my question. Relief choked me. I found enough energy to shove myself over to him and dragged him into an embrace. His delicately dark scent, like a sunny meadow hiding mossy depths, filled my nose, fantastically familiar. It sent a pang through my heart.
“I’m so glad we got you out,” I said, pulling back so I could look him in the face.
Snap regarded me, cocking his gorgeous head. “So am I,” he said brightly. “It was very kind of you.” His gaze slid from me to Ruse and then Thorn and Omen, who’d stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the table. “You all went to so much trouble to help me… Who are you?”
7
Sorsha
Thorn brandished the fruit like it was a sword. “This is a banana.”
Snap took the yellow crescent from him and brought it to his nose. He breathed in, and a dreamy smile crossed his lips. “It smells delicious. Is it for eating?”
Ruse chuckled where he was standing next to Thorn by the RV’s kitchen, but the sound came out a bit strained. “Absolutely! You ate one of those when we made our first appearance in Sorsha’s apartment. Jog any memories?”
Snap raised the banana to his lips, taking a bite right through the peel like he had that first time what felt like ages ago. Watching him, my breath caught in my throat. At this point, I didn’t really expect a light of recognition to spark in his eyes—the way it hadn’t after all the previous memory-jogging we’d attempted—but it was hard not to hope for it anyway.
He chewed thoughtfully, every motion like the shadowkind man I’d come to know and to care about a lot more than was typically my policy. Then he shook his head, regretful as always that he was letting us down in some way he didn’t even understand. “I don’t believe I’ve had one of these before. It’s fantastic, though!”
My stomach clenched tighter into the ball it’d been forming since Snap had first shown that he had no recollection of who any of us were. He was the same person—monster—whatever. It was just as if months, possibly years, had been wiped from his mind.
As the devourer downed the rest of the banana with equal enthusiasm to the one he’d pilfered from my kitchen, Ruse and I exchanged a glance. His was as fraught as my inner state. Omen had been held prisoner by the Company for weeks longer than Snap had, and his memories hadn’t been addled as far as any of us had noticed. But who knew what additional tortures the scientists might have devised? It could have been some new tactic in their scheme to infect all shadowkind with a deadly plague or an unintended side effect from one of their experiments.
I stroked Pickle’s back where he’d hopped onto my lap and tried to ignore the growing gnawing of the question I least wanted to face: What if Snap had lost those memories for good? All the work he’d done toward taking down the Company… All the intimacies and affection we’d shared…
When I’d first met him, he hadn’t even realized what physical pleasures his body was capable of. I wasn’t sure he’d felt anything for me other than gratitude that I’d helped free him—and he didn’t remember that now either. I was a total stranger who meant nothing to him, and there was no way to replicate the scenarios that had brought us to our unexpectedly passionate union.
“If our equine friends had left us behind some dish soap, I’d make you a bubble stew,” Ruse joked. “You liked those last time too.”
Snap’s forked tongue flicked over his lips. “Is this ‘bubble stew’ as tasty as the banana?”
“Ah, no, it’s not for eating—that one’s just fun to look at. Little shiny globes floating through the air.”
The devourer laughed. “For a place without magic, the mortal realm has a lot of marvelous things! So many different flavors and colors… So much vivid sound. This contraption that carries us great distances without us having to move our bodies at all.” He patted the RV’s table with an awed expression.
The Everymobile wasn’t carrying us anywhere right now. We’d parked it in the lot by the derelict strip mall while we sorted out what to do next. Omen stepped up to the table, his arms folded over his chest.
“It’s unfortunate that you don’t remember anything about our cause or the rest, but we do have to get on with that mission. Our