But I keep pushing. It feels like I’m a magnet walking toward another one, repelled with each step. I place my hands on the wall to feel my way forward. And at last I reach a Trunk and then a handle.
When I touch the handle, my mind fills with Luca. I see his brown eyes. I see the vest he always wears. I see everything. The images flash before me, too fast and blurry to properly make out. But they are there. The memories, though muddled, are there.
This is his Trunk. He is an illusion.
And he must be innocent.
I swing it open.
Luca, however, doesn’t disappear. He remains in the cage, though the Trunk stands waiting for him, sucking the air out of me like a vacuum. Why doesn’t Luca disappear? After a few more moments of waiting, I shut the Trunk and take three deep breaths.
Then I notice the charms hanging inside the cage. Maybe they’re preventing Luca from leaving.
But the only person who would think to put those in the cage would have to know that Luca is an illusion. And there are only three people who have access to Luca: my father, Chimal and Agni. The only person capable of creating Hellfire—a fire-worker—is Agni. He would’ve recognized Luca’s charms for what they were.
My stomach fills with dread. Has it been Agni all along? He could’ve lied about the informant. He could’ve fed lies directly into my father’s ear. Villiam trusts him more than anyone.
I need to get Luca out of here, and fast. If Agni is behind all of this, then even Villiam could be in danger. Then I think back to the incident with the horses and realize that he might have been in danger since the beginning.
Desperate for a solution, I open the other Trunks. First, Unu and Du and Nicoleta. Unu and Du appear beside me, and they stumble as their legs hit the ground.
“Where are we?” Unu asks.
“Smells like shit,” Du says.
“Language,” Nicoleta hisses. She materializes behind me. “We’re in the Menagerie tent.” Her eyes fall on Luca. “What’s going on? Why are we here with him, Sorina?”
“I think he’s innocent.”
“How can you—”
“He’s an illusion, Nicoleta,” I say. “I don’t know how. My mind... I don’t remember creating him. It doesn’t make sense, I know, but he is.”
I expect her to argue with me, to claim that I’m breaking down under too much stress. For days now, we’ve all begun to believe that Luca is the killer, that he’s the Alliance spy. That he’s dangerous.
Nicoleta looks at me, wide-eyed, for a long moment. But she doesn’t argue.
“I need you two to be lookouts,” Nicoleta says to Unu and Du. “We’re going to figure out how to get Luca out of this cage.”
The four of us exchange glances. If Venera were here, this would be easy. Venera could bend through the bars and throw the charms out, and then I could make Luca disappear. But the situation isn’t entirely hopeless. Nicoleta has her strength, after all, even if her abilities come and go.
“I need you to bend the cage bars,” I tell her. “Please.”
“I don’t know if I can.” She holds her hands behind her back. “I... I messed up the last time. I failed you.”
“But no one else can get him out,” I say.
“But I’m not strong enough—”
“Please,” I beg her. “Please try.”
Nicoleta takes a deep breath, nods and then walks to the cage. She grabs two rungs with each hand and pulls. Nothing happens.
“Nicoleta—”
“Just give me a minute,” she snaps. “I’m not talented like the rest of you, I know. But I can do this. I can do this.” Her voice quiets, as if she’s only talking to herself.
She pulls again. The bars give a little, but not much. Not enough.
“Why is it that everyone else is special and I’m the useless one?” she says, nearly in hysterics. I’ve never seen Nicoleta like this. She always wears a mask of composure. The effort of bending the bars must be draining.
I place my hands on her shaking shoulders. “You’re the least useless of all of us,” I say gently. “You’re the one who holds us all together. You’re the one keeping everyone sane.”
“And who’s keeping me sane?” she snaps, tugging on the metal bars. They screech and bend some more. “Who’s taking care of me?”
“I...” I don’t have an answer for that. This entire time, I’ve been leaning on Nicoleta for help. While I’ve been gone with Luca, searching for the killer, Nicoleta has been repairing the mess at home. Buying food, even if no one eats it. Doing the laundry. Setting up and packing up. Ensuring that our lives go on. She has managed to simultaneously run our family and, when I asked her, to help me capture Dalimil. Maybe I have been asking too much of her.
She groans and pulls more on the bars. Slowly, they give way, barely enough for me to reach my arm through and grab the charms near the top of the cage. I reach inside and rip them off, and then I drop them to the dirt and grind them into pieces with my heel.
“Now what?” she asks.
“Now I make him disappear,” I say.
I return to the Trunks in my mind and reach for that last one, the one hidden within the haze of forgotten memories. I unlatch the lock and reach out for Luca’s Strings. They’re there, taut and binding him to me. How did I never notice them? I’ve never thought to look for them before, of course, but I can’t believe that they’ve been invisible to me all this time.
I gather the Strings in my hands and throw them into the Trunk. Luca disappears from inside the cage and enters the Trunk in my head. He’s safe.
I throw my arms around Nicoleta. “Thank you,” I breathe. “Thank you.”
She squeezes me until my chest hurts. “We’re going to get out of this. Even if it means leaving Gomorrah, we’re going to escape.”
If leaving Gomorrah will keep my family safe, then so be it. But it may not come to that. If Agni is the killer, then everything would be solved. The investigations would end, and my family could stay here.
But he might not be.
“Well, I guess this means Luca is definitely an illusion,” Nicoleta says.
“Yes.” It takes me several seconds to manage the word. Because yes means that something is wrong with my memory. Yes means that all of this makes less sense than it ever did. Yes means that I fell for someone I made up. Yes means I made up someone to fall for. And for him to fall for me.
The two of us walk to the doorway out of the room, where Unu and Du sit on the ground and wait, muttering to themselves.
“There’s been no one here,” Unu says.
“Not a soul,” Du echoes.
Nicoleta looks around the dressing room and then turns to me, her voice hushed.
“Your mind must have been tampered with,” she says. “A mind-worker.”
“I don’t know any mind-workers,” I say. I mean, I technically do. I know Tuyet, though her mind-working isn’t normal and might not be able to alter someone’s memories. And there are several other mind-workers in Gomorrah, but no one I associate with.
“That doesn’t matter,” she says. “There has to be a mind-worker involved.”
“Do you know any mind-workers? By name? Who would want to hurt us? Who would know anything about us?”