Chapter 30
M elanie stood with her back to us, facing the wall. Her spectral form had more substance than I’d ever seen it have, which was encouraging, even if she was staring at wallpaper.
“Melanie?” I took a couple more steps into the room. “Melanie, it’s me, Cameron.”
She turned slowly to face me. “There are butterflies hidden in the walls?”
I glanced at the wallpaper that covered one side of the room—a floral pattern which, on close inspection, might truly have butterflies hidden in it.
“How are you feeling?” Derek asked her. “Do you remember Cameron?”
Melanie’s mouth parted in a warm smile. “Of course I do. We’re roommates, except…” She frowned. “This room is different.” Her eyes rounded. “Did we move? Can I stay?”
She was here, but she was confused. I needed to get her back on track. “Melanie, what’s the last thing you remember?”
Her frown returned, and she dropped her chin, chewing on her cheeks in thought. “Oh…I was in the filing room.” She looked up, eyes bright with the memory. “I found your brother’s folder and then…then…” She winced. “I was here…What happened?” She wrung her hands. “Cameron, what’s happened to me?”
I withdrew the vial from my pocket. “We’re going to find out. Trust me. Just relax.” I held up the vial. “The solution in this will help you to remember…everything. Not just what happened in the filing room but all the things that happened before. Before you died.”
She stared at me wide-eyed. “My past?”
“Yes, Melanie. Do I have your permission to use it? I’ll need to break the bottle near you.”
Her gaze bounced between the vial and me. “I’ll remember everything…good and bad. Everything…”
I’d come in here for answers, but it felt wrong to take them from her without her consent. This was her mind. Her thoughts. Her afterlife. “Do I have your permission?”
Her delicate jaw hardened, arms coming down to her sides and ending in fists of determination. “Do it.”
I threw the vial at the ground by her feet hard enough for it to smash. Purple smoke appeared, obscuring her from view for several seconds, and when it cleared, Melanie stood hunched over, her hands in her hair hugging her scalp while a low, keening sound spilled from her lips.
My heart sank. “Melanie?” I made to take a step, but Derek gently gripped my elbow.
“Wait,” he said. “Give her a moment.”
Several more seconds passed before Melanie finally straightened. She looked the same, except where her eyes had been a wishy-washy gray, they were now dark as an impeding storm.
“It’s coming back…the past…I’m remembering. I…I remember home. A small town filled with magic but beyond it…nothing. The pockets of magic were all around us. I remember applying for a job here. Carter interviewed me, and I got the position.”
I resisted the urge to ask her about that night in the filing room because it seemed as if she was reliving her past, as if the memories were coming back in layers, and I didn’t want to confuse her.
She was silent for several beats, nodding to herself, her gaze slightly unfocused, reliving her past, and then her mouth parted.
“Oh…Oh my…How could I have forgotten?” Her eyes welled. “Oh…They took me from him, and they took her from me. They took her. Took her…and I…I waited…” She began to hyperventilate.
“Melanie, calm down. What are you saying? What happened?”
“I was in love. I was happy. I left here because I was happy. But they came for me in the night. They brought me here to the academy and locked me up, and then…” She looked down at her stomach and then placed her hands on it. “They took her. They took my baby.”
“Where is she?” Melanie demanded. “I need to know what they did to her. I need to know what…” She clutched her head.
“They made me forget her. They made me forget.” She began to cry with body-wracking sobs, and my eyes burned with empathy.
“They took me away from him. I loved him. Oh…does he even know I’m gone? Does he know he has a daughter?”
“Who? Melanie, who are you talking about?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. “I can see him in my head, but I can’t remember his name. I can see them taking my baby, but their faces are blurred.”
“What about the night in the filing room?” Derek asked. “What happened then?”
She looked up at him with a tear-stained face. “What?”
“You went to search for Romi’s file, and something happened to you. Someone did something to you to mess with your mind. It could be the same person who took your baby. Can you remember?”
She closed her eyes. “I remember the clip of boots on wood and the smell of jasmine and eyes…eyes burning like lanterns in the dark. Amber, so warm, yet so cold, and a face…so pale. Hair like a raven’s wing and—” Her eyes snapped open. “Oh…Remi… Remi found me that night. She did this to me.”
Remi? Mistress Travani?
Melanie’s eyes rolled, and she swayed. “No, please let me hold her. Regina? Remi, bring her back, please.” The voice changed in timbre, an echo of the past. “I’m sorry, Melanie, truly sorry for what I’m about to do.
” Another voice. “Remi, I don’t like this.
I don’t—” Remi’s voice spilled from Melanie’s mouth like a spooky recording.
“Then leave. Take the baby and I’ll finish here.
” Melanie moaned. “Don’t hurt her. Don’t…
What…what is that? I don’t want it. I don’t…
” She fell silent, her chest heaving with breaths that got fewer and further between before stopping because ghosts didn’t need to breathe.
She opened her eyes and looked right at me. “I remember what happened to me. They took my baby, and then they killed me, and now…Now they’re going to pay.”
Her face contorted, chin elongating, eyes darkening and sinking into their sockets, her body hunched, and she dashed at the wall.
Bright blue light shimmered across the surface of the wallpaper, throwing Melanie on her ass. She screeched and ran for the door, meeting the same resistance, except this time the light latched on to her.
Her horrific form melted away, and she was simply Melanie again—a frightened specter with blue fire eating away at her body.
“Please,” she pleaded with me. “Let me go. I deserve justice. I deserve to know what happened to my baby. I need to?—”
And she was gone. “Melanie!” I hammered on the door and fell through when Yarrow yanked it open. “Where is she? What happened to her?”
“You tell me,” Yarrow said. “I wasn’t in the room with you.”
“She was eaten by blue flame when she tried to leave the room,” Derek said.
“Then she’s fine,” Yarrow said. “It’s simply a precautionary measure to neutralize any threat. She’ll materialize in due course, but what I want to know is what prompted her to turn into a threat.”
“She remembered what happened to her,” Derek said.
Yarrow’s eyes lit up. “She remembered who attacked her in the filing room?”
I swallowed past the bitter tang at the back of my throat. “Yes, she did. She also remembered how she died and who killed her. They’re both one and the same.”
Flora gasped, hand flying to her mouth.
“Who?” Curi asked.
“Travani and Carter. They killed her and they took her baby and now I’m going to find out why and make them pay.”