Chapter 32
A laugh burst out of Soraya before she smothered it with her hand. The noise was unexpectedly jarring, cutting through the quiet peace of the rose garden like a blade.
Soraya’s eyes quickly darted back to the street, checking if she’d alerted anything to their position. A couple of cars swished by on the otherwise empty street of Exposition Blvd. Once satisfied that they were all clear, she looked back at Jesmine, who watched her with weary eyes.
“I’m serious, Soraya. You’ve always been…different. It would explain a lot,” Jesmine stated cautiously.
Soraya folded her arms across her chest. “I haven’t been any more different than you or Evelyn,” she objected. “It’s one of the reasons why we got along so well. And are you hearing yourself? I’m a fairy—elf? Ahvi is an elf fairy? Really?”
“And yet, monsters are hunting us down. Winged men are flying through the streets. I watched you disappear right in front of me, and I couldn’t do a damned thing,” Jesmine’s voice wavered a fraction.
“If you had told me a week ago, I was about to encounter all this crazy bullshit, I would have laughed in your face and told you to check yourself into a mental hospital,” she said, dead serious.
“But after living through it…I know our choices boil down to believing it and staying alive—or walking out there to see what those demons would do when they catch us. Maybe nothing because it’s ‘not real.’ Or maybe we die.
” She held Soraya’s gaze. “But if it is real—and I think it very much is at this point—they are after you for a reason. It’s because there’s something about you—not me—that they are attracted to.
Maybe you even have something they want. ”
Soraya let her words sink in. She agreed with most of what Jesmine had to say—already having reached the same conclusions herself. But when it came to applying it to herself—
The image of her standing in front of their shared bathroom mirror blurred into the forefront of her mind.
The running facet she left on in her stunned state echoed in her ears as her wide eyes bore into her unfamiliar reflection.
The points of her ears were unmistakably protruding out of her glistening, black hair.
Then—nothing. She had promptly fainted until Jesmine roused her from the bathroom floor.
Of course, this was right after she’d encountered Makoto in all his savage-like beauty. And his ears… She’d known something was off. And for a moment, she had even wondered if maybe—just maybe—she was like him too.
Maybe all of the men she met this past week were the same.
Then there was Ahvi to contend with. Her empty room. The fact that her phone number was no longer in service—disconnected. And there was something else…something about her that Soraya was struggling to remember.
The hairs on her arm stood on end at the memories—memories she had so quickly forgotten within hours.
And that was when she recalled the fog and ringing.
The fog-like feeling and the ringing in her ears…
they hadn’t made a reappearance so far, and as she remembered more and more…
she wondered if the fog and the ringing were only present when she was actively trying to retain her memories—and some outside force was equally trying to rip them away from her, causing the ringing and fog side effects.
Yet…there were other times when her memories had simply…slipped away, leaving her none the wiser that she’d lost them in the first place.
Her stomach clenched with terror at that last thought. How would she know what she’d forgotten if that were the case?
Soraya rolled her shoulders back, trying to release the tension from her body. It would be a real problem if both of them forgot what was happening around them.
Where would that leave them if they forgot about everything?
Believing in the situation wouldn’t matter then. They would be sitting ducks and more than likely go back to the apartment, oblivious to whatever hell spawns were waiting for them.
The fear. The confusion— the panic they would feel if they ran into those monsters again. Even though, to their forgotten minds, it’d be the first time…They would be goners.
So, how would they prevent themselves from forgetting while fleeing for their lives? And how did Ahvi fit into this mess?
“Look, Soraya,” Jesmine said, pulling her from her thoughts, “I’m not saying that you being one of them is necessarily a bad thing. It just makes you…unique.”
Soraya glared at her.
Jesmine put a hand on Soraya’s shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. “I still love you, and I’m positive so will Evelyn. You might just need to give her time to adjust…assuming we can convince her that elves and monsters are real. You know how she can get.”
Shaking her head, Soraya shrugged off Jesmine’s touch.
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. But we don’t know anything for sure yet,” she said stubbornly.
She could feel the adrenaline seeping out of her, and it was being replaced with a bone-deep weariness that not even sleep would be able to fix at that point.
“Well, I know one thing for sure,” Jesmine said with conviction.
“I will always love you.” Soraya smiled as she continued.
“And those monsters are after us, and that big, creepy, zombie-looking one is bad news. And…I saw some other weird shit. Like, I wasn’t even on earth, kind of weird.
” Soraya’s eyes widened. She wasn’t alone in that either.
“It happened when I went to see my hookups. Remember? I texted you that evening and you were rightfully giving me shit for it?”
Soraya said dryly, “Yeah, I remember. We had dinner with Ahvi and split up afterward… I think that was the last time I saw her.”
Soraya had gone to that odd shop after they had split up.
She’d planned to question Laura, the shopkeeper, about the supernatural.
The woman was as strange as her shop, and Soraya’s gut told her she might know something about their situation—maybe even help them out.
Or call the cops. Either worked. At this point, Soraya had no better ideas for getting out of this mess.
“Yes! And don’t give me that judging look—I wanted to see them again. They had told me they would only be in town for the next couple of days, and I wanted to make the most of it. Or rather that—”
“Jesmine, focus,” Soraya interrupted. She hadn’t forgotten Jesmine’s earlier hints about Ahvi, and she hoped whatever came next wasn’t as bad as she was making it out to be. Elf-fairy business aside, Ahvi was still their friend…at least she hoped that was the case.
“Right, right. Anyway, it was through Ahvi that we met these men, right?”
“The Midnight Jungle,” Soraya confirmed, tilting her head forward. Her hair slid across her face, and as she reached to brush it back, her fingers froze against the unfamiliar pointed curve of her ear.
“Yeah. And the second time, those guys invited me to their hotel. Gave me these very odd instructions, now that I think about it.” Jesmine murmured that last part more to herself as she pulled off her bag and unzipped the little side pocket.
She produced a hair tie and passed it to Soraya, who accepted it with a tight smile.
Ignoring her ears for now, Soraya arched an eyebrow while finger-combing her hair back from her face. “Seriously? They gave you weird instructions and you just…went anyway?” She questioned while snapping the hair tie in place to add emphasis to her disappointment.
Jesmine flapped a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever. What are you, my mother?”
“Your real mother doesn’t care about you,” Soraya supplied.
Jesmine rolled her eyes before continuing.
“Well, the third time I went to see them on my own, I was headed for their hotel, and I kept getting turned around. And for the life of me, I couldn’t remember where it was or anything.
Then, I saw Ahvi crossing the street nearby, where I thought their hotel was.
And, I don’t know, she looked—anxious. She’s always cool, calm, and collected.
So, I knew something was up, and I followed her.
And wouldn’t you know it—she led me to the very hotel I was trying to find in the first place. ”
Soraya listened with rapt attention. Jesmine’s story was eerily similar to her own experiences. She recalled her journey to retrace her steps and find the bar Ahvi had taken them to, only to realize she’d forgotten where it was located.
“And boom, I was at the hotel door—which, by the way, was in a place where a door shouldn’t be. It kind of reminded me of a speakeasy. And it was inside some random alley, right smack in the middle of a brick wall.”
Soraya didn’t say anything as an image of a pair of mirrored doors opening up to a sidewalk flashed through her mind.
“So, I followed Ahvi through before the door closed and found myself back in their hotel lobby. It was actually a really bougie joint—though it was odd because now that I think about it, the door was in a completely different place than it had been when I went the first and second time. The inside looked twice as big as the outside,” Jesmine scrunched her brows, no doubt the memories she’d lost coming back to her in the moment.
Soraya knew exactly how she felt. Windows with an endless starry night sky stretching far off into the distance and an empty abandoned shop where a restaurant should have been quickly flashed through her mind.
“Wait, when you went through the door, did you feel any pain at all?” Soraya asked, remembering her elevator ride down after.
She quickly banished the memory away as her pulse quickened. She can share her story later.
Jesmine furrowed her brow. “Not at all. Why?”
Soraya shook her head. “Never mind, keep going.”