42

Manipulations

I was screaming into the ice water, then I surfaced, gasping for air, and Pan was kneeling beside the metal tub.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Let her breathe, Pan,” Elof said, and I saw him standing just behind Pan.

“Did I get too hot?” I asked.

Pan nodded. “Heat was radiating off your body, and then you started to scream, so I dumped you in the ice bath.”

“Do you remember anything?” Elof asked me.

“I think. Sorta.” I looked over to the Ögonen, staring placidly at me. “They implanted something.”

“What do you mean?” Pan asked.

“Spiders. They filled a room in the dungeon with spiders and then the spiders burst into flames.” My teeth started to chatter, so Pan took my hand and helped me out of the tub.

“How do you know that didn’t really happen?” Elof asked. “That it wasn’t some kind of bizarre torture by the Älvolk?”

Pan handed me a towel and I wrapped it around my shoulders.

I shook my head adamantly. “No. The Ögonen used spiders to scare me before.” I glanced over at Pan, thinking of the moment he’d confessed he loved me—a moment he no longer remembered. “And Pan was there, and he started acting strange when the spiders showed up.”

I dried my face with the towel, and I looked up to Ur the Ögonen. “Why did you do that? Why did you infiltrate my memories?”

Ur blinked at me, then looked to Elof.

“What are they saying?” I asked Elof.

“Nothing to me.” Elof shook his head. “Ur, we thank you for your help, but if you wish not to converse with us in whatever way you can, perhaps it’s best if you go.”

Ur blinked and then walked out of the lab. Though they were gone, that didn’t mean they couldn’t still read my thoughts from far away. I shivered again, thinking of the spiders covering Pan’s face.

“What did you remember?” Pan asked.

“We were left alone, by accident, I think,” I said, and I’d already decided that I was going to skip over all the kissing bits—at least until Elof wasn’t around. “Just me and Pan. And you asked me what Indu was doing with me, and I told you about the documents I translated for him. Some kind of gross blood pudding recipe with an elk heart as an ingredient. You called the Älvolk cannibals.”

“Shit,” Pan said. “Do you remember anything else?”

“That’s when it was overrun with spiders and fire.” I chewed my lip. “I have to remember what I translated for Indu.”

“You can’t do that again with the Ögonen,” Pan said. “You weren’t under that long before you got way too hot. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll never do that with an Ögonen again,” I said definitively. “I can’t trust what they show me.”

“Maybe you can’t completely trust anything you see when someone else is digging around in your head,” Pan said. He leaned against the island; his button-up was wet on the rolled-up sleeves and chest, so the fabric stuck to his muscles.

“I can trust Sunniva Kroner,” I said.

“That’s the younger woman who does the aural healing back in Förening?” Elof asked.

I nodded. “She’s been working on her healing since I’ve been gone. I’m sure she’s made progress by now.”

“That’s a bit of a leap, don’t you think?” Pan asked, not unkindly.

“Fine. I’ll call Finn before I go back and get the scoop.”

“Whoa, what?” He straightened up. “You say that like going back to Förening is a sure thing.”

“I have to get these memories back,” I insisted. “There’s something in those translations, and I have no clue what it is. But since they let us go, I must’ve figured it out, which means that the Älvolk know what it is. They stole blood from me and my sister for it. We need to know the truth.”

“I’m not arguing with that,” Pan said. “I just don’t think it’s worth you dying to find out. Are you sure that you can trust Sunniva Kroner? Not to muck around in your brain and not to go further than your body can handle?”

“Her brother is one of Finn’s oldest and most trusted friends, and Finn is the most honorable man I know,” I said. “Tove is doing this with Sunniva.”

He was silent, considering it. “They wouldn’t let you do it if it wasn’t safe?”

“No, Finn definitely would not,” I said, and he let out a relieved sigh, his fears temporarily placated.

“When did the spiders appear in your memory?” Elof asked.

He pulled up a stool and had a seat. I was still standing, alternating between my feet, because I didn’t want to sit. I felt too antsy, and my skin had a sunburnt feel to it, so any touch burned a little.

“It was right before Pan started asking me about the translations,” I said.

“What had you been doing before he asked you about that?” Elof pressed.

My cheeks burned, and I mumbled, “Like . . . kissing.”

“Ah, understood,” Elof said.

Pan cleared his throat. “What did the spiders do?”

“Crawled around.” I shrugged. “They swarmed the room.”

“Maybe they were meant to highlight something?” Elof asked.

“But . . . they ruined the memory.” I frowned. “I was panicked and I didn’t understand at all what memory-Pan was saying, because I couldn’t recall what my half of the conversation had been.” I shook my head. “I need to get to Sunniva and get the rest of my memory back.”

“Well, before you head out, let me do a quick checkup to make sure that there wasn’t any serious damage done,” Elof said.

He checked a few things—my heart rate, blood pressure, pupils, reflexes—and then he cleared me to go. Pan walked me home, and he stayed long enough to be interrogated by Dagny while I had my phone call with Finn.

The verdict from Finn was that Tove and Sunniva had made significant progress, and he thought it might be time for me to come back to Förening.

“So it’s settled then, isn’t it?” Pan asked, once I finished summarizing the phone call. “You’re going to Minnesota.”

I nodded. “It’s where I need to be.”

“It’s where I need to be too!” Eliana piped up, and she threw one arm around my shoulders. “With Hanna and my sister.”