though I had been running for an hour.

  “Let’s see, where should we begin?” Zo paced in front of me, his long fingers walking over the strings one by one. “I know. Let’s talk about how you killed V.”

  The notes started slow and quiet, an alternating rhythm that sounded like rain falling or a tribal chant.

  “I didn’t kill him,” I whispered, though my mouth felt filled with dust and my teeth tasted like bones. Guilt was a slippery emotion. I hadn’t swung the knife, but I had faltered when it mattered the most.

  “Really? Let’s review.”

  A picture formed in my mind’s eye, a moment from my past, recent enough to be considered my present, and yet still far into my future. Strange that such paradoxes had become my life.

  Zo’s music picked up speed, a shadow emerging from beneath the harmonies.

  I could see that last moment frozen in place, a slice of time as still as a photograph. The blackened ruins of the Dungeon basement. The black door straight as a guillotine. Four men in the room—Zo, V, Leo, and Dante—and me. Leo and Dante were off to one side, almost out of the picture, a haze of red blood blurring across Dante’s eyes. Zo and V were center stage; I stood close by as a knife descended, plunging into V’s leg, the blade winking silver along the slash.

  “Do you remember this, Abby?” Zo crooned softly. His words wound through the music, slipping and peeking between the notes. “Do you remember what you did to V?”

  The image changed ever so slightly. Now instead of holding onto Zo’s arm, I was holding onto V, trapping him in place.

  This was wrong. I knew it in my breath and in my blood.

  I let the words flow unchecked, forcing myself to remember the truth even as I spoke it. “No. You came to the Dungeon that night. You provoked V, insulting him and taunting him. You tricked Dante into chasing you along the river in order to weaken the barriers. And then you cut him; you hurt him.” I felt tears slide from my endlessly open eyes down my cheeks at the memory of Zo’s blade cutting across Dante’s face, at the sound of Dante’s cry. “But I trapped you. I held you in place so V could . . . so he could . . .”

  “Kill me?” Zo suggested. “He wanted me dead. And he wanted you to do it, didn’t he?”

  The music was so loud in my head I could barely think. It would be so much easier to let go, to let myself drift away on the rising tide of sound. It would be so easy. It would be so wrong.

  “Yes. No.” I struggled to keep my thoughts organized. “He was going to kill you, but then you were behind him. You forced the blade into his leg. That’s how he died. It wasn’t me.”

  I could feel the memory weaken, change into something new.

  There was the Dungeon. The door. Dante and Leo. V. And a knife—in my hand.

  “It wasn’t me,” I gasped, struggling against the music that seemed to be growing louder the longer I listened to it. “It wasn’t. I didn’t do it. I remember.”

  “Are you sure?” Zo’s voice whispered in my ear even though he was nowhere near me. “Are you so sure you can you trust your memories?”

  I set my jaw and forced myself to breathe, to count my heartbeats, to find that place of stillness where it was easy for me to slide between, to find my balance. The music that enveloped me seemed to grow quieter as the world around me slowed.

  I felt a crack along the edge of Zo’s compulsion and seized it. I managed to turn my head and look Zo directly in the eye. “Yes,” I said. “I can.”

  Zo raised an eyebrow, apparently unimpressed by my declaration or my movement. “What about this memory?”

  The music changed between one note and the next, and so did the picture in my head.

  Valerie sat on the edge of a stone fountain. The conservatory room was locked from the outside. She wore a threadbare bathrobe with a tattered hem. Her eyes were bright, but with something other than sanity. She looked thinner, hollowed out, as though the essence of her had been scooped out and tossed aside. She looked hungry for attention, desperate and alone.

  It was bad enough to have seen my friend wasting away in a mental hospital. Seeing her the way Zo wanted me to see her was worse.

  “You put her there, you know,” Zo said conversationally. “It is your fault she lost her mind.”

  “No,” I said again. “You took her to the bank. That’s when it happened. I didn’t do it. I tried to help her.”

  “Obviously not hard enough.”

  “Where is she?” I demanded. “You left the Dungeon with her that night. What did you do to her?”

  “I couldn’t very well bring her along on this particular trip. Don’t worry; she’s safe enough.” His eyes narrowed. “But this isn’t about her.”

  Zo’s music twisted and Valerie was replaced with Natalie.

  “What do you remember about her?” he asked with a hint of legitimate interest in his voice.

  How much did he already know about Natalie? I suspected not much. I remembered the first night I’d met Zo. That cold January night when he and Tony
and V had played as Zero Hour in the Dungeon. That might have been the only time Natalie had ever met Zo in person. I was glad that I had managed to keep her out of his orbit for so long. Glad that the photograph Dante and I had taken of her kept her safe and stable. I wished I could have done more, but I hadn’t brought a camera with me back through time and it would be hundreds of years before such a device would even be made.

  I found the crack in Zo’s compulsion—the place where the music didn’t quite line up—and pushed. I felt it bend, weakening to the shattering point. I could feel my freedom returning, like a limb slowly waking up from numbness. I shook my head, my body prickling with pins and needles. I pushed harder, shoving with everything in me, until it snapped under the pressure and I fell to my knees.