Chapter 28

"What the hell are you doing out there?" Zephyr asked, her voice muffled by the glass between them.

"Open the window," Lysandra whispered.

Her friend undid the lock and pushed the pane of glass out a few inches. "Lysandra, this is a new low. What are you doing here at six in the morning?"

"I didn't get home until after sunset yesterday. Ismene yelled at me - "

"What? You told me you had to get home at one o'clock!" Zephyr leaned further out the window. "How'd you get held up? Did you get mugged or something?"

"Um . . ." Lysandra paused. She realized her misstep too late - she hadn't told Zephyr anything at all about her visits to Cale and his Memory Recoding studio. "You know, it's a really long story. Can you come out?"

"It's way too early for that, Liss," Zephyr said, but when Lysandra just stared at her, she relented. "Fine, I'm coming." The curtains folded over the window again, and she disappeared.

Five minutes later, the two of them walked the streets of Oblitus, huddled close together against the slight chill of the morning. Zephyr had only found one cloak. Lysandra tucked her arms against her torso in an attempt to keep warm.

"So what is it?" Zephyr asked. "Did you get attacked, or what?"

"No," Lysandra said. She sucked in a breath. "Can I ask you something?"

"Sure, shoot," Zephyr answered.

"You forgot Oden, right?" Lysandra asked, her voice going quiet.

"The name sounds vaguely familiar."

"Did you forget anything else? Anything you thought you should have remembered but couldn't?" Lysandra probed. "You know what I mean?"

"Well," Zephyr began, "one day, I forgot to go to the Market to get oranges, and my parents yelled at me for ten minutes straight."

"That's not what I mean," Lysandra amended. "'Forgot' as in the way you forgot Oden. Not the kind of forgetting you do every day."

Zephyr shrugged. "I don't know. I don't think so. Are you going to tell me about what happened to you yet?"

Lysandra's mouth twisted. Without Zephyr's admittance to forgetting something or other, she had no proof regarding Mason Viatrix. She decided to let it slide. "Yeah," she sighed. "So you remember when we were sitting in the café and we saw that guy who cleaned our table?"

"You mean the really attractive one?" Zephyr asked, arching an eyebrow. "Of course I remember him."

"Well," Lysandra said, "he's a Memory Recoder."

"And...?"

"And he was trying to help me with my memory, so when I left - "

"Whoa! Wait a second," Zephyr interrupted. "When did this start? Yesterday? A week ago? A month?"

"It hasn't been that long," Lysandra answered. "The first time I went to see him was the day we went looking for your Memory Recoder - Mason Viatrix - and we couldn't find him. I ran around looking for another Recoder, and I found him. At first we didn't get along at all. He told me that something bad probably happened to me in my past, and I yelled at him, and those kinds of things. But then..."

"Then he asked you out."

"Um, no. That's not really what happened." Lysandra bit her lip.

"Wishful thinking." Zephyr shrugged. "What did happen?"

"Something weird happened with my memory, and so I went back to him because he was the only one I knew how to find," Lysandra told her. "We argued about a lot of things, but he wanted to help me because he knew someone who had lost a lot of memories at a young age, too. So somehow, he found us that day in the café, and he asked if I would meet up with him. I found him instead of going home."

"Ooh, dangerous! So what did he want you for?"

Lysandra fought to keep control of her voice. She could hear tremors beginning to develop in it as she spoke. "He wanted to try to find Mason Viatrix. But when we couldn't find him, we went back to his studio and he looked at my memories again."

"Okay," Zephyr said, squinting a little.

"We tried to figure out what had happened to them," Lysandra explained. "But we didn't really find anything. Anyway, by the time I got home, the sun had already set, and Ismene yelled at me for a while."

"I told you, that woman is not my favorite. What about the Recoder?" Zephyr asked, changing the subject again. "Is there even a remote chance that you two might be together?"

Lysandra hesitated, remembering those close times in Cale's studio. When they'd spoken about their pasts, their pain. When Cale had apologized and Lysandra had insisted he shouldn't. Did that count? Lysandra didn't even know what "together" meant. She had never been "together" with anyone - not even Remiel. Her relationship with Remiel had only been a suggestion, only a plan, never final.

"I don't know," she said finally.

"So there is a chance? Oh, Saints!" Zephyr squealed. "He is so cute, Lysandra. You should introduce me to him."

"Like you need an introduction to any other Memory Recoder," Lysandra answered, rolling her eyes.

"Aww, come on," Zephyr whined in response, shoving her friend's shoulder.

"You're sure you haven't forgotten anything?" Lysandra asked again.

"I'm sure." Zephyr looked sideways at Lysandra. "Why are you asking me that, anyway? Is losing more of your memories a side effect of getting them Recoded?"

Lysandra shrugged. She remembered Cale's and Zavier's reaction at her suggestion that her memories might have been stolen, and backed off. "Not necessarily. I'm just wondering."

"Whatever you say," Zephyr said, spreading her hands.