Forgotten Self (Forgotten Self #1) (26 page)

“
Oh, don't I know it.” I spin around to face campus, walking backward
s. “Thank you, oh University of Maine.” I spread my arms lovingly.

“
You're welcome, my dear.”

The sound of my theology professor's voice stops me cold.

My arms fall and I peek over my shoulder, seeing that he's only a few feet away.

My cheeks flush with
embarrassment. “Uh, hi, Professor Ebed.”

“
How is school?” he asks, stepping closer to me. A little too close.

I step back and tuck my hair behind my ear, a bit confused. “The same as when we talked about it yesterday, sir.”
Obviously
.

An unnaturally large
smile appears on his face. “That's so good to hear, Abigail.”

There's an awkward lull and I glance to the side to see that my friends have all stopped to watch us. Jesse is frowning.

Finally the professor speaks. “Well, I'll see you in class tomorrow.” He
offers a little wave and saunters off.

Silently, I watch him walk away. His shadow trails behind him like an oil spill. So dark...

“
Abby!”

I blink forcefully. There. Normal shadow, normal teacher.

“
Let's go!” Danielle calls down to me.

Spinning around to j
oin them, I tell myself to forget about it.

I'm just having an off day.

Look For

Forgotten Self Book Two:

“
The Seven”

Coming in 2012

Check out this excerpt from:

“
After Eden (Fallen Angels, Book 1)” by Katherine Pine

Prologue

The two of us used
to reenact
The Snow Queen
in the woods behind our house. We'd begin by lying on the lawn, and his cool fingers would squeeze my hand until my eyelids grew heavy and my breathing slowed. Then he would let go.

"Where are you going?" I'd call out as I grabbe
d his ankles, causing him to stumble when he tried to stand.

"Stop," he'd tell me. "I don't love you anymore. I love my queen." He didn't want to say such things, he didn't even like the game, but I loved it and so he indulged me.

After that he would run i
nto the woods. I would count to ten, and then go find him.

Once I found him in a pile of autumn leaves. He'd hidden in the tall branches of the old oak, and then fallen and skinned his knee. He didn't cry, he never cried, but I did.

Sniffling, I rolled up
his pant leg and picked up a yellow oak leaf from the forest floor. It wasn't medicine, we both knew that, but still my brother let me rub it on his skin. "You found me," he said.

"I will always find you," I promised, and my little heart meant every word.
It loved him more than it could stand, and so it could not conceive of a world where those words wouldn't be true.

"I love you, Devi," he said. I wanted him to call me Greta. Greta was the girl from
The Snow Queen
. She was the brother of Kai, the boy in t
he fairy tale who shared my own brother's name.

Things would have turned out differently if my name really had been
Greta. She was the bringer of spring. She could suffer the winter and melt the ice around her brother's heart. She would find Kai regardles
s of where he'd gone or who'd taken him.

But I'd been named Devi, and so after he was stolen I couldn't find him, no matter how hard I tried.

Chapter 1

No other girl under the age of 18 would be caught dead outside
Morrison's
after 5pm, especially when t
he sky looked like a backdrop from the opening scene of a hardboiled mystery. The used bookstore's turquoise and mustard yellow exterior had always reminded me of my grandmother's psychedelic kitchen, and so conjured memories of unconditional love, burnt c
ookies and salmonella poisoning. Maybe that's why I chose to spend Friday nights shuffling through the sale books on the outdoor rack instead of getting ready to hit the clubs or crash a party on the East side.

Unfortunately all they had out were the usua
l suspects--science fiction novels featuring giant reptiles shooting lightning from their bloodshot eyes, techno-thrillers, and old school romances
a la
Lilac Lovelace's magnum opus
Sweet Savage Sentiments
. I skimmed a few chapters before closing it with s
avage disappointment.

You won't find him here.

My fingers trembled, suddenly aware of the cold air, and the trashy book almost fell from them. That voice was so lonely and quiet--the voice of a child. I stumbled back.
Don't do this
, I commanded, but I'd a
lready shut my eyes, gone completely still, and made my breath as quiet as possible.

I listened for that voice to return. Only the sound of tires, the dull, throbbing beat from the strip club across the street, and my own internal silence responded.

He wa
sn't there. It was just my mind playing tricks. I shut my eyes and stood.
Don't look
, I told myself as my heartbeat raced. I just needed to keep my face forward, to bury myself in the pages of a book, any book. I couldn't--

I glanced over my shoulder. Abov
e the line of skyscrapers I could just barely make out the gray silhouette of the West hills. My house was hidden up there, behind the cedars, firs, and gnarled limbs of deciduous trees. Part of me longed to go home, drop my backpack by the front door, and
curl up under the quilt on my bed to wait for sleep. But I couldn't go home. Not yet. Night wouldn't come for another few hours.

I looked away from the forested heights and returned my attention to the neon-lit heart of the city. The days were getting sho
rter, I reminded myself. Soon I'd be able to wander past that spot on the bluff where he'd disappeared without seeing every detail of the oak, the crumbling wooden gate, and the wide expanse of gray buildings far below. I'd still know those things existed
in the dark, of course, but at least the images wouldn't seduce my mind into playing that memory over and over--the one of my twin brother being taken by the man in white.

I wiped my sleeve across my eyes. Thinking about it shouldn't have affected me this
much after so many years, or at least that's what everyone kept telling me.

A gust of freezing wind blew at my back. I crossed my arms over my chest and stared into Marilyn Monroe's carefree smile. Ever since I was a kid the front window had featured that
famous poster of her standing above the vent, pushing that little white dress over her legs. She looked warm and dry--I was kind of jealous.

The wind roared again. Marilyn's face didn't change but her dress seemed to twirl, perhaps due to the
shadow of th
e twirling poppet nailed from a string on the overhang.

Wait, what?

I blinked. Alright, I hadn't just imagined it. A black doll no bigger than my hand danced in the breeze. Three pins stuck out of its chest, and pasted on its back were two feathers--one re
d, one white.

I suppressed a chill. That had to be new. Either that or someone was playing a joke on the pudgy, aging clerk; I doubted someone who wore freshly ironed polo shirts with little animals embroidered below the collar was into that sort of thing.
Then again, whoever owned the place seemed to collect oddities. There was a dream catcher above the register, and the door to the storage room had been replaced by long strands of glow in the dark beads.

I rested my hand on the doorknob, debating whether
or not to go inside. They probably wanted to close early. The only customers they'd get on a day like this were lunatics--well, lunatics and hopeless romantics with a fetish for the smell of dusty old books, which in their eyes probably amounted to the sam
e thing.

My grip on the doorknob tightened. They hadn't officially closed yet. A light still glowed from the back of the store and no one had flipped around that illegible, handwritten sign in the window I'd always assumed said "We're Open."

I glanced dow
n at the florid pink book I still held and decided to check their romance section before I left. They had to have something better than
Sweet Savage Sentiments
.

Right as the thought entered my mind something hot built up in my throat, increasing in pressur
e until I could scarcely breathe.

Panic seized my chest. I tried to grip the doorknob but I couldn't feel the cool metal beneath my fingertips anymore.
Not now
, I pleaded. It was always my first thought when the headaches started. My head pulsated as if m
y blood was trying to pump out of my skin. God, why did this have to happen--and so randomly, too? I was going to collapse. I had to get out of there before I passed out on the street. Already the gray, fall sky was blurring into the sidewalk. My palms hit
my temple, slick with perspiration. Maybe the clerk inside...

Too late
. I fell into the door and the bell above it jingled, signaling a visitor. No, signaling
me, gasping for breath and flopping around on the pavement like a fish. If it didn't hurt so ba
d I would've laughed.

Two boots appeared in front of my face, so close I could feel the leather on the tip of my nose. A hand gripped my shoulder and a voice said something, maybe. Then everything faded.

***

Someone was trying to pound my chest into submi
ssion.
Okay, okay
, I conceded. But whatever was above me couldn't read my mind. Instead of stopping, it
dragged something sharp across my collarbone.

Damn that stings
. I placed my hand over the scratch and opened my eyes.

My long, black hair was plastered
to my face. In between the strands I saw two slanted, yellow eyes staring back. I sucked in a breath as the mass of fur meowed and catapulted forward, pushing its wet nose into my chin.

"You're finally up. Are you feeling better?" A man's voice. It sounde
d contemplative and primal, as if someone were whispering a lament over a dying fire. Or perhaps it only seemed so enigmatic because I was half awake.

"I hope you're not allergic to cats," he continued.

Clack
. Something was placed beside me. I rolled my h
ead to the side. My temples still pounded lightly and my vision was still blurry. The fact that I was being attacked by kitty kisses probably didn't help.

"Not allergic." I sniffed the mug on the table and grimaced. "Hate coffee," I muttered.

Out of the co
rner of my eye I saw a hand reach down to grip the mug and cringed, this time from pure shame. I wanted to explain that I wasn't normally that selfish, but my tongue refused to move.

Luckily he just chuckled. "Be right back." His footsteps grew distant and
then inaudible, leaving me alone with the sound of the cat's rhythmic purring.

I rubbed its sleek coat as my vision cleared. Dim light spilled over the walls from over a dozen candles. The way they were spaced around the room in a circle reminded me of a
séance, but that's where the similarities between this storage space and a midnight ritual ended. Instead of being sprawled across an altar dressed in something sheer and white, I was underneath a woolen blanket on a faded pink couch that smelled of coffee
and dust. Bookcases lined the walls from floor to ceiling, and even more books were stacked in tall, uneven piles throughout the room.

Plus the cat that lapped at my fingers was orange and gray, not black.

The footsteps returned from behind. "Here's some
water." A hand set down another mug and gave the cat an affectionate pat on the head. "Looks like I'm condemned to be eternally bossed around by temperamental women."

Before I could respond or turn to face him,
the owner of the voice walked to the leather
armchair in front of me and sat.

I stopped breathing. The man--no, not a man, for he couldn't have been more than a few years older than me--was beautiful in that indie musician or starving poet kind of way. He wasn't very tall, but long, lean muscles fil
led out every inch of his frame. His hair wasn't long enough to hide the silver stud in his left ear, but it still covered most of his angular face. On his left forearm was a tattoo of a goat inside a triangular design, and on his right a tattoo of a Chine
se-style dragon that seemed to dance over his skin when he moved.