7. Chapter 7- Lenora
August brought me back from the dead. That should be the worst thing I learn tonight.
It isn’t. Not even fucking close.
For a long time, neither of us speak.
August sits on the floor beneath the ruined shelves, his back against the wall, staring at his hand.
Four fingers. One of them is mine now. His collarbone is inside me. His tooth is in my mouth. His heartbeat is beneath my own. Little pieces of him.
Taken. Stolen. Transferred.
I sit across from him with my knees drawn against my chest.
The black writing on the wall has stopped dripping.
NOW YOU REMEMBER WHY I MADE YOU FORGET.
I can’t stop looking at it.
“You loved me.”
August’s head lifts. “What?”
“The first time.”
His face crumples. “Yes.”
“So much that you couldn’t let me die.”
“No.” The word comes out broken. He corrects himself. “I couldn’t.”
“That’s different.”
“I know.”
I rub my palm over my chest.
Two hearts.
Mine and his.
Except that isn’t exactly true.
His isn’t physically there.
I know that.
I still have one heart. One rib cage. One body.
But somehow my nervous system recognizes his rhythm. Like my body is learning him.
Rehearsing.
“How did I die?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“I have been trying.”
I watch him. His face looks thinner than it did hours ago. Actually thinner. There’s a hollow beneath one cheekbone that wasn’t there before. The skin around his eyes has begun sinking inward.
I hate that I notice. I hate that I know exactly how much of him has disappeared.
“Maybe we need to touch again.”
“No.”
“That’s how we remembered.”
“No.”
“August.”
“No.” He pushes himself upright. “I am done using your body like a fucking doorway.”
“My body is already doing whatever the hell it wants.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to help it.”
“We need answers.”
“And every answer costs me a piece.” His voice cracks.
I flinch.
He looks away.
“I’m sorry.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Don’t apologize for wanting to live.”
I stare at him.
“Do you?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Do you want to live?”
“Of course.”
“Then look at me and say it.”
His eyes meet mine. “I want to live.”
The words almost destroy me. Because some selfish part of me wanted him to say no. Wanted him to say he’d happily disappear into me. Wanted him to make this romantic. Beautiful and tragic.
Anything except what it actually is.
Terrifying.
He wants to live and I’m consuming him.
“I don’t want you to die.”
“I know.”
“Stop.”
He closes his mouth.
I laugh weakly.
“Sorry.”
A strange pressure starts behind my left eye. I press my fingers against it.
He notices immediately. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Lenora.”
“My eye hurts.”
He is across the room before I finish the sentence. “Don’t touch it.”
“I’m not peeling my eyeball, August.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
The pressure increases and I wince. It isn’t pain exactly. More like something pressing from behind trying to fit where there isn’t room. My vision doubles. “August.”
His hands hover beside my face. He doesn’t touch me. “What do you see?”
“You.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Fuck.”
“That’s comforting.”
Then the room tilts. I close my right eye and he disappears.
Not literally.
The apartment does.
For one second, I’m looking through another pair of eyes in a bathroom mirror. Red hair. Freckles.
June.
Then another.
Blonde. Eleanor.
Another.
Dark curls. The first Lenora.
Faces flicker across the glass.
Women. So many women.
Not eight.
More.
I jerk backward. “No.”
“Lenora?”
The pressure behind my eye becomes unbearable. Something wet slides down my cheek.
August’s expression turns to horror.
“What?”
He doesn’t answer.
“What?”
I wipe beneath my eye.
Blood. A lot of it.
“August...”
Something shifts. My vision goes black on the left.
I scream.
He grabs my shoulders. “Don’t touch your eye.”
“I can’t see!”
“I know.”
“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” Something hard rolls beneath my eyelid. I feel it. A sphere. Moving. “No.” My body convulses.
I gag.
August catches me as my knees hit the floor.
My left eye pushes forward. I scream so hard my throat tears.
“Lenora!”
“GET IT OUT.”
“No.”
“GET IT THE FUCK OUT!”
Blood pours down my face. Pressure. Stretching. Then release. Something slips wetly from my socket and drops into my palm. For half a second, I can’t understand what I’m holding.
An eye. My eye–green and an optic nerve trailing from the back.
I stare at it.
August makes a sound like he’s going to be sick.
My empty socket throbs. Then something moves inside it. “No.”
“Lenora, don’t...”
I grab his shirt. “Something’s in there.”
His face goes white.
“August.”
“Don’t move.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“LOOK.”
His hand shakes as he turns on his phone flashlight. He looks into my empty socket and freezes.
“What?”
Nothing.
“August!”
“There’s another eye.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“Behind it.”
“Whose?”
He doesn’t answer.
The answer grows into place. Pressure fills the hollow. A second eye slides forward through blood. My vision returns in a nauseating burst. Except everything looks wrong.
Sharper. Colors colder.
August’s face...familiar. Too familiar.
He stumbles backward.
I see why.
His left eye is cloudy. Color draining. Mine isn’t green anymore.
I turn looking into the mirror.
One green eye. One dark gray. August’s eye. “No.”
I turn.
His left iris is fading toward white.
“Give it back.”
He almost laughs. “How?”
“I don’t fucking know. Give it back!”
“I would if I could.”
I look down at the green eye in my palm. My eye. The one I was born with.
Something is written across the back. Not ink. Tiny dark markings beneath the tissue. Letters. I bring it closer. A name.
SARAH.
I stop breathing. “August.”
He sees it. “What the fuck?”
“This isn’t my name.”
“No.”
“Who is Sarah?”
“I don’t know.”
The eyeball twitches in my palm. I drop it. It hits the tile with a wet sound. Then another memory rips through me.
Not August’s.
Not mine.
A little girl.
Seven years old. Sitting on a yellow bicycle. A woman kneeling in front of her, tying a shoelace. “Careful, Sarah.”
The girl laughs. “I am careful.”
A scraped knee. Three little white lines. My scar. The scar that came off with my first piece of skin. “No.” I stumble backward.
August catches me.
I shove him away. “No.”
“Lenora...”
“My scar.”
“What?”
“The scar on the first piece.” I can barely breathe. “That wasn’t Lenora’s.”
His expression changes.
“It was Sarah’s.”
The room seems to shrink.
Another memory. A school hallway. A locker. A boy handing me a note. Except my name isn’t Lenora.
It’s Sarah.
Another.
Sixteen.
My mother screaming at me because I came home late.
Another.
Twenty-three.
Moving into my first apartment.
Another.
A driver’s license.
SARAH ELLIS.
No.
“No.” I clutch my head. “No, no, no.”
“Lenora...”
“Don’t call me that.”
He freezes.
“Don’t fucking call me that!” I slam my hands against the sink. The mirror cracks beneath my reflection. Whoever looks back at me has one of August’s eyes.
His jawline begins to appear beneath mine. His tooth. His bones. His finger.
But beneath that...someone else.
Sarah.
I see her. I remember her. Not a past life.
A life.
Mine.
A woman who existed before August ever saw me. Before I became Lenora.
“What did he do?”
August says nothing.
I turn. “What did that man do to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
“I don’t.”
“The tooth.” I point toward the bedroom. “The fucking tooth that belonged to someone else.”
His face changes.
“The pieces.” I can barely form the words. “They aren’t random.”
I look at the jars. Hair. Teeth. Bone. Skin. Names. Different names. Different dates.
Not reincarnations.
Evidence. Bodies. Women.
My stomach turns. “They were people.”
August’s eyes fill. “Lenora...”
“They weren’t me.” I can hear my voice breaking. “Eleanor wasn’t me.”
“No.”
“Anna wasn’t me.”
His mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
“June wasn’t me.”
“Stop.”
“They were women.”
“I don’t know.”
“YES, YOU DO!” The scream tears my throat making him flinch. I point toward the old jars. “You didn’t watch me come back.”
His face collapses.
“You watched women become me.”
Silence.
There it is.
The truth.
Huge. Ugly. Impossible to hide from now.
I laugh. Then sob. Then laugh again because my mind can’t decide what to do with something this fucking horrific. “It’s not reincarnation.”
August whispers my name.
I shake my head. “No.” I touch my chest. His heartbeat answers. “It’s transfer.” The word changes everything.
I see it now.
Every cycle.
A living woman. A real person. A life.
Memories. Family. Scars. Then August finds her.
Or she finds him.
The bond wakes. The molt begins. Old pieces fall away.
Lenora is written over her. August is used to rebuild whatever is missing. And when it’s done...the woman disappears.
Not dies.
Worse.
She is overwritten.
I grab the edge of the sink. “Sarah.”
August is crying now. I’ve never hated seeing someone cry more.
“My name was Sarah.”
“Your name is Lenora.”
“NO.” I spin toward him. “That’s what this thing wants!”
He stops.
“My mother named me Sarah.” The memory comes faster now. Her face. My mother’s face. Birthday cake. College. Friends. Bad dates. A dog I had when I was fourteen. A tattoo I almost got and chickened out of.
A whole fucking person.
How could I forget her?
How could I forget me?
“I had a life.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t.”
He flinches.
“No, August. You don’t get to say that.”
“You’re right.”
“I had a fucking life before you recognized me in that lobby.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t waiting for you.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t spend thirty-eight years missing you.”
His face crumples. “I know.”
“I was just...” My voice dies.
A host.
I can’t say it.
August does. “A person.”
I look at him.
His voice shakes. “You were a person.”
Something in me breaks completely and I sink to the floor.
August kneels several feet away. He doesn’t touch me.
For once, I’m grateful.
“How many?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer.
“How many women?”
“At least eight.”
“No.” I shake my head. “The eye showed me more.”
His face pales.
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many women have been erased so I could come back?”
His mouth opens.
Nothing.
“HOW MANY?”
“I DON’T KNOW!” His voice shatters. He presses both hands against his face. “I’m sorry.”
I stare at him.