The Memory Puller (The Memory Puller Series Book 1)
The Memory Puller: Chapter 15

Cassandra stalked through the trellises between the Temple and Cloisters, the sun ablaze in orange fire on the horizon.

As she headed towards her nightly kitchen duty, she contemplated what she’d seen in the young man’s memories, both of which she’d pocketed as soon as she realized she might need to track him down for questioning. He’d already left the Temple by the time she scrambled into the waiting area after him. And, of course, he hadn’t given his name or address. The Temple offered anonymity to anyone who requested it.

She couldn’t shake the sight of Sister Kouris’s face. Even if Cora had left the order willingly, that young man’s memory had made it clear that Sister Kouris had not. Unless she had left willingly and been captured after?

Regardless, the damaged memory was almost entirely useless. The portion showing both the cell and Sister Kouris had dissolved. Even if Cassandra decided to trust Mother Superior and show her the memory, all the abbess would see was a long walk down a black hallway.

Cassandra didn’t recognize the hallway, but the lights on the walls and lock on the door suggested the building must possess Fae magic. And, obviously, she didn’t recognize the pleasure house from the young man’s other memory.

Though perhaps it would be easier to identify the red brick bell tower she’d spied through the window. If she could locate the bell tower and by extension, the pleasure house, perhaps she could track down that courtesan to learn the young man’s name or where to replace him. And perhaps he could lead them to Sister Kouris.

The scent of chopped onions and roasted garlic pulled Cassandra from her deductions.

The kitchen in the Cloisters was unlike any that Cassandra had previously known. A massive hearth with a twelve-burner stovetop and three ovens jutted out from a tan stone arch. Most kitchens in the colonies required a fire to cook over, but the gigantic magical appliance delivered a flame with the turn of a knob.

In front of the hearth stood a rustic wooden workbench above which hung copper pans and dried herbs. A deep white porcelain sink occupied one corner of the room.

But the coup de grâce was the enormous metal box, tall enough to walk in, that hummed quietly in the other corner—an icebox chilled with Fae magic and loaded with perishable meats, dairy, and produce.

As usual, the harried kitchen staff pinged around the room in preparation for dinner service; feeding forty hungry Sisters was no easy feat.

Cassandra approached the workbench to greet Mistress Eklan, the kitchen stewardess.

Fifty years ago, Mistress Eklan had journeyed to the Temple in her youth seeking sanctuary. She’d escaped an untenable situation in the southern colonies upon which she’d never elaborated. And though Cassandra was too polite to pry, she suspected it involved an abusive husband.

Since Mistress Eklan wasn’t a virgin and, therefore, ineligible to join the Shrouded Sisters, she’d begged Mother Superior for any position within the Temple. The abbess had relented, allowing the woman to oversee the kitchen and the mortal staff and livvies who toiled there.

Short and thin with a stooped back and severe gray bun, the tough, no-nonsense woman ran her kitchen like a military operation. Cassandra had the utmost respect for her.

“Back for more, eh?” Mistress Eklan cackled, the same joke she’d made every night since Cassandra had been assigned the chore.

Cassandra bobbed a respectful curtsy. “Yes, Mistress Eklan. How can I help tonight?”

“Pile of carrots over there needs chopping. Diced this time! Not those hack-job chunks you tried to slip past me last night.”

“Yes, Mistress.” Cassandra made to move down the workbench when Mistress Eklan grabbed her wrist with wrinkled, knobby fingers.

“She’s been looking for you,” the old woman said.

“Mistress Eklan, you know that’s not possible. She doesn’t even know who I am.”

“She knows.”

Cassandra rolled her eyes, not believing Mistress Eklan despite desperately wanting to.

Mistress Eklan nodded her head back. “She’s washing dishes over at the sink. Go say hi before you ruin my carrots. She’s been waiting for you all day.”

“You don’t know that, Mistress.”

“I do. Go.”

Cassandra walked to the sink where a frail, thin obliviate was running a soapy cloth over a dinner plate. The livvie had curly, black hair threaded with gray and her deep brown eyes were lightless and vacant as she tracked Cassandra’s approach.

“Hi, Mama,” Cassandra whispered.

The woman showed no reaction, merely stared beyond Cassandra for a moment, then returned to her dish.

“Mistress Eklan said you’ve been looking for me, but we both know that’s impossible. You’re never looking for anyone.” There was no cruelty in Cassandra’s words, just quiet resignation.

Her mother said nothing, continued her task.

It was difficult for Cassandra to reconcile this shell of a person with the spirited woman she’d known her mother to be before her father had died, and they’d been forced into this half-life.

Cassandra’s father had been a member of Thalenn’s mortal police force. A boisterous man set on wringing every last drop of pleasure from life, he’d loved his daughter and wife with a fierceness that Cassandra had sometimes found suffocating. Until it was gone.

He had sparkling blue-gray eyes—Cassandra’s eyes—and a long, braided beard that Cassandra used to stroke as she fell asleep when she was little. Cradled in his strong arms, she would try to stay awake as he spun her wild tales of the monsters roaming the continent. Her mother would scold him, complain the stories were too scary, and he would laugh her off, insisting his daughter was the bravest girl in Ethyrios.

That the monsters of the world would cower before her.

On good days, Cassandra still believed him.

When Cassandra had turned ten, two years before he’d died, he gifted her the pendant and started training her in the backyard of their cozy, two-bedroom house in Thalenn’s southern suburbs. He taught her how to defend herself, how to use an enemy’s momentum to her advantage, how to wield a dagger and shoot a stun pistol, how to escape bindings.

And, most importantly, how to conquer her fear when her mind screamed at her to succumb to it. How to breathe deeply, still her racing thoughts, focus on her body’s movement and the scene unfolding before her, and nothing else.

Repeat the mantra, he coached her.

Blade up, fear down.

She remembered the night he died in vivid, agonizing detail. A message came just after dinner: a young girl had been abducted by a Beastrunner, a coyote bi-form, who’d been trafficking mortals to the continent and selling them as consorts out of a place called the Serpent’s Den. His clients were unscrupulous Fae who would feed off the girls’ emotions and do the High Gods knew what else with them.

Her father wasn’t on duty that night, but he went anyway, glancing toward Cassandra in anguish as he strode out the door.

She hadn’t understood what that look had meant until she was older. He’d been imagining that she’d been abducted. And he wouldn’t, couldn’t stand by and do nothing if there was even a slim chance of saving the girl.

In her nightmares, Cassandra often heard her mother’s tortured howl and her knees cracking the floorboards as she’d opened the door that night upon the mortal police chief.

Helmet in hand and wearing a sorrowful grimace, he told them what had happened. “I’m so sorry, Mistress Fortin. He did save the girl. He’ll be remembered as a hero.”

Her mother scoffed, gazing up at the chief through tear-soaked eyes. “And who will save our girl?”

Cassandra wanted to tell her mother that she didn’t need saving. That she could save herself. She was the bravest girl in Ethyrios, after all. But she didn’t feel capable of saying the words.

So she simply walked to her room, leaving her mother wailing by the door. She pulled out her wooden dagger and performed the exercises that she and her father had been practicing earlier that day.

Blade up, fear down. Blade up, fear down. Blade up, fear down.

She executed the movements for hours until her limbs trembled, and she could barely hold the practice dagger. She collapsed to the floor, and the grief she’d been holding at bay with the precise movements swallowed her whole.

Her mother had never recovered. Cassandra wasn’t convinced that she herself had either. They were evicted from the house a month later, unable to afford the payments since Cassandra’s mother was in no state to hold down a job. They moved into a decrepit studio apartment in the Thalenn slums, and her mother started selling memories, the only means of support she was capable of.

She was obliviated ten months later.

Cassandra was sitting in the waiting room at the Temple when it happened. Mother Superior floated into the quiet, antiseptic space like a wraith and crouched before her, swallowing Cassandra’s small pale hands within her larger mahogany ones.

“Your mother has been called by the Goddess Letha, my child. She will bathe in the waters of Oblivion for eternity, at peace. You must not weep for her.”

And Cassandra hadn’t wept. She’d held her tears then, like the brave girl she was. Had been holding them for the past eight years.

Cassandra often wondered what memories still rattled around in the empty cavern of her mother’s mind, stalking through the shadowed crevices. Did her mother recognize the faces? And did she know that the memories were hers, that she herself had lived them?

Cassandra hoped, at the very least, that some of the happiness remained. That even a glimpse of the love she’d so frequently witnessed between her parents had remained. Cassandra held onto that hope, knew she would shatter into a thousand pieces if she ever let go of it.

To see her mother so broken by her father’s death, even before the obliviation, had left an indelible mark on Cassandra’s budding teenage mind.

Was love worth that kind of devastation?

Cassandra had decided it wasn’t. And though she chafed against her chastity vow in the physical sense, she appreciated the emotional boundaries it placed upon her.

The vow protected her from giving herself to someone who could hurt her, whether purposefully or not. Her father’s destruction of her mother certainly hadn’t been intentional, but her mother had been destroyed nonetheless. Cassandra was determined to never, ever go through anything like that. Ever.

It was why she would never act on her feelings for Tristan, no matter how much her body was begging her to do so.

If she dropped her guard, even for a moment, he could utterly ruin her.

Cassandra wrapped her arms around her mother, placing a gentle kiss atop her head.

Her mother didn’t react. Didn’t lean into the embrace, didn’t stiffen against it. Just continued swirling her cloth against the plate.

“I’ll be here if you need me, Mama,” Cassandra whispered into her mother’s hair. “I promise.”

It was the same offer Cassandra made every time she saw Mama. The offer she made to honor her mother’s sacrifice. The offer Cassandra would never stop making, even if her mother never accepted.

Cassandra returned to the workbench and started peeling carrots.

Mistress Eklan hobbled over and squeezed Cassandra’s arm.

“She knows, girl. She knows.”