“Was that the kind of thing you wanted to hear?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Good.” He slid on his sunglasses. “Because that’s as much sharing as I do. Go on in.” He nodded toward the house as Aunt Nicki swung the door open. Eve headed toward her, then glanced back over her shoulder at Malcolm.

Unmoving, he watched her from the sidewalk.

Inside, Aunt Nicki put her hands on her hips. “You look exhausted,” she pronounced. “And too thin.” She picked up Eve’s wrist and wrapped her fingers around it. “You’re wasting away. I don’t care how much pressure Lou is under. We can’t have you wasting away. Are you eating?”

Eve shrugged. She didn’t know how many of the seven days she’d spent in the hospital bed and how many in Malcolm’s office. “Intravenously, I think.”

“Doesn’t count.” Aunt Nicki bustled into the kitchen, and Eve followed. “Soup? Sandwich?” She checked the refrigerator. “I’ll make you a grilled cheese sandwich with microwaved tomato soup. Serious comfort food. You look in need of serious comfort food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Did I ask if you were hungry?”

“Will you tell me your memories instead?”

Aunt Nicki slowed. She stared at her, blinked once. “Excuse me?”

“I want … to hear your memories. I’m hungry for memories.” It was the best way she could think of to put it. It felt like hunger, vast empty spaces yawning inside her that wanted to be filled.

“You are the weirdest kid that I have ever met.” Aunt Nicki sped up again, making a cheese sandwich and plopping it into a pan. It sat there, sad and unsizzling. She selected a cup of soup and put it in the microwave.

Eve sank into one of the kitchen chairs. Not looking at Aunt Nicki, she fiddled with the edge of a placemat. It curled as she kneaded it. She only had a few memories of her own, rattling in the emptiness inside her, and so few of them made sense. “Why do I have memories of them, the people on the bulletin board? And why do I know they died? Was I … was I there when they died?”

Aunt Nicki didn’t turn. Looking up at her, Eve saw that the muscles in her neck and shoulders were tense. “It’s what you choose going forward that defines who you are,” Aunt Nicki said. “Not what you chose in the past.”

“What did I choose?” Eve asked. “Why didn’t I stop their deaths? Could I have …” Her voice failed her, and she sat in silence. She clenched her hands in front of her on the placement.

Aunt Nicki flipped the sandwich. It was still pale yellow with unmelted chunks of butter on the other side. “Ah, yes, heat will help,” she said, falsely merry. She turned on the stove. “There we go.” She fetched a plate and a bowl and a spoon. Folding a napkin, she adjusted it so that it tucked neatly under the side of the plate.

“I need to know,” Eve said softly.

“You asked about my memories.” Aunt Nicki sat opposite Eve and uncurled Eve’s fingers. Eve had bunched up the corner of the placemat. Aunt Nicki smoothed it flat. “I spent a lot of time trying to forget my past. My childhood … Let’s say I did not have a perfect one. Spent a lot of time … Well, when I hit eighteen, that was it. I left it all behind.”

“I didn’t choose to leave my past behind,” Eve said. “It was taken from me.”

“Are you sure about that?” Aunt Nicki asked gently. The microwave dinged. She popped out of her chair, retrieved the soup, and flipped the sandwich. At the stove, her back to Eve, she said, “My father drank. My mother drank. My older brother … dead in prison by eighteen. Hanged himself. Or had someone help him. No one was ever sure. Can’t say I was sorry. He used to put out his cigarettes on my arm, at least until Dad stopped him with a baseball bat. After that, he left home, and Dad left soon after. Now, it’s just Mom and my baby brother. He’s in California, as far away as he could get. She’s in a nursing home and needs twenty-four-seven care, which I can barely afford. Alcohol ate her brain cells. She’s fifty-eight and barely knows her own name … She reminds me of you, actually, but you drool less. And so I chase down petty fugitives to pay her bills, when I’m not babysitting for someone who doesn’t know me and barely knows herself. But it’s my choice, to be the responsible one, to be the caretaker, to be the person who …” Aunt Nicki took a deep breath and turned around. “Point is, I invented me … maybe as a reaction to them … definitely as a reaction to them. I am myself in spite of my memories.”

“So are you saying I shouldn’t remember?” Eve asked.

“God, no,” Aunt Nicki said. “Lou would have my head. Especially now, with the latest developments. You need to remember faster.” She pushed away from the table and returned to the stove. A minute later, she flopped the grilled cheese sandwich onto a plate and slid it next to the soup in front of Eve. “Eat.”

Eve sipped her soup. It slid warmly down her throat. She bit into the sandwich, and the cheese singed the roof of her mouth. She puffed air to cool her mouth.

“Dip it,” Aunt Nicki suggested. She mimed dipping the sandwich into the soup.

Eve tried it. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s comfort food.” Eating it made the agency and the hospital and the visions feel far away. She couldn’t bring herself to ask about the “latest developments.” Most likely Aunt Nicki wouldn’t explain anyway.

She ate in silence and didn’t try to remember anything. If she couldn’t remember everything, she wondered if it would be easier if she remembered nothing. Aunt Nicki busied herself cleaning the kitchen. At last Eve asked, “Do you think I could do that? I mean, invent myself like you did.”

Aunt Nicki stopped. “I have absolutely no idea.”

As she turned that thought over and over in her mind, Eve finished the soup, running the last of the sandwich crust around the bowl.

Aunt Nicki cleared her dishes. “Get some sleep. That boy from the library is anxious to see you at work tomorrow. He’s been calling nonstop for the past week.”

Zach! Eve stood up. “I can call him back—”

Aunt Nicki shook her head. “Sleep. One more night won’t kill him.”

“Can you promise me that?”

“He’s not the primary target,” Aunt Nicki said. “I can promise you that.”

Eve thought of the who’s-next game from the cafeteria, and she wondered how many people—aside from Aidan, Topher, and Victoria—the marshals were protecting. For all she knew, there were hundreds hidden around the city or spread throughout this world. “Who’s the primary target?”

Aunt Nicki looked at her. “You,” she said. “It’s always been you.”

Eve nodded. Of course. She knew that. She’d always known that. She was the key, whatever that meant. “Thank you for the food.”

“Go.” Aunt Nicki waved toward the bedroom. “Don’t let the bedbugs bite, and all that.”

Eve tried to smile, failed, and gave up. She nodded to Aunt Nicki, then headed down the hall. She trailed her fingers over the faded hall wallpaper and thought of Zach. His hall had been filled with family memories.

She wondered if, someday, she could piece together bits of memories like that wall. Maybe if she accumulated enough little memories, she too could have a history. Thinking of that possibility, Eve opened the door to her bedroom.

Lying in the center of the quilt was the Magician’s hat.

The black velvet hat was incongruous on the cotton quilt. It lay like a cat, asleep or dead, in the center of the bed. Dust particles drifted around it, catching the light from the window.

Eve screamed.

The air shoved out of her throat so hard and fast that she felt as if it would never reverse and she would never breathe again. She would simply scream and scream until every bit of oxygen was forced from her lungs, her blood, her body, her mind, and she turned inside out into the air itself and dissolved into her scream.