Conjured

They were prepared for this, I thought. I was a pawn who had been moved across the chessboard. Malcolm’s strong hands were trembling as he laid the box inside. He closed the lid. The snap of the clasps echoed in my ears.

“Now what happens?” Zach asked softly in my ear.

I shook my head. I didn’t know.

Behind us, other agents swept into and over the wagon. It was photographed, and then the items inside were carefully collected, each sealed into its own plastic bag or jar and labeled. Yellow tape was stretched around the site, and the carnival workers and patrons were pushed back behind the tape. Outside the tape, the agents began to interview the contortionists and the acrobats and others. A few tried to drift away but were corralled back for their turn. I saw several of them point to me as they were interrogated.

Aidan joined a cluster of agents around a computer—they’d set up a makeshift workstation under a white tent, a command center. Lou took Malcolm aside and spoke in low tones that I couldn’t hear. When Lou finished, Malcolm nodded and looked over at Aidan as if something had been decided. For the first time, I couldn’t read Malcolm’s expression. I gripped Zach’s hand with my cloth fingers. His hand felt damp with sweat that seeped into the fabric of my palm.

Lou strode toward us. “Zachary, our medics would like to check you out.” He nodded to a woman in a doctor’s uniform. She beckoned three assistants to join her. “Afterward, we’d like to ask you some questions.”

“He stays with me,” I said.

The doctor spoke calmly, as if I were a wild horse that needed soothing. “He’s been hurt. He may have internal bleeding. We need to be certain that his injuries are superficial.”

I hadn’t thought about his injuries. Of course they should check him. “You’ll bring him back to me?”

“You should check her too,” Zach said at the same time.

The doctor looked at Lou and then at me—my cloth skin, my marble eyes, my thread mouth. Carefully, she said to Zach, “She doesn’t need human medicine.”

“Don’t change,” Lou said quickly to me. “You as a doll will be more effective at the trial. No one will doubt your story with you as living evidence.”

“She isn’t just a doll,” Zach said.

“Of course,” Lou said.

“She’s become more.”

“So Agent Harrington has said, time and time again.”

Zach turned to me. “Who you were … who you became … You were wrong before, when you said it was a lie. You have changed, in all the ways that matter.”

I didn’t know if I believed him, but I smiled as if I did. He loosened his grip on my hand, and the doctor and her assistants efficiently separated us. Zach was escorted away from me. The instant he wasn’t touching me, I felt panic rise up into my throat. I pushed forward, and Lou held out his arm, blocking me.

“I won’t cooperate if he’s not safe,” I said quietly, low so that Zach wouldn’t hear. “You want my testimony, then that’s my price. Don’t harm him. Don’t detain him. Don’t … do anything to him he doesn’t want. In fact, help him. Set him up with whatever life he wants, with or without his family, in whatever world he wants. And I’ll say whatever you need me to say.”

“She means it,” Aunt Nicki said behind me.

I turned to look at her. Her gaze slid away from me, as if she didn’t want to look at my doll face. She watched Malcolm lock the briefcase. Aidan was beside him, double-checking and triple-checking the locks.

“She has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. You have to admit that,” Aunt Nicki said, her eyes still on Malcolm. “Malcolm was right.”

Lou grunted. “Suppose I’ll have to give him a promotion.”

“He deserves a damn medal,” Aunt Nicki said. To me, she said, “Malcolm was the one who first discovered you, you know, after you escaped the carnival. You were careening between worlds. He insisted you had the potential to grow, to coalesce into a coherent being, even though you were”—she gestured at my cloth body—“like this. The rest of us thought he was crazy.”

Malcolm lifted the steel briefcase. He was flanked by multiple agents.

“He badgered Lou into pulling in magic-wielding doctors from multiple worlds—specialists to build your body.” Frowning again at me, Aunt Nicki clarified, “Your human body. At the time, you couldn’t control your magic well enough to do it yourself, even if you’d understood what we wanted you to do.”

“Those doctors are ridiculously proud of you,” Lou said. “They babble on about papers that they’ll write based on you. You made a number of careers.”

“At Malcolm’s insistence, we set you up,” Aunt Nicki continued. “Gave you a home. A job.”

“At my insistence, we recruited Aidan, Victoria, and Topher to befriend you—they were our three strongest, the ones best suited to challenge you and the ones best able to defend themselves against you, if need be,” Lou said. “Working with them, we threw as much stimulation at you as we could.”

“Malcolm believed the memories and instincts were buried in there, inside you,” Aunt Nicki said. “We simply needed to help you become someone who could access them. And we succeeded!”

“Yes.” Lou contemplated me as if I were a sculpture he’d carved. “Yes, we did. We’re all proud of you.” From Lou, this was an extraordinary statement. I stared at him with my marble eyes. Maybe … maybe I had misjudged him.

The agents parted, creating a path through the crowd, and Malcolm marched toward one of the silver mirrors, carrying the briefcase. He looked back once, directly at me, and raised his hand in a wave. Aidan vanished from his side as Malcolm melted into the mirror—I wasn’t certain if Aidan had gone through the mirror or not. I felt a breath of wind on the back of my neck.

“You have done well.” Lou smiled, an unnatural expression on his face. I hadn’t thought his mouth could form any shape but a scowl. I remembered I’d seen him smile exactly once, when he’d handed me the magic box. He put his hand on my shoulder, as if to be friendly. “Our apologies,” Lou said. “But we can’t risk losing you now.”

I looked behind me to see Aidan holding an open box, the one that had once held the Storyteller. “See you at the trial, Green Eyes,” Aidan said. Lou shoved me toward him, and Aidan touched me with the box.

I was trapped inside.

Chapter Twenty-Six

On the day of the trial, Malcolm escorted me into the courtroom. He was flanked by two agents, plus another six behind us. Their guns were drawn—two tranquilizer guns, two tasers, and two loaded rifles. Malcolm had said the guns were merely a precaution.

All the guns were pointed at me, and I heard whispers and gasps and the words “doll” and “puppet” as people craned for their first look at me.

The courtroom was on the first floor of the agency. There was a solid-wood jury box, as well as mahogany benches for the audience, plus the judge’s podium with a witness stand beside it. Lit by iron chandeliers, the warm wood made the room look oddly cozy.

The room was filled with strangers. As I passed by the bailiffs, I recognized three faces in the audience: Aidan, Victoria, and Topher. Aidan wore an elaborate and exotic suit that made him look even more handsome. He had an entourage around him of men and women in uniform, which made his offer to me seem all the more real. These were the people from his government, the ones who wanted me to work for them, who wanted to use me as their weapon. Near them, Victoria was dressed in a floor-length gown, and her hair was arranged in dreadlocks that imitated snakes. They slithered over her shoulders as she watched me walk down the long aisle from the door to the front of the courtroom. Beside her, Topher was also in formal dress, a uniform-like suit with an orange sun on his chest. A man next to him carried a flag with the same symbol. None of them gave any hint that they knew me, but Topher looked at Aidan, who shook his head almost imperceptibly. I didn’t know what the exchange meant.