Vicki Pettersson - The Given

“Frontal lobe,” Kit said, and both of their gazes flew to the smoky mass that had been blasted away. “Why?”

“The sulfur can only approximate her visage, not replace it. That’s why she can’t talk. But if her memory were intact . . .” And it wasn’t.

“Episodic,” Kit interrupted.

“What?”

“Episodic memory. The stuff brimming with autobiography and emotion, which she still clearly feels.” Kit motioned to the angry corpse. “That’s stored in the temporal lobe, and that’s farther back.”

“Really?” Grif tilted his head at the sulfuric Gina, and said, “So, Gina. Do you think you can show us what happened?”

The smoky eyes narrowed.

Kit’s right eye took on a twitch, too. “What do you mean ‘show’?”

But Grif stayed focused on sulfuric Gina. “What if it means helping us capture Barbara . . . once and for all?”

And another blast of gaseous breath hit them as the corpse grinned.

“Hold on to me,” Grif told Kit as Gina’s head shifted, dust particles expanding when it took a deep breath.

“Are you kidding?” Kit breathed, and wrapped both arms around him, twining their fingers together. He was lucky she didn’t demand a piggyback.

“Don’t let go,” he warned, and she squeezed tighter.

The last thing Kit saw was the smoky section of Gina’s head splitting apart. It was as if a firecracker had gone off beneath a mound of sand, yet only a moment after the blast each dusty particle reversed and was funneled through the still-formed lips. Then the corpse blew all the sulfur—the protein and keratin and life that Grif had given her—back in their direction. The entire morgue instantly disappeared in a gritty, yellowed haze.

Kit wanted to cough, but there was no air to take in. Her lungs tightened, choking on matter never made for that soft pink tissue, and relief didn’t come. She felt entombed, unable to breathe, move, or even blink, and the heaviness of unconsciousness had already begun to settle over her when she felt a tingling in her flesh. Her body went white-hot as sulfur pricked at every pore, but then it dissolved atop her skin, sinking in and settling deep.

Then Kit blinked, and the smoke was gone.

In its place was a sprawling green lawn, a skid mark on an otherwise wide, pristine street before them . . . and the remnants of a scream curling through the air.

“Whose—” But Kit’s mouth wouldn’t work. The perspective shifted, a dash down the sloping lawn and view of the empty street dizzying Kit so that she realized it wasn’t her mouth at all.

We’re in Gina’s memory, remember? You’re seeing everything from her viewpoint.

Grif’s voice, connected through touch and massaging her brain, calmed Kit considerably. So she sent back a mental Okay, and settled in to watch.

The street spun, Gina turning around, and suddenly they were back on the lawn, lifting an old Cissy doll from the ground.

Mary Margaret’s kidnapping, Kit thought. And, panting hard, Gina began running for the house.

She burst through the giant, paneled oak doors, and the flash of a dark-haired woman was reflected in the hall mirror—late twenties, wide-eyed and gasping and with a heartbeat that shook in Kit’s own breast. Gina stared at herself in the mirror. “What have I done?”

The next flash of memory, a moment later, a second episode: Gina hitting her knees on a plush cream carpet at the feet of an elegant, sickly woman. The woman had been lounging in front of a large, crackling fire.

“Forgive me, Theresa . . .” Gina caught herself, the sob cutting off, as she clutched the hem of the woman’s nightgown. “I mean, Mrs. DiMartino. It’s my fault . . . they took her. They took . . . it was the wrong doll.”

A little doll will be waiting in the front yard . . .

Though obviously fatigued, with deep creases beneath each eye, hair graying at the temples, Theresa DiMartino straightened, took the doll Gina held out . . . and ran a forefinger over each diamond eye. Her gaze flew again to Gina; her eyes sparked with fire as well. “Where’s my third diamond?”

She may have looked weak, but her voice was strong, as if hardened in the fire next to her. Kit’s own throat constricted at the tone, and Gina was too frightened to respond at all. Instead, she pointed to the doll’s plastic belly. Theresa DiMartino lifted the gingham dress and, without hesitation, yanked one of the attached legs. Out tumbled the third precious gem, once a part of the necklace Sal had made for her using money stolen from his enemies.

The men who’d just retaliated by abducting her niece, Mary Margaret.

Without moving another muscle, Theresa turned her gaze, like an arrow, back up and through Gina Alessi. Kit felt it pierce her, too, as if Theresa could see all the way into the future and to Kit and Grif listening fifty years later.

“ She’s behind this, isn’t she?”

Barbara. Gina shared the thought with Kit and Grif before mutely nodding.

Theresa looked at the doll, her long, thin fingers smoothing the dress down before her gaze slipped back up to the pink porcelain cheeks, rosy beneath the gleaming eyes. “My husband is going to kill you. You know that, right?”

Yes, Gina knew. Fear forked in her belly, spearing them all. “Oh, please, miss.”

Theresa roared. “You brought that viper into our home! She tried to seduce my husband— mine!— and you were lucky I didn’t send you into exile with her! And now”—Theresa was panting, chest heaving with her fury—“now you let her back in?”

“She saw the necklace in the paper.”

“And saw that I was sick, too,” Theresa spat, mouth drawn down, bitter.

“I— I thought that she was over . . .”

“Say it.”

Gina swallowed hard, swallowed bile. “I thought she was over Sal.”

Theresa closed her eyes, and then slumped with a heavy sigh. She turned away from Gina, the doll gone limp in her lap, and faced the roaring flames.

Gina begged, “She changed her name, she altered her appearance. I thought she was starting over—”

“You mean a new grift.”

“Yes.” Gina cast her gaze down, so that Kit and Grif watched her hands, white-knuckled, twining in her lap. “I thought she forgot all about you.”

“Women like her,” Theresa said without turning her head, “do not forget. And they certainly don’t forgive. I know because I am a woman like her.”

She did look at Gina now, her face awash in bitterness. “How do you think I knew that she was after my Sal five years ago? Nineteen years old, fresh-faced, peach-pretty. Yet that couldn’t hide the greed already lurking beneath. Some people are born with rotten cores and your cousin is one of them.” Theresa shook her head, slowly now, mouth curling into a sneer. “She could change her appearance a thousand times, and I’d always know exactly who she is.”

Theresa dropped back her head and stared at the ceiling. Gina tried to speak again, but was silenced with only the lift of Theresa’s hand. Her other hand fluttered atop her heart, but didn’t rest, as if she was afraid it’d break at the touch. Finally, she lifted her head. “Do you want to live, Gina?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re going to do exactly as I say. Your cousin thinks five years is a long time to hold a grudge, she thinks she has the patience to exact a thoughtful revenge, but I’m dying, darling. I have nothing to lose.” She held up the Cissy doll, and made its eyes blink, open and shut. Open and shut. Thousands of dollars of jewels winking in and out of sight. “And she hasn’t seen anything yet . . .”

And then the sulfur closed in again. Somewhere, where Kit and Grif were still standing in a twenty-first-century morgue, she tightened her hold around his arm. Don’t let go . . .