Blurred Memories (6 page)

Daniel riffled through a few
pieces of paper on his desk, picked up one, and handed it over.
Simon snatched it with eager hands and started reading, his mouth
forming silent words. When Kate gave Daniel a questioning look, he
reclined in his chair and said over his steepled fingers, “They
have no clue what’s going on, just that some kind of magic is
blocking the spell.”

“
It has happened before,”
Marc said, drawing Kate’s and Daniel’s gazes. “Not with breaches,
with demons themselves. Back when they first appeared, mages tried
to fight them with magic. A spell would work once or twice, but
then the demons would adapt somehow, and the spell would be
useless.”

“
Of course,” Blake said,
his voice toneless. “They can do magic better than we
can.”

Kate and Marc both turned to
look at him. Even Simon stopped reading the report to stare. Blake
shifted uncomfortably under their combined gazes.

“
What?” he said, now
sounding defensive. “Don’t tell me you didn’t figure that one out
by now.”

“
We did,” Kate said
quietly, sharing a quick glance with Marc. “It’s just…”

When she shrugged, Marc
picked up where she had left off. “You never talk about the magic
demons used when we ask.”

Blake’s expression closed
off at once. His back turned ramrod straight, so that he seemed to
gain a full inch in height. “I’m not…” He huffed. “I’m just
pointing out the obvious, that’s all. It’s not like I know exactly
what kind of magic they can do.”

Kate turned back toward
Daniel, hoping to hide her frustration. She couldn’t understand why
Blake refused to talk about it all. They already knew the outline
of what had happened—so what was the point of keeping details from
them? Marc had tried to let him go at his own pace and there was no
progress that she could see. She really had to sit him and Marc
down and shake things up.

“
So what’s the plan?” she
asked Daniel, and was relieved when her voice remained
steady.

Daniel’s gaze flicked
between Blake and Marc for a few seconds, before focusing on Kate
again.

“
Simon closed more breaches
than any other mage,” he said, briefly tilting his head toward
Simon, who was back to reading over the reports from the other
mages. “I hope he’ll be able to tell us what’s different about this
breach. As soon as he can devise a way to figure that out, we’ll
take him there and see what we can learn.”

As soon as he finished,
Simon answered. “Just give me a few hours. I know a couple of ways
to detect magic. I should be able to adapt them by to—” He
hurriedly covered his mouth and a wide yawn. “Tomorrow night,” he
finished. “Or tonight, since I guess it’s already
tomorrow.”

“
I could take him during
the day,” Kate offered. “Less chance of coming across demons
then.”

Daniel shook his head. “You
don’t know the terrain. I’d send you with the rest of the squad,
but it’s only three of them right now, and that’s not enough, even
for reconnaissance.”

Kate frowned and wanted to
ask questions—were the other squad members wounded, or fighting
elsewhere, maybe? But already Marc was nodding and saying,
“Tomorrow night.” His eyes shifted toward Blake. “That way we’ll
all get back into the swing of things.”

He meant Blake, of course.
They all knew it, Blake included; he threw a blank look at Marc,
and a muscle ticked in his cheek, but he didn’t say
anything.

“
Tomorrow night,” Daniel
repeated, and his tone of voice made it clear that it was his
decision to make, not Marc’s. If Marc noticed, he didn’t show it.
Daniel stood, clearly putting an end to the meeting. “I have rooms
ready for you. The squad is on the third floor. I’ll show you
there.”

After such a long night,
rest sounded heavenly. There was just this one thing Kate had
promised herself she’d do today, and she wouldn’t wait any longer,
not even if she was tired, not even if she knew it would make
everything harder for now.

Chapter 5

As soon as Kate pushed open
the door, a sense of deep familiarity swept over her.

When fighting in the City,
the squad had set up in barracks in a nearby camp, but when on
R&R in the town of Claremont, the fighters had stayed in a
converted hotel. The arrangement was standard in most cities, and
nothing looked more like a hotel room than another hotel room.
Colors changed, some places were better maintained than others,
some mattresses were narrower, others more comfortable, but in the
end it was always a bland room, a bed, desk, and chair, and heavy
drapes over the windows.

She thought, briefly, that
she would have to remember to thank Daniel for getting them a room
with one huge bed, but maybe that wasn’t necessary; she didn’t
really care to bring up that topic of conversation with him. It was
hard enough to talk about it with Blake and Marc.

Hard, but necessary. And she
would do it tonight, damn it.

She went inside with Blake
and Marc in tow, and they all set their travel bags against the
wall.

“
This is just like…” The
words remained stuck in her throat, and she couldn’t
continue.

“
Lakeview,” Marc finished
for her.

She turned to flash him a
smile, grateful that he understood and remembered those happier
times when everything had seemed possible.

“
Is it?” Blake asked,
sounding confused. He looked around the room with a frown. “I
don’t…”

Kate’s smile faltered. “Like
my room,” she said quietly. “Just…a bigger bed.”

Blake still looked
uncertain, as though he were trying to reconcile his memories with
the room around him. Kate’s heart tightened. Her face must have
betrayed how upset she was becoming, because Marc reached out and
rubbed his hand up and down her back.

“
All hotel rooms look the
same after a while,” he said, his eyes flicking toward
Blake.

“
Ah, yes.” The shadow of a
smile touched Blake’s lips. “Of course.”

Why did he sound like he was
just saying what he thought they wanted to hear—again?

“
It’s okay if you don’t
remember,” Kate said. The words scratched her throat like shards of
glass. “You don’t have to say you do. You don’t have to lie, Blake.
Not about that, not about anything.”

Marc’s hand stilled on
Kate’s back, and somehow it felt like a warning. She was entering
deep waters, Marc was telling her. Treading them might be dangerous
for all of them. She knew that even more acutely because Blake had
gone completely rigid at her comment, and he was being very careful
not to look at her.

“
I’m going to take a
shower,” he said, picking up his backpack again. “I won’t be
long.”

If his words hadn’t been
enough of a clue that he didn’t want company, the snick of the
bathroom being locked certainly was. Kate flinched at the sound and
instinctively turned to Marc, throwing her arms around him and
pressing her face against his chest.

“
Hey, what’s wrong?” Marc
asked in a whisper, stroking her back once more.

The shower was already
running in the bathroom, the rush of water probably loud enough to
cover their voices, but Kate spoke as quietly as he had.

“
We can’t go on like this,”
she said and looked up at Marc, meeting his eyes and willing him to
see how serious she was. “We can’t let him hide anymore, or he’ll
never get better.”

Marc’s features darkened. He
pulled the chair out from the desk and sat down. Kate refused to
let go of him, and she stood between his parted legs, her arms
locked around his neck, now looking down into sorrow-filled
eyes.

“
Kate… He’ll talk when he’s
ready. We can’t demand this from him. It would only damage him
more.”

Kate shook her head. She
wished her eyes would stop prickling. “But he won’t talk about it,
can’t you see? He thinks it’d hurt us.” And he was probably right,
but that wasn’t important. “He’s keeping all that poison inside,
and it’ll keep festering until he lets it out. You know I’m
right.”

Marc’s shoulders slumped in
defeat. His eyes turned to the closed bathroom door, and his voice
was even quieter still when he said, “I can’t force him to talk. I
don’t want to force him to do anything he doesn’t want.”

He didn’t explain why, but
he didn’t have to. Kate understood that he didn’t want Blake to see
in Marc his jailer and torturer—his Master.

“
Then let me do the
pushing,” she said, more urgently now because the water had stopped
running. “We have to move on. We can’t stay like this forever. We
can’t let him have nightmares forever.”

Before Marc could reply, the
lock clicked open. They both turned to watch Blake leave the
bathroom. He was only wearing his boxers, and a towel was draped
over his shoulders, catching the water that dripped from his hair.
He went very still when he saw them, like he always did whenever he
caught them kissing or being affectionate.

“
The water’s still running
hot,” he said in a bland voice. “It doesn’t look like there are
restrictions here.”

A beat passed without anyone
speaking or moving. Marc finally stood and said, “I’ll go next,
then.”

He gently unwound himself
from Kate’s arms and leaned in to press a kiss to her cheek and
murmur in her ear, “Okay. But be gentle.”

Picking up his travel bag,
he went into the bathroom, stopping briefly to run a hand through
Blake’s wet hair and give him a smile. When the door closed on him,
Blake looked at Kate, confusion coloring his gaze. Had he heard
Marc’s admonition—or even more of their conversation? Kate’s
heartbeat fluttered at the thought.

Kate climbed onto the bed
and kneeled there, tapping the mattress in front of her gently.
“Come sit with me,” she requested. “I’ll dry your hair.”

A flash of something dark
and painful crossed Blake’s face, gone as soon as Kate noticed it,
but he did approach her with slow, measured steps, and sat with his
back to her on the edge of the bed where she had indicated. Kate
picked up the white towel and started to rub his hair
gently.

“
What are you thinking
about?” she asked in a whisper.

Blake gave a small shake of
his head. “I’m not thinking about—”

“
Don’t lie to me.” Somehow,
it was easier to do this without looking at his face or the pain in
his eyes—the mask he was so adept at wearing. “When you approached
the bed, you almost flinched. Tell me why.”

She continued to towel his
hair dry and could feel his head shaking minutely under her hands.
He didn’t answer.

“
We never talk anymore,”
she said. “We just tiptoe around each other and don’t say what we
think or want anymore and…and…it’s making everything more
difficult. Not knowing what goes on in your head makes everything
difficult.”

She dropped the towel,
circled his torso with her arms, and pressed her face to his back.
He smelled like soap, and she breathed in deep. The skin was smooth
and perfect against her cheek, the scars from the beatings he had
endured in the demon dimension long gone. She wished his mind—his
heart—were free of scars, too.

“
You don’t want to know
what goes on in there,” he whispered in a tone that sounded like
confession. “Messy place. I’m not done cleaning yet.”

“
But I
do
want to
know. How else am I going to help? How else are
we
going to
help?”

Her voice took on a pleading
note, “Please, Blake. Just tell me this one thing. So I’ll know we
can still talk to each other.”

For long moments, he
remained as stiff as a marble statue within her arms. Eventually,
though, he started to relax, and when he did, quiet words rose in
the bedroom.

“
You’re…on your knees,” he
breathed, and as tiny as his voice was, Kate could still hear the
tremor in each word. “I…I really don’t like to see you on your
knees.”

He didn’t explain why, but
Kate could fill in the blanks. He must have seen that image of her
on her knees back when he was a prisoner, and maybe Kate didn’t
need to know the specifics. Maybe she didn’t even want to. But at
least, she now knew one way not to make him uncomfortable. She
unfurled one leg, then the other, until she was sitting behind
Blake, his body tight against hers in the V formed by her open
legs.

“
There.” She pressed the
word like a kiss at the nape of Blake’s neck, and he shivered
against her. “Better?”

He nodded once.

“
All you have to do is tell
me. Tell us. We can’t guess this kind of stuff, Blake. All we want
is to make you happy, but you have to help us.”

Again, a long moment passed
in silence before Blake spoke, still as softly. “I’ll…try. It’s the
best I can right now.”

Kate held him a little more
tightly. She didn’t know how much longer she would have until Marc
came out of the bathroom; it certainly wouldn’t be enough to start
anything. But at least she could let Blake know what else she would
have liked from him.