I shook my head. “I hate to break it to you, but your data is faulty. I didn’t move until I left for college. I’ve lived in this house most of my life.”
His expression was unreadable. “We are uncertain which . . . memories . . . have been altered.”
“Why don’t you know? It’s your fault, isn’t it? Did my grandmother make you . . . ?” A distant, high-pitched buzzing drew my eyes to the dark windows behind him, and he thrust the notepad at me, but I shook my head. “You can’t screw with people’s memories. It isn’t right.”
“I know.”
“And she didn’t ask you to?”
“She did not.”
I knew what I needed to ask next, what anyone other than me would be demanding to know, but I couldn’t form the words.
Sal’s attempt at subtlety left a lot to be desired. “As I relayed previously, your daughter’s genetic sequence shows no sign of our interference. And . . . although my opinion matters little . . . if her father wanted to be a part of her life, he would have chosen differently.”
“That was a private conversation!”
“Shhhh,” he tilted his head toward my bedroom, “I did not overhear a conversation. Though you should remember that my Audial Enhancers can gather and sort soundwaves from within a mile or so—depending on geographic and mechanical variables.”
He wrote a few words. I do try to protect your privacy.
“Right, I’ll try to remember that—oh, wait. Unless you make me forget.”
“Lila, we need to focus now.” I will never alter your memories unless you ask. “We have much to discuss, and suffice to say, it is unclear who altered your memory of conception, but—”
“No one altered my memory of that.” He frowned, and pointed at the word “cooperate,” but I insisted. “Look, the details are none of your business, but trust me, that is a real memory.”
“Why do you believe that I am lying?”
“I didn’t say that,” I hedged.
“There is no other logical reason that you would profess something so completely illogical.”
“Hey, back off. I remember him, okay?”
“You are more intelligent than this convenient falsehood. Memories are just coded information. Any code can be rewritten.”
“You are disturbing. And wrong.” I knew I was being stubborn, but the moment of Eileen’s conception was the truest and most tangible experience I’d ever had. It was real. Period.
“What are you thinking right now?”
“Nothing you need to know.”
“Please, Lila. This is growing wearisome. If you continue to be difficult, our arrangement will be negated.”
I grabbed the pen and paper.
NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS!
He looked at my words and nodded as if taking them very seriously, but a single hiccupping contortion gave him away.
Jerk. It’s not funny. “And what pray tell happens if I don’t prove my worth?”
All humor drained away.
“Your value. To us. To our goals. I would never think myself to be a judge of your worth.”
“Sal, arguing semantics might be your idea of a compliment or something, but I’m exhausted and every muscle in my body hurts. All I want is to sleep and dream of sunshine and rainbows, but I’m apparently all out of luck, so can we at least cut the crap? I don’t feel like being interrogated, and y’all are just going to have to deal with it. You’re twenty-thousand-years-old. What’s another day? If it can’t wait, you start talking.” And with that, I curled my legs back up in front of me and crossed my arms.
He studied me for a long moment, started to write something, changed his mind, fiddled with the pen, and then looked at me again. I raised one eyebrow and waited. Pebbles swatted at my ear, and I stared her down, too, until she gave a piteous mew and turned around to face Sal.
The only problem with a waiting game is that it gets boring, and boring is relaxing. The urge to curl up and sleep was winning out over anticipation of any earth-shattering revelation that he might deign to share, so I reached for one of the water glasses.
“This is just water, right? You’re not trying to poison me again?”
A strange expression rippled across his features, and with a twinge of guilt, I took a long drink. Guess that wasn’t funny, either. The cool glass was soothing, and I wrapped both hands around it, feeling the contrast between the tender new ridges and my unmarred skin. He couldn’t have given me modulators. I’d seen enough of his flawless body to know that there were no scars anywhere on him.
Now who’s disturbing? He was unconscious, you pervert.
I busied myself with sipping more water. The candlelight had turned the liquid to an amber mystery, and from the corner of my eye I could see his long, muscular fingers toying with the edge of the paper. The soft light danced across his hand, creating grasping shadows that brushed my legs. An unnatural warmth spread through my center, and a fiery orange angel sparked into being at my knees. When it lazily drifted down the slope of my thigh, I drained the glass and thunked it back on the table.
What. The. Hell. I shifted farther away and turned to face him directly. He copied me, and Pebbles reoriented herself at his shoulder, giving me a baleful glare.
“I find myself wishing that you would see me as a man.” My breath caught in my chest, and his low voice drew me back to him. “Then we could talk as equals, and you would not fear me.”
Really. “We are equals, thank you very much.” Unbelievable. “And I don’t fear you.”
“Do you not?”
“No, I don’t!” I insisted, even as my memory threw pain and unblinking black eyes at me. “I just don’t like not knowing. I don’t like uncertainty.”
“And yet you are fascinated with unprovable concepts . . . ” he gestured to my bookshelves, “ . . . and ask very few questions considering the circumstances.”
“Maybe they just haven’t been proven, yet. Just because something seems kooky, doesn’t mean—”
“Lila. Is your capacity to self-assess truly that limited?”
I was taken aback.
“I-I think I’m tired of looking for answers. Most of those books
