Page 56

Mafi met them at the back entrance to Covenant. Her hijab was a riot of sunset colors, and her eyes were dark and disbelieving as she eyed Kierse up and down. “Didn’t think you’d be back.”

“Didn’t really want to,” Kierse admitted.

In fact, she’d been chewing on it the entire drive to the hospital.

She couldn’t ignore the stigma she felt was attached to needing help .

Her. Kierse. As if help was something she’d ever been allowed to ask for before.

She’d once had the flu and been bedridden when she’d been working with Jason.

It was the most helpless she’d ever felt, and she’d reviled every second of it.

It was one thing to ask for help with her memories when she had thought they were a magical problem.

It was another thing entirely to think she’d done this to herself .

Hidden her memories from her own mind so she didn’t have to look at them.

Objectively, she knew that wasn’t her fault, but it didn’t make it any easier to confront.

“But I’m here,” she said with a shrug.

“Guess you discovered that his powers aren’t endless,” she said, shooting Graves a look.

Graves arched an eyebrow. “Who said they weren’t?”

Mafi scoffed. “You never change.”

“I’m here,” Graves said. “With her.”

Mafi pursed her lips. “Well, come this way.”

Graves put his hand on the small of her back, and together, they followed Mafi into the hospital.

Kierse didn’t know what exactly to expect, and she was jittery with nerves as they headed down a long, narrow hallway.

It felt the same as when she was about to jump into a heist, except instead of excitement she only felt a foreboding sense of dread.

Mafi took them into a room that was less hospital and more therapist office.

It was painted in soft blues with dim lighting illuminating the client couch, rows of low bookshelves, potted plants, and a tea kettle.

It didn’t have the antiseptic smell of the rest of the place, but rather a warm sandalwood scent. It was meant to be inviting.

“You’ll wait here. Make yourself comfortable,” Mafi said.

Kierse took a seat on the couch, crossing and uncrossing her legs. Graves went immediately to the bookshelves. He scoured the shelves with a neutral expression.

“Anything interesting?” she asked.

“Lots of self help.”

“That makes sense, considering…”

He tilted his head as he explored the next shelf over. “This one has books on how to improve your sex life.” His eyes lifted to hers, and a smirk played at the edges of his pretty mouth. “I don’t have any of these in my library.”

She flushed. “Pretty sure we don’t need any help in that area.”

A knock at the door interrupted whatever was going to come out of his mouth next.

The door opened, and Dr. Carrión entered the room.

She wore a knee-length skirt with a blue blouse tucked into it and her white coat over top.

Her black hair was curly and shoulder length, framing her light brown face.

She wheeled forward in her wheelchair and held her hand out. “You must be Kierse.”

Kierse stood and shook her hand. “Hi. Yes, that’s me.”

“I’m Dr. Camila Carrión. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m glad you decided to come back to the Covenant and apologize that I was back home in Peru when you were last here.”

“That’s all right,” Kierse said.

“And you must be Graves.” They shook as well. “Nice to meet you, too. Mafi speaks quite highly of you.”

Surprise flickered across his face for the span of a second. Kierse had literally never heard Mafi say so much as a kind word to Graves, let alone about him.

He held out his gloved hand. “Correct. How was your trip to Peru?”

“Productive,” Carrión said with a smile.

“I’m glad to be back in the city, though.

As Dr. Mafi might have mentioned, I’m specifically studying monster mental health in a post-Monster War New York.

Though my practice is much broader than that, and I’m happy to have you here today.

I’ve reviewed your file, Kierse, and Dr. Mafi filled me in on your history with memory issues.

” She turned to Graves. “It was nice to meet you, but I’ll continue the rest of the meeting with my patient. ”

Graves straightened his cuffs. “I’ll clear the room,” he said smoothly. “I’m just here for her.”

The doctor smiled up at him. “Excellent. There’s a waiting room down the hall with refreshments and a television if you head to the right out the door.”

He held up a book he’d pilfered off of her desk. “I have my entertainment.” His gaze shifted to Kierse. “I won’t be far.”

The implication hung in the air as he exited the room. Dr. Carrión wheeled into a spot across the room from Kierse. “He’s quite charming.”

Kierse laughed. “Most people find him intimidating.”

The doctor grinned. “I could see that. Though he doesn’t appear to intimidate you.”

“Not anymore.”

“That’s good. Would you like some tea?” she asked as she poured tea into a mug.

“No, thank you,” Kierse said.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning? Tell me how this all started in your own words.”

Kierse took a deep breath and then released it.

“A magical spell was put on me by a Druid when I was a child. I didn’t realize that I had magic at all until I met Graves last winter.

It turned out the spell dampened my powers, and they returned to me fully once it was gone.

Around the same time, I started having nightmares, which ended up being memories of my past with parents that I didn’t have any conscious memory of.

All I knew—or thought I knew—at the time was that my mom died in childbirth and my dad left me. ”

“But that wasn’t the case?”

“No. They fled with me to New York when their families rejected their marriage. With the help of a potion I got from the goblin market and Graves’s powers, I’ve been piecing back together what happened.

But I keep going back to the night the spell was put on me, and there’s a block.

I get to the room where it happened, but I can’t go inside. ”

“What do you think you’ll find in this room?”

Kierse shrugged. “The person who did this to me.”

“What will it accomplish if you find them?”

“I’ll finally have answers,” she tried to explain.

“Maybe the person is still alive and I can ask them why they did this to me. I mean, I know that my parents asked him to put the spell on me. To hide me from someone who was trying to harm my family. But I don’t know why they made me forget my past in the process. ”

“What could be a reason that person would want you to forget your past?”

“I don’t know,” Kierse said. “The why is evading me. I need more information. Maybe the spell was just protecting me. Maybe the general memory loss is part of the spell. Like to hide my magic, I needed to forget all magic.”

“So it could be nothing more insidious than a side effect of the protection.”

Kierse bit her lip. “It could be, but something tells me that there’s more.

My memories are starting to come back, but this memory is still stubbornly stuck.

And I don’t know why. So it could be that the Druid didn’t want me to see that memory, or this is some side effect from when the spell broke, or like Mafi suggested, my mind won’t let me see it. ”

“And you believe your mind is shielding you from what?”

“Seeing the spell being put on me,” she guessed.

“Hmm. Do you think that was particularly traumatic for you?”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I don’t remember.”

Carrión glanced down at her tea. “But your parents died shortly after that, correct?”

“I…think so,” she whispered.

“Or at least, they abandoned you to the streets and you presumed them dead.”

“Right.”

“How does that make you feel?”

“Feel?” she asked uncertainly.

“About your parents and their abandonment.”

“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “It’s not…great, but I survived.”

“Of course you did. You’re a survivor. But what if you had children, would you want them to have the same upbringing as you?”

“No,” she said automatically, half coming out of the chair in horror. “Children should never have to go through what I went through.”

“No one should have to endure a loss like that.” The doctor’s face was open, and Kierse could see no judgment. “In my experience, the trauma of the loss of a parent, the loss of security, the loss of love is one of the deepest we could ever go through.”

Kierse choked as she tried to swallow. “Yes.”

“And with that in mind, we need to consider that the trauma you endured may have some impact on why you cannot get past that mental block.” The doctor set her tea down before asking, “Is it possible that they died in that room?”

Kierse’s chest tightened. “No, I can get past that night. I can see me leaving with them after the spell is put on me.”

“That’s good. That you can move past it.” She tapped a finger on the arm of her chair. “Do you have a memory of their death?”

Kierse froze. She had been so hung up on the block that she and Graves hadn’t gone further. The thought made her sick to her stomach.

“I don’t know,” she finally whispered. “I don’t think I want to see it.”

“And why is that?”

“Would you want to see your parents’ deaths?” she gasped.

“Both of my parents are dead. I watched my father pass during the war and my mom at a young age. I was there, and it was terrible. The grieving process was excruciating. But that isn’t what happened to you.

You were never able to grieve their losses for what truly happened.

A new history was constructed around you.

That is not the same thing. Just because you have learned how to live with what happened doesn’t mean that you’ve healed from it. ”