The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Read online

  “I’m glad.”

  Rachel stared at the face of the man in the photographs. Some of the photos also showed a woman and two little children. The thought of their father never coming home made Rachel’s heart constrict. It reminded her how dangerous her own father’s work was—which perhaps should have made her less angry with him. But it did not.

  Instead, she felt all the more upset that he had not paused to hear the important things she had to tell him. while he still had the chance. As she looked at the photos, however, something else struck her. It was entirely thanks to her mother, Siggy, and Zoë that she was here at all, to stand here and look at this memorial. If her mother had not whistled and freed her from the paralysis spell; if her friends had not jumped down from the dreamland; it might be her picture that was propped up on a memorial, surrounded by flowers.

  The idea of dying did not frighten her. Rather, what troubled her was how helpless she had felt after Serena O’Malley had entered Sandra’s apartment. There had been nothing she could do to defend herself, no one whom she could have called for help. It was the second time she had been paralyzed by an enemy. If she counted the time Sandra muted her, that made three battles where she had been entirely helpless.

  Rachel was tired of being helpless. She wished she were more powerful, or, at least, that there were someone who was both willing to protect her and strong enough to do it.

  But there was no one.

  Just before the elevator, William paused and spoke to a secretary seated at a desk that overlooked the lobby. Turning back to Gaius and Rachel, William said with a twinkle in his eye, “Seems we’re half an hour early. While we wait, would you like to see one of our labs?”

  “Would I?” Gaius made a sound halfway between a gasp and a laugh. “That would be a yes. As if you didn’t know.”

  William stopped, peered into one room, and then closed the door again, shaking his head. “That one is proprietary. We’re working on improved communication methods for the Wise. Father and Iron Moth are quite protective of their prototypes.”

  “You mean, to catch up with cell phones?” asked Gaius.

  William winced and nodded. “For centuries, we were ahead on instant travel and communication. Now we are lagging seriously behind in the communication department.”

  “What’s wrong with calling cards?” asked Rachel.

  Gaius leaned toward her and said softly, “Have you ever been sitting in class, and someone’s voice came out of your calling card, disturbing everyone?”

  Rachel blushed. Was he referring to something she had accidentally done to him. “Yes.”

  “That doesn’t happen with mundane phones. We have something called voicemail.”

  “I’m sure we can find something I can show you both.” William rounded a corner and looked in another door. “Let’s see…ah! Here’s one that’s safe for us to see.”

  Locke opened a door, and the three of them entered. Inside was a large laboratory with a number of work stations. Scientists in lab coats, both men and women, bent over their work. Their equipment varied from unfamiliar mundane devices that clicked and clacked, to hissing Bunsen burners and glowing soldering irons, to large, orange tricorne mirrors, such as alchemists used. The air smelled of various chemicals, of hot, melted metal, and, oddly, of garlic. In the center of the room was a device consisting of two long, narrow rectangular, metallic boxes attached to each other and seated atop a wheeled platform.

  “Rail gun!” Gaius headed straight for the device—which was at least as large as a cannon—and stroked its sleek gray side. “What does it shoot?”

  “That’s precisely what we are working on,” explained Locke. “This is an order for the King of Transylvania. He wants…”

  Another man strode into the lab. William stiffened, and Gaius gasped. Rachel spun around to get a better look at the newcomer. As he took off his hat and tossed it onto a hat rack, she saw that it was a tall, broad-shouldered young man—a young man she knew.

  “Blackie!” She ran over to greet her second cousin and then stopped abruptly, recalling with a shudder that his memory had been damaged.

  “Do I know you?” Blackie Moth asked in his clipped, mid-western accent. He had a shock of dark curly hair, a pointed goatee, and steel-gray eyes.

  Rachel knew some people had visceral reactions to seeing a crippled or deformed body—such things did not trouble her. The thought of a crippled memory, however, sent a spasm of horror throughout her being. It took all her dissembling skills to force her face into a smile.

  “I’m Rachel Griffin.” She curtsied, ducking her head until she could school her expression. “Your second cousin.”

  He pulled out a notebook, opening it to a family tree. “You are related to me…how?”

  “Your grandmother, Lady Nimue Griffin Moth, was the sister of my grandfather Blaise Griffin, the late Duke of Devon.”

  “Ah. I’ve heard of you.” He traced the tree, pressing his finger against a place on the page. Each word was short and clipped, which is exactly how Rachel remembered him as speaking before his accident. He looked at her frankly. “I didn’t realize you’d be Oriental.”

  Rachel gave him a kind smile. “My mother’s half-Korean.”

  It felt strange to say that, after so many years of believing that her mother was a quarter Korean. She still felt a bit dazed by the realization that she had somehow been wrong about the identity of her great-grandmother for her whole life. Before returning from London, she had asked about her real great-grandmother, but her mother knew almost nothing about Grandpa Kim’s mother. Ellen Kim Griffin had only ever met her step-grandmother.

  Gaius leaned back on his heels. “I think you mean that Rachel’s Asian.”

  Blackie scowled, “I ain’t buyin’ into that newspeak nonsense. ’Specially as their word-alchemy sucks mothballs.”

  “Word alchemy?” Gaius leaned farther back than he had meant to and had to step back rapidly to regain his balance.

  “They try to move the essence of an idea from an old word to a new one, leavin’ behind the qualities they don’t much like. Isn’t that alchemy?” asked Blackie. “Only to make it work, they have to endow the original words with the essence of hatred and vitriol, in order to get folks to stop usin’ em. Turn ’em into swearwords. Look at: Oriental, Colored, cripple, retarded. Perfectly good words, ruined.”

  “I…never thought of it that way,” said Gaius, who was looking decidedly uncomfortable.

  Blackie continued, “Homeless now means what used to be meant by bum or tramp. And let’s not even get into what happened to that little word that used to mean full of fun.”

  “They’re just trying to be kind,” countered Gaius. “Does this ‘word-alchemy’ do anybody any harm?”

  “Sure does. Perfectly good older books suddenly banned, because now they have swearwords in ’em that weren’t swearwords when they were written,” spat Blackie. “Bah. You should have heard the nonsense words the American Sorcery Council wanted to use to replace Unwary—Mundie? Muggle? Flobbit? Thank goodness the Wise actually showed some wisdom and voted it down.”

  This last comment caused Gaius to snort with amusement, though he was still a bit red in the face.

  Rachel listened, but she did not weigh in. She had always vaguely thought that Asian was a word for people and Oriental was for rugs or gardens—though she knew both words had been used differently in ages gone by. She was amused to notice, however, that, even without his memory, Cousin Blackie had retained his talent for turning an innocent conversation into something that caused offense. Rachel’s grandmother, Lady Devon, had once described him as having the manners of a mutt who ran into the house after capturing a rabbit—so that when he shook the creature to snap its neck, he also broke the household crystal.

  Blackie turned to William. “Where’s your better half?”

  “You mean Vlad?” asked Gaius.

  Blackie snorted dryly. “Not Dread. Coils. Fine gal. Head for science.”


  Her cousin must have meant Naomi Coils, William’s girlfriend. William nodded pleasantly. Gaius, however, looked distinctly uncomfortable, though maybe he was still unnerved by the previous conversation.

  “She’s well,” William replied. “I shall tell her you asked after her.”

  “How’s Granite doing at MAAT?” Gaius asked. Leaning close to Rachel, he whispered, “Blackie’s younger brother was a senior at the Upper School last year, but this year, for college, he transferred to Minnesota Academy for Alchemy and Thaumaturgy.”

  Rachel leaned over and whispered back, “I know. He’s my second cousin.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Aloud Rachel said, “William, weren’t you thinking of going to MAAT, too? At least that’s what S…” Her voice cut off.

  “I did think about it, but I felt Roanoke had more to offer me, overall,” replied William.

  He did not ask her what she had been planning to say, which was for the best—because only after she had began to speak had Rachel recalled that she had only known about his plans because she and Sigfried had been spying on his conversation with Sandra.

  “What does MAAT have that Roanoke does not?” Rachel asked curiously. “I thought the other academies only offered a portion of our curriculum.”

  “That is true when it comes to sorcery,” William replied. “But Minnesota Academy for Alchemy and Thaumaturgy also offers mundane sciences not taught at Roanoke.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Rachel. “Yes. I guess that makes sense.”

  “MAAT is almost a training program for O.I.,” said Gaius, gesturing at the laboratory around them. “A great many of the graduates end up here.”

  “It’s the only school in the world that mixes magic and technology,” said Blackie. “Outside of Bavaria, anyway. And to answer your question, Valiant, my brother Granite’s doing well, when he can be bothered to go to class. He’s been there only three months, and he’s already running a gamblin’ ring. Spends too much time on non-scholastic pursuits, if you ask me.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  Gaius turned and gestured toward the rail gun and the surrounding lab. “So you are involved with this research?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’re working on rail guns?” prompted Gaius.

  “Yep.”

  “Ammunition or the weapon itself?”

  “Yep.”

  Rachel sighed. Even back when he had his entire memory, Blackie had never been a big conversationalist, but he used to be more forthcoming than this.

  She turned to William, who was leaning against the wall with only his shoulders touching the plaster, the rest of his body formed a straight diagonal line, as if he were propping up the building. He was smiling a rather sardonic smile. As he turned his head to glance at something in the lab, his dark brown hair fell forward, and Rachel noticed for the first time that his ears were slightly pointed. It made him look quite dashing.

  She quickly looked away. It would not do to fall in love with yet another of Gaius’s friends. Not that she was in love with Dread!

  “Blackie, you mentioned Transylvania?” she asked.

  “The king requested a weapon to fight his vampire menace,” William replied, his unexpected ears again hidden beneath his hair. “Blackie here is part of a team working on developing a rail gun that fires garlic.”

  “Still in the exploratory stages. Won’t be ready any time soon,” said Blackie curtly. “We’re experimentin’ with a few approaches: compressed garlic mixed with metal shavings to form the sabot, a sintered hollow projectile with garlic juice inside, and endowing our current ammunition with essence of garlic via alchemy. So far, this last one is the most promisin’. Wanna find the cheapest way to hurt those blood-suckin’ louts.”

  Gaius’s eyes widened. “You need a rail gun to shoot vampires?”

  “Suckers are tough.”

  Rachel giggled. Blackie just looked at her.

  “Besides,” Blackie added with a shrug, “it was a good excuse to design this prototype. Eventually, I hope to build a much bigger one—for flinging stuff into space.”

  “Siggy wants to go into space,” noted Rachel.

  Blackie grunted, “If we get the bigger model workin’, we’ll fling ’im up there for you.”

  “Can you tell us more—about this project?” asked Gaius, gesturing at the gun.

  “Well…” Blackie slid his hands into his pockets and tipped back on his heels, thinking. “One option is to try foamed metals, but our zero-g lab is not yet a hundred percent operational. Another option is gravomancy, which looks promisin’, but gravomancers are rare. We’re recruitin’ as we speak.”

  “Foamed metals!” Gaius’s eyes lit up. “I’ve read about those. So you’d fill the pores with garlic-infused gas?”

  They talked in detail about the experimental work, using many terms that Rachel did not know, some of which were not in any dictionary she had memorized. While she did not begrudge her boyfriend the time spent learning about things he found fascinating, she did not wish to be alone with her thoughts, which were growing darker.

  Who had robbed her cousin of his memory? What power was responsible for his terrible loss? Could it be someone upon whom she could sic Sigfried and Lucky? She imagined this mysterious entity, its head aflame, while Lucky and Sigfried roasted marshmallows.

  The thought of Blackie’s loss of memory was too disturbing. Casting about for a pleasant subject, Rachel recalled something she had overheard the Agents say back in September.

  She turned to Locke. “That glowing umber stuff your Rapid Response Team used to capture the demon in Tunis?” she asked. “That was the same stuff that caused you to abandon your plant in Miyagi Japan, wasn’t it?”

  William and Blackie exchanged glances. “How did you know…”

  Gaius cut them off with a laugh. “How does Rachel Griffin ever know anything?” He spread his hands. “It is one of the world’s great mysteries.”

  Rachel smiled slightly, secretly delighted by the boys’ reactions. “What is that stuff?”

  William smiled dryly and gestured at Blackie. “Here’s the man to ask. It was his research that made it possible. A high price to pay, but at least we are putting it to good use.”

  Rachel turned to her second cousin. “Was it the work you were doing when you lost your memory? The same project William worked on last summer?”

  Blackie nodded. “I was tryin’ to reproduce an experiment Locke and Dread performed their freshman year.”

  “Oh?” asked Rachel politely.

  “The two of them blew up the forest behind Roanoke Hall,” stated Blackie. “I’m told they still have trouble gettin’ magic to work there, even today.”

  “Hang on!” Rachel whirled around to face William. “The explosion that left that barren spot behind the main hall? That was you?”

  Locke covered his mouth with his fist and cleared his throat. “I believe it was. Yes.”

  “As Siggy would say, ‘Ace!’” laughed Rachel.

  “You mentioned this Siggy earlier. Before I schedule him to be flung into outer space, who is he?” asked Blackie.

  “My blood brother.”

  “Guess that makes ’im my blood-second cousin then.” Blackie pulled out his notebook and opened to the family tree. Grabbing a pen, he asked, “What’s his full name?”

  “Sigfried Smith the Dragonslayer,” Rachel replied with the proper amount of archness.

  “The kid who killed a dragon in the sewers of London?” Blackie wrote the name beside Rachel’s and put the little book back in his pocket. “Even I’ve heard of him.”

  Rachel continued, bright-eyed. “Siggy and I have been ever so curious about the exploded area. We wondered if the same method could be used to stop magic or produce wards.”

  “It can be used to freeze demons,” Blackie replied. “Unfortunately, we haven’t proceeded beyond the one application. Most of my notes conveniently disappeared during my ‘accident.’”

&
nbsp; Accident or… Rachel’s heart sank.

  “Erased by the Raven?” she whispered.

  “You mean the Guardian?” Blackie asked, a strange look in his steely eyes. “Don’t think we’re supposed to talk about him.”

  Of course, it was the Raven.

  That took the wind out of the sails of her elaborate plans for revenge. She could not hate the Raven. She could, however, hate whatever drove him to do such a thing. The demons? The chaos outside the Walls of the World? Whatever it was, she felt certain that the Raven would never rob someone’s memory for his own benefit.

  “Why not?” asked William. “Talk about the Guardian, I mean.”

  Blackie crossed his arms. “He’ll make us forget.”

  “Not me,” Rachel shook her head. “I can’t forget.”

  “Can’t? Not even if the Guardian wanted you to?” asked Blackie skeptically.

  Rachel nodded solemnly.

  William asked. “Because of the Rune that the elf-woman gave you?”

  “I thought you said it was okay to tell the others,” Gaius explained quickly. “Now that she’s…” He faltered, not uttering the word dead.

  “I did. It’s all right.” Rachel absently touched the side of her head, where the silver Rune was tattooed to her scalp, under her hair. “But it’s probably better not to tell too many folks.”

  “Perfect memory, huh?”

  Blackie grunted. “Can’t say I’m not envious, but I imagine it’s a burden, too.”

  “Why?” asked Rachel, surprised.

  Blackie shrugged. “Can’t forget pain? Can’t forget sorrow?”

  “I…suppose,” Rachel swallowed, her mask of calm sliding into place to hide how close to home his comment had struck. She thought of the trouble she had been having as the emotions she had tried to cast returned to haunt her. Pushing that matter aside for another time, she flashed the young men her brightest grin. “But the joy stays fresh, too.”

  “Maybe.” Blackie did not look convinced.

  “Are you planning to continue your research?” she asked. “To find more uses for the original experiment?”

  Blackie regarded her for a moment. Then he took a piece of paper, wrote on it, and handed it to her. On it, he had written: