Forget Me Not

Lisa rang the bell, and then she waited, licking her lips. No one passing by gave her a second glance, and only a couple gave her a first. It was too cold for voyeurism, for anything but huddling into your coat and hurrying by.

She jiggled from foot to foot, pretending she felt the bite in the air like they did, hoping she didn't bump into anyone she knew. All of them would have been baffled to find her here.

'Misty Futures: Piercing the Veil.' read the sign, painted in wobbly letters. What gilt was left clung in flakes, fool's gold picked off by the wind.

It was rare to find anyone plying their trade so openly in Ryars Valley, but Lisa supposed the funhouse air of the place fooled people as surely as the neat, professional outlets of other Nightpeople did. The sign flapped and creaked in the wind, and the clutter of baubles in the window dazzled the eye; gold and silver winked, massive fake jewels glittered like a magpie's treasure trove.

The door opened a crack. Dark eyes peered out. "Yes?" drawled a woman's voice, heavily accented.

She hesitated. This was stupid. She already knew that.

"Well? Make up your mind. I'm not going to stand here and freeze while you dither." The accent slipped for a moment, revealing Middle America, and some of Lisa's doubts vanished. It was just another façade – a way to keep away tourists and curiosity seekers.

"I want a reading," she said.

"You're in the right place then. Come in.”

Inside, the shop was full of arcane clutter – crystal balls, tarot cards spilled across a rickety table, heavy red drapes making it feel more like a tent than a business place. It had an air of faded opulence that might not be so false if the rings on the woman’s fingers were anything to go by – those were rubies, unless she was mistaken, and that big rock on her thumb was definitely a diamond.

“So what’s a vampire doing in my shop?” The woman locked the door and flipped the sign over to ‘closed’. “You don’t need me to tell you it’s a long life ahead, unless you annoy any hunters.”

“It isn’t my life I want to know about.”

The woman surveyed her, eyes keen amidst the welter of clumped mascara and bold green eyeshadow. She wasn’t Romany, but she’d taken great care to cultivate the idea that she was: the bright clothes, the loose, curling black wig, the accent she’d dropped now. “Do you have any idea how difficult that is?”

“Difficult,” she countered, “but not impossible.”

Weeks of delicate, probing questions had told her that. She’d been careful, spacing them apart so Chatoya wouldn’t understand just what it was she was asking. Or more importantly, why she asked, what it was that consumed her.

Half-love, half-life. She'd been told it was so a thousand times; the words they used were different, the analogies varying - Cougar was awkward and blunt, Jepar wreathed it in smiles and just that little bit of thoughtfulness, Chatoya was soft-spoken while her eyes were always bare and bitter – but they'd all said it at one time or another. They'd all felt the burn of unrequited love, or lust or even liking.

She disagreed, though. The half-love she felt was all the more ferocious for its fragmented nature. It had the holy nature of a relic, a piece of the true cross perhaps, all the more precious because the imagined whole had a thousand times more power than a handful of splinters.

To yearn for so long, to feel that hungry, lonely love – it was a deep devotion, a passion that subsumed her life. In her obsession, she lived a fuller life than ever she did when love was a two-way street.

And it was obsession; she didn't kid herself about that. Why else did he adorn the corners of her sketches, the first face her hand leapt to in idleness; the only one who she could never quite capture to perfection?

Cern Akafren was her best friend, but she wanted him to be more with a savagery that surprised her. It had been years since she’d loved anyone – years since she dared to, thinking herself too damaged and cautious for such unguarded passion.

But Cern had taken her by surprise. She’d always enjoyed his black humour and mischief, both of which hid his more serious side - and it seemed only natural that they gravitated together among the circle, to argue over the latest politics or the newest moral dilemma the media had grabbed, to let serious debate disintegrate into banter before picking up again – it was usually Thom who brought it all back on track while the others bowed out once it became heated.

And then it was just her and Cern stood on opposite sides (and even when they agreed, one would play devil’s advocate just for the ethical hell of it), trading words faster and faster, until she felt alive and flushed and crackling with energy, until it was down to the pair of them twisting into evermore intricate arguments while Cougar feigned yawns and Chatoya and Jepar chatted about less fraught things. It was him and her, it was the gleam in his purple eyes, the heat in his voice, the crook of his smile when she made a clever point.

And just when the rest of the circle were about to step in and break it up, there’d be a moment of silent accord amidst the contentious words – and Cern would say, “Done?”

“Done and won,” she’d say, and that would be it, all animosity forgotten.

And she came to realise that more and more she sought their faux conflicts, yearning to reduce the world down to the two of them and the chemistry she felt there in the charged atmosphere. Sometimes they’d come so close – he’d be inches away, still arguing, trying to silence her as she tried to silence him and it seemed natural that one day it would not be logic or facts that he used, but a kiss, as swift and abrupt and fiery as any words.

Outside of their personal amphitheatre, she relished his calm and his dry wit and his laidback attitude. He seemed to her as honest and transparent as glass, intolerant of lies or deceit.

It made her uncomfortable, then, to be here, asking this, to intrude so rudely into his future, but part of her craved the knowledge: will I be part of it? If I dare to step beyond our friendship, will he welcome me, or will I destroy everything?

I have to know.

“Not impossible, no. But it’ll drain my powers,” the woman said firmly. “I won’t be able to work for at least a fortnight.”

“How much?”

The woman named a figure. Lisa grimaced, but she had expected as much, and she opened her bag to reveal a slim wad of bills. “Done.”

“You won’t remember it all afterwards, you know. You won’t be able to. The mind isn’t meant to see such things. Bits and pieces will stay with you – enough to be a warning, perhaps. You’ll call it luck or a hunch, but it will be the ghost of futures present, if you take my meaning.”

She had known that too. “I do.”

“And I need something of theirs...” Those eyes were shrewd suddenly. “Of his.”

“How did you know?”

“I wouldn’t be much of a fortune teller if I didn’t recognise a lovelorn girl, would I? You seem too practical to moon over men, girl. He’s probably not worth it, you know. They rarely are.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” she muttered.

“It’s your life. And his, of course. So, what have you brought me? I hope it’s not toenail clippings. They might do the trick, but they’re not pleasant to work with.”

She drew out a small container – and in it was a mouthful of blood, his blood.

That was the other thing, wasn’t it? There was no denying the intimacy of her lips on his throat, a caress that was carnal as it was primal, a mesh of desire and hunger. He knew it too: after, he always looked glazed, drowsy.

“Do you do that to all the guys?” he’d said dryly, once. “No wonder they’re all so disappointed when you ditch them.”

“I don’t let the others remember,” she’d replied, stretching. “Cougar would be furious if I muscled in on his image.”

Now, the woman took the container from her. “Well, this should make it more potent. What is it you want to see?”

She cleared her throat. After so much concealment, it was hard to say it aloud. “Will he love me?”

“This spell won’t show you one future,” the woman warned. “You might see a dozen or a hundred or thousands and some won’t be the answer you want. There are very few certainties in this business – unless you’re Ryar ap Sangager or the Oracle of Delphi, and last time I checked, the Burning Times did for both of them. All we’ve got left are fragments of their spells.”

“I know that.” But...even one future would be enough. If she could glimpse some way to make it happen, something that said the promised miracle would come: she could love openly, without fear of betrayal, a love as simple and bright and recurrent as the rising sun.

“Sit down then. It’ll take me a while to prepare this.”

~*~

So it was that two hours later she found herself sat opposite the woman with a sheet of glass between them. Cern’s blood gleamed on it as the scent of herbs drifted about them. Dull orange fire rose from the woman’s hands as she finished her invocations.

The fire spread over the glass – and as instructed, Lisa placed her hands on it-

~*~

She was young still, herself still, but the man in front of her was so old and withered that she could barely recognise the familiar features sagging within.

“Hello Cern,” she said, placing a bunch of flowers by his bed. “How are you today?”

“Is that you, Marie?” How weak the voice, creaking like a disused door. “Why haven’t you come to see me-”

“Marie won’t be coming today,” she said gently. Marie was long dead, bequeathed none of her father’s mix of supernatural blood: two hundred years old, he had outlived both his children and three of his grandchildren already. “It’s Lisa.”

“Lisa? Knew a Lisa once. Good friend of mine. She ran away, though, off to some...some werewolf who reckoned he was her soulmate.” He coughed, a long rattling sound. “Didn’t see her again.”

“I came back,” she said. “You were right about him after all.”

“Was I? Was I, now? What was I so right about, girl?” He squinted at her. “When’s Marie coming?”

She swallowed down her sorrow. “Not today, Cern. You were right about Alex. He was just a bastard with a big attitude.”

“Sounds like something I’d say.” Some of the confusion cleared from his face. “You look like her.”

“It’s me,” she whispered, reaching out to grasp his hand, shocked at how fragile it was. “Cern, it’s me.”

“Still haven’t changed, I see.” He gave a papery, wheezing chuckle. “Two hundred years, Lise, and you’re still wearing the same damn necklace. Talk about vintage fashion.”

She forced a smile but it was terrible to see him like this.

“And here I am, old and ugly while you’re still stopping traffic. Should have got in there while I had the chance, shouldn’t I? I thought about it, you know, but you never seemed interested.”

Oh god. Oh, I was so interested, but I thought...

“You idiot,” she whispered, her voice husky. “You were the one running round kissing all the girls.”

“Ha, you were the one who made all the boys cry.” He struggled for breath for a moment, and she was frightened, feeling the reality of death closer than she had imagined. “Seen any of the others? Cougar came to call the other day.”

“I saw him,” she admitted. Cougar Redfern had nothing for her but angry words at her abandonment of them all those years ago. He knew how to nurse a grudge and that one had been stewing for two centuries. “It didn’t go well.”

“He’ll get over it. What about Jepar? Toya?”

She swallowed hard. “No.”

They were both dead, Toya at the hands of her soulmate when he’d returned to keep the promise he had made to her when they were fourteen; Jepar in a duel with a dragon that he could never have hoped to win.

“Do you need anything?” she said.

His face had clouded over again – naïve, bewildered. “Where’s my Marie? Who are you? Isn’t she coming today?”

It was too much. She got up, kissed his forehead and said gently. “She’ll be here later, Cern. Maybe you should sleep.”

~*~

It was Christmas, and Lisa was sat around a table with a flock of chattering friends and a stranger. Cougar and Zara were arguing furiously as her fiancé, Darkstar, sat wearing an expression of patient suffering while Cern eavesdropped shamelessly. Thom and Chatoya were comparing theories about a series of books they were both reading – and the stranger watched them all.

Jallakri ap Ganra, she called herself, and she was a werewolf that Cern had found in the woods one night, attacked by the Pack. Lisa wasn’t sure about her at all. Her claims of amnesia just didn’t ring true, and there was something familiar about her that Lisa just couldn’t place...

“Could you pass the salt?” Cern asked absently – Jal reached for it, and when their hands brushed, Lisa saw the most astounded expression cross his face. Wonder, spilling into his eyes, roused sharp jealousy in her and she knew what had happened.

“Oh, you are kidding me,” moaned Cougar. “Please pass the salt? What kind of way is that to meet your fated other half?”

Jal fled, and Lisa felt all her hopes crumbling into heartbreak of a silent, private sort.

~*~

She was waking slowly, grimacing at the number of aches that made themselves known to her. A groan escaped her – and then hands were brushing back her hair, helping her sit, sending a gentle wash of power through her that she recognised as it sped under her skin.

“You,” said Cern flatly, “are an idiot.”

“Good morning to you too,” she muttered.

“It’s afternoon.” There was a tightness to his mouth that she’d never seen before. “What were you thinking?”

She knew exactly what she’d been thinking. “I remembered what she was.”

“And didn’t it occur to you to tell us?” he demanded.

She took a shaky breath. “Would you have believed me? She’s your soulmate.”

Outrage brought heat rushing into his face. “So what? She nearly killed you! Gods, Lise, look at you – you were riddled with stakes when we found you...didn’t you hear us calling?”

Calling, howling, screaming in the end – Cougar and Jepar and Cern all mingled, the three of them trying so desperately to find her. And her hanging on there while Jallakri ap Ganra acted exactly as a creature of Nightfire did, planting each stake with torturous care until Lisa felt herself an obscene pincushion, consoling herself with thoughts of the jokes she’d make of it when they found her.

“I couldn’t answer. She wouldn’t let me.” She smiled weakly. “I didn’t bargain for that.”

His face was rigid. “What did you bargain for? If you knew what she was, why did you go haring off after her?”

Because someone had to be bait. Because until she killed and you saw that it wasn’t self defence and it wasn’t a mistake and it wasn’t anything but pure bloodthirst, you wouldn’t believe me. How could you when you’d seen inside her soul and thought it clean and true?

How could you know that she had made the true horror of what she was a secret even to herself? That was the price she agreed with Nightfire. That was the lie she told herself and you and all of us.

She didn’t answer.

Yet his expression changed, slow, becoming baffled. “You...did it on purpose.”

She didn’t lie. She didn’t say a word.

“You let her hurt you. Oh gods, why?”

Better me than you, Cern. Better me than you.

“Where is she?” she said.

He shrugged, as if it didn’t matter, but that was wrong, surely. “Blue Malefici’s got her. Nightfire are taking her back. He said they’ll see that justice is done – and you know, I believed him.”

His tone was so matter of fact she blinked. “And...you’re okay with that.”

“She lied to me. She tried to kill you – and she enjoyed it. I felt that, Lisa, I felt it while we were looking for you, in the back of my head every moment.” He shivered. “She chose that. Do you know why?”

She shook her head.

“Because she was bored. She was bored and she wanted power and she gambled away her life for that.” The words were acid with his disgust.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be.” He gave her an odd, lopsided smile. “I guess I owe her in a way.”

We all owe something to our soulmates, she thought. They show us ourselves in our entirety, and sometimes the reflection is unpleasant, sometimes it is squalid and brutal, but it’s true. And once you know who you are, with all the illusions stripped away – well, if you don’t like it, you can change.

I changed. And I owe my soulmate for that too, though he’ll get no thanks from me.

“I thought you were going to die,” he said, soft, hesitant. “And you know what?”

“What?” she said, absent, miles away in old debts.

“It broke my damn heart.”

The words jolted her – she saw now the marvel in his face, saw once more that frankness she had always admired. And she was suddenly glad of the aches, glad of the risk, glad of every savage moment.

“Do you mean that?”

“Yep.” He shifted, gruff, uneasy. “Are you going to do anything about it?”

And of course, he didn’t know how she felt – only that he was taking this first, vast step beyond their friendship, breaking the truce that existed between them. How brave he was, braver than she had been with her silence and her frustration.

And she felt her smile, answering, immense, near painful. “Everything.”

~*~

He aged and died; he was young forever, made a vampire by a passing villain, by her, by Cougar. He inherited dragon powers, and was destroyed in a war – he won the war, and handed them back with a wry smile. His soulmate came, time and again, always the same stranger bringing slaughter with her: he loved her, he loved her not, he forgave her, he scorned her, he fought her, he surrendered to her and became a vile, murdering thing himself.

Always Lisa was there at some point in his life, whether she slunk back when he was middle aged or ancient or even as a silent watcher at his funeral. She confessed her love, and he refused or accepted.

Successful, he lived for years, ringed by friends. Broken, alone, he hung himself from a tree; he overdosed, he drank himself into disease and death. Loveless, loving, the multitudes of life passed by but she was there, and when she was not, Lisa began to see that he suffered.

She wasn’t his soulmate, but she was some vital part of him. And if she was not there – whether he had turned her away or she had left him to whatever future remained – his passion faded and died. Arguments became real, embittered with no one to say when they ended, no one to say no more, enough, done and won.

Whether he loves me or he doesn’t, he needs me.

She came back to the real world with a jolt.

“Good enough?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” she said, praying she would remember – praying she could halt the slide of those dreadful, lonely futures, that she could turn him to those others...and to her.

But it was fading so fast. Already she was clutching to find the ones among the many that she had wanted, but the incense was making her head spin, and the woman wore a cruel, knowing smile, and she was being ushered out of the shop with questions on her lips...

The door shut firmly behind her.

~*~

The woman counted out her profit, sighing. A Midnight witch made her trade where she could, and every so often someone would come along who wanted this spell. And if they wanted it once, they’d pay to have it again, wouldn’t they? If, that was, she made sure that all their recollections drained away. And she did.

The girl would be back – not now, but maybe in a year or two, asking for the same spell, not knowing that she had already received the answers she sought. And one or two ragged bits would stay with her – enough to jog her memory, enough perhaps to keep her from tumbling down a completely disastrous road.

Or maybe to nudge her down it. That was love for you, after all.

She fingered the heavy ring that had once been a marriage band.

Better to forget it, yes, than to live under its terrible shadow all your life. Better to live in hope than regret, better to have the undying dream of love than the sordid reality.

Forget me not, he’d said, and she hadn’t. But how she wished it had all been different.