Page 60 of Atlas of Unknowable Things

“Où est ma sœur?” he shouted again.

The colors began to blur and congeal.

I tried to scream, but his knees were now on my chest, his hands around my throat. He began to squeeze and the world became flashes of light like single images strung out between gold and gray.

And then there was a figure behind him. A streak of movement, a flash of blond hair, and a hand grabbed his hair, pulled back, slid something across his throat. Clean and clear, there came a bright red line.

His eyes widened and blood spilled out. He gripped his throat, the life bursting out of him like birds bound tight and then released.

Cool hands slid beneath me. Aspen’s voice whispering in my ear.

“Shhh now. Everything’s going to be all right. We got you. Shhh. We got you.”

I awoke in a brightly lit room. Every part of my body ached, but something was different. The sense that death was gripping me was gone. I felt different inside. As if something horrid and sick deep within me had been cured, a tremendous fear eased.

I wiped my eyes and looked around the room, but it was empty. It seemed to be some kind of small medical suite. Was it possible I’d been taken all the way to a hospital and didn’t remember?

“Hello?” I called softly.

I tried to move, but found that I was too weak. I sank back down onto my pillow and drifted back to sleep again, dreaming of trying to fit an odd-shaped key into a lock, but the lock kept morphing until finally I realized it was never a lock, but a rose, and its petals fell away, broken and bruised.

And then someone touched my forehead.

I opened my eyes and saw Aspen standing over me. She was applying something wet and cool to my face with a cloth.

“You’re awake,” she said, smiling down at me.

“Where am I?”

“In the infirmary, down below my garden.”

“You saved me,” I said, my voice breaking with emotion.

“Well, Lexi did the dirty work. I just did a little bit of something to help bring you back from the brink. That psycho did a number on you.”

It was only then that I remembered Lexi slitting his throat. A shiver ran through me. Who exactly were these people?

“Oh god,” I moaned. “Is he…”

“Dead?” I heard Lexi say. Turning my head, I saw her sitting on a couch over in the corner, cool as a cucumber. “Yeah, he’s dead.”

“Oh god. Oh god, what are we going to do?”

“Look at me,” Aspen said, grabbing my chin like one would a fractious child. “You have to forget about that business.”

“Business?”

“Yes. It’s over now. A man attacked you, you don’t know who he was, and he got away.”

“But he’s dead,” I whispered, the loss of human life bearing down on me like a weight I’d never even considered. “His name was Guillaume.”

“It was him or you. We made a choice.”

“But the body.”

She shook her head. “There is no body. You hear me? We took care of it. Don’t mention it again, understand?”

I nodded. “Yeah. But could you let go of my face?”