“Many,” I said. “If you think of a lost dog, you’ll believe I guessed it. So think of something else. Something only you would know.”
He went quiet again. His hands were warm against mine, a fine charge of electricity moving between us. It was exciting and comforting at the same time. I closed my eyes. I had never done this in a public place before, outside my own sitting room, yet I shut out the world, the voices at the other tables, the clinking of china, the tinkle of a bell as the door opened, the sounds from the street. I let it all wash away. You are in control, Ellie, my mother always told me. Manage your power. Train it. It can be made to follow your will.
And it could. I could feel it, could feel my mind opening, could feel something at the edges of my thoughts, like an itch. It was something powerful, something—
“Ellie,” James rasped.
“What is it?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and then I saw it.
A forest. The trunks black and narrow, the tops of the trees heavy, everything dappled black and white in the intermittent light. The wind whistling in a low voice, the ground hard and cold, shapes moving through the trees, running. The heavy tang of smoke, in the eyes, in the throat, pulled into the lungs, the taste of it everywhere. And the smell . . . dear God, the smell . . .
Geben Sie es mir.
Give it to me.
Someone was screaming.
Geben Sie es mir.
Pain as deep as a scalpel’s blade, overwhelming. Something wet and warm. My vision blurring. Deadwood in the undergrowth next to me.
Geben Sie es mir!
Shaking against the ground, the soles of my boots rattling on the hard earth as my legs convulse and shiver. Reaching into the front of my tunic, smeared with blood, my eyes watering in the wind, groping with fingers gone numb with cold. The deadwood in the undergrowth—don’t look at it. Don’t. Just give it to him, and quickly.
Rifle shots crack through the trees. The German’s face is suddenly clear, gray with fear, the pimples on his skin etched in ink. His chin and neck are red with cold, red from the rough shave he gave himself in the ice this morning with a dull blade and no mirror. His hand grasps my numb wrist and pulls the thing from my hand, and he backs away. The smell comes again, sickening. And in the undergrowth, where the ground is wet with gore, something moves—
I opened my eyes. My feet were pressing into the floor, pushing me back in my seat, my hands jerking away from James’s and into my lap. I did nothing but gasp for a moment, my pulse beating hard in my neck, my mouth dry. James’s dark-lashed eyes opened slowly and regarded me with a look that was utterly unfathomable.
“Why?” I managed, my voice strangled.
He blinked slowly, as if coming out of a dream.
The vision still lingered like smoke, but from the edges of perception I began to hear the everyday noises of the restaurant around us. “Why did he want your canteen?” I asked.
Shock rippled over his face. “What?” he said to me. “What did you just say?”
“Your canteen. Why did he want it? What could he possibly want it for? Was it a trophy?” I swallowed, pressed my hand to my face. “The smell—I think I might be sick. And there was something—something moving . . .”
His hand shot out and grabbed my upper arm, harsh and bruising. His face was utterly pale. “Ellie. What did you just see?”
“I saw what you saw!” His hand was icy on me. Something awful moved in the depths of his gaze, and suddenly I was appalled beyond measure that he had actually lived through what I had just seen—lived through that, and more. Weeks, months of it. How could anyone come through such a thing with his sanity intact? “They were dying in the woods,” I said, knowing as I spoke that the words were inadequate, that everything was inadequate. “In the undergrowth. The man on the ground next to you was named Fenton, but I can’t see what happened to him. It was something horrible, and he was screaming.”
“My God,” he said softly.
“The German took your canteen. After the battle, after you’d been injured. I don’t know whether he was thirsty, or whether it was just a trophy. That’s the belonging you were thinking about—the canteen. Wasn’t it? A gift from your father. You lost it, and you wanted to know what happened to it.” My throat felt as though lined with sandpaper. “He lived barely sixteen hours after he took it. His body fell in a ditch; no one found it. Not until after the war, and it was so—so decomposed, they—”
His grip tightened. “Stop it.”
“They buried him in a graveyard with other unknown soldiers. I can’t see the name of it. I don’t know where it is. They knew it was an English canteen, but they buried him with it anyway. He’s in the sixteenth row, the seventh grave from the right. He—”
“Stop it,” he said again, louder.
People were looking at us now. I saw an older man, an apron tied around his waist, watching us with consternation and a trace of uncertainty, and I realized he must be the owner, wondering whether he should intervene. I pulled my arm gently, but James did not relinquish his grip.
“James,” I begged softly.
He looked at his hand on my arm, his fingers disappeared into the fabric of my sleeve, and he let me go. He looked sick.
I nodded at the man in the apron. “It’s all right,” I said to him. “He’s upset. I’m sorry.”
The man gave James a narrow look and reluctantly turned away.
My headache loomed, insistent. I’d need to rest, and soon; I’d used my powers three times that day already, and this last vision was one of the strongest I’d ever encountered. “I don’t know what to say,” I said to James. “I’m sorry.” I searched his face for something, anything, to indicate that it was all right, but I found nothing. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” I was babbling now. “I can usually control it. The visions aren’t usually so complete. The smells, and the cold, and the screaming . . .”