Page 50 of The Vanishing Bookstore
‘Ambrose, I don’t know what to say to you.’
He looked hurt and she felt awful that she kept on being like this to him, but what else was she supposed to do? She didn’t remember him, even though he’d never forgotten about her.
‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Can we talk?’
She nodded, unable to refuse him. Memories of his soft skin and warm hands had flooded her mind in the cab. She followed him up a small staircase to his apartment where he pointed to the couch and she sat down, relieved to be somewhere safe.
‘My memories are coming back fast and furious,’ she said as soon as her back hit the leather. She closed her eyes. ‘I remember the randomest things, like washing in freezing-cold forest streams, I know that the Salem Witch Trials were held in 1692, I know that we were hanged, all of us, and that you triedto help me in some way. Sephy said that you saved my life once, thank you.’
‘I know this is weird, Dora, but I feel pulled towards you.’ This made her sad, her heart felt as if it was tearing in two. His big blue eyes were so full of kindness that she wanted to hug him and tell him it was okay. And maybe it was. Because she was starting to remember so much more with every passing hour.
‘You need something to release the blockage, the memories are there inside your mind.’
She thought back to the witch trials memorial, the loud popping sound inside her head and waking up in hospital, but she didn’t tell him about that in case he worried too much and wouldn’t let her do what she needed to.
‘If I was a witch, did I have a costume: a pointy hat, a magic wand, a broomstick?’
He laughed, but not in an unkind way. ‘This isn’tHocus Pocus, Dora; you don’t keep young by sucking the life out of the kids of Salem.’
‘Phew, I’m glad to know that at least. You know what I mean though, did I have anything that was important to me?’
‘You had Hades, who never left your side. You had your dark grey linen dress with lace cuffs that Sephy sewed for you, by hand. You said that you loved it, that you felt powerful whenever you wore it. I don’t know what happened to that, but I can tell you one thing. You don’t need a magic wand or a witch costume, your magic is deep inside of you, and it always has been. Whether you choose to believe that or not.’
‘Do you think I still have the dress or that Lenny has it somewhere?’
She closed her eyes and saw herself standing at the edge of a forest, wearing a grey dress with a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. Her long black hair was blowing in the late summer breeze and her boots were speckled with mud from walking tooclose to the shore. She was young, sixteen at most if she had to guess. Hades was sitting on one shoulder, and she was watching the cottage she had once called home burning to the ground. She blinked and shook her head.
‘Did our home burn the first time?’
He nodded. ‘It did, after they took your mom and then your aunts, they didn’t burn anyone. Instead they hanged them from the thick branch of a tree. They came back for you, but we’d escaped, we made it to the forest and hid. They couldn’t find you, so they burned down the house and we left then. I had a small boat in the cove, and I hid you under a blanket and rowed away. I left my family behind, I left everything.’
‘For me?’
He nodded. ‘For you, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat, Dora.’
‘Thank you, I’m lucky to have you as a friend, Ambrose.’
She reached out and stroked his cheek. Where her fingers touched his skin, she felt a tiny fizz of electricity in the tips and wondered if he could feel it too.
32
‘You look a little pale, Dora, have you eaten?’ Ambrose asked.
She shook her head.
‘Why don’t you get cosy and I’ll make you something. We can’t go out hunting for a book on an empty stomach.’
Dora nodded and lay back, not sleepy in the least but afraid of talking to Ambrose for much longer. As she closed her eyes, she felt the room begin to swim a little as if the sofa had been tipped to one side, like being in a bunk on a boat, the way the swell of the ocean made it rock from side to side, and then she was there on a huge sailing ship, not a cruise ship but one that looked like theMarie Celeste, which was the only sailing boat she could name. There weren’t many other passengers, just the crew, herself and two young children. She called out to them, but they disappeared before her very eyes and the next moment she was walking along a dirt track through a forest, then running as if someone was chasing her. She reached the end of a cliff and threw herself down into the sea, a silent scream on her lips. She didn’t hit the water though; in the blink of an eye, she was scurrying down an alley carrying a velvet box in one hand.
She could see the Empire State Building in the distance and realised she was in New York. Her mind took her from oneplace to another, in all of them there was the same woman, yet slightly different, and she realised it was her. In New York she was smiling and flirting with a floppy-haired young man who she knew was Ambrose although his eyes were darker, and his skin tanned as they sipped cocktails in a bar on Fifth Avenue. The captain on the boat turned to smile at her; it was Ambrose’s smile, there was no mistaking it even though he had a rough beard and a hat pulled tight on top of his head. She turned onto her side. She needed to find the book and hopefully it would loosen the rest of the memories to fill the blanks in.
She saw herself in Salem. Recognising the main street and the common, she walked arm in arm with Sephy and Lucine. They were smiling and laughing at something, all three of them dressed in gowns that would have been fashionable in the 1700s. This was really happening, for some strange reason Dora and her aunts were living life after life, and some of them looked fun, others not so much. At some point her mind must have shut down and her eyes closed, letting her fall asleep, because when the phone began to ring, she took a moment to wake up and find her bearings.
‘Hello.’
Dora’s voice was rough, tired and she was getting a cold.
‘Ms English, this is Officer Eric McKinley, did I wake you up?’
