Page 27 of Jacob Michaels is Dead

“Do you think we can’t trust her to tell the truth, or we can’t trust her to keep us safe?”

“What’s the difference?” I let go of Lucas’ hand and turned to look out my window into the darkness. “Trust is trust. If you can’t trust a person, you don’t know if they’ll sell you up the river the first chance they get. How do we know she won’t help us until the man in the black hooded cloak shows up, Lucas? Then she just…tosses us the wolves. No pun intended.”

“Surely.” Lucas snorted and pulled my hand back into his. “What other option do we have, though? That’s my whole argument. We can drive around Point Worth until you run out of gas—which, by the way, we’re running dangerously low on—or the sun comes up, whichever is first. Or we can go see if your—Esther Jean Wagner can help.”

“How do we know she won’t just attack us when we show up?”

“I don’t.”

“If she starts a fight, I’m not so sure I can take her, babe.” I sighed. “She could easily kill us both. I mean, maybe. Sometimes she acts scared of me. Like she’s afraid I’ll blast her to smithereens or something…but other times…she’s kind of formidable.”

Lucas laughed.

“Yeah.” He said. “I’ve seen those looks she gets.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“Rob,” He sighed, “just one last point I can make here. She kept you alive until you decided to leave town, and—”

“Which she probably put into my head!”

“—and if she wanted to do you harm, don’t you think she would have done it when you were young and defenseless? When you didn’t know how to use your magic?”

“I don’t remember, Lucas,” I grumbled. “Forget that part? Maybe she did try in the past and wasn’t able? I don’t have any idea what might have happened between us before I ran off. Which, I can’t even remember why I really decided to do that.”

“We decided that you should leave,” Lucas said suddenly. “You and I.”

“What?”

“You and I made that decision,” Lucas stated, his eyes darting around as if trying to remember something. “Maybe Esther Jean had something to do with that, but—”

“Is that something you just know again?” I urged him on.

“No, Rob.” Lucas turned to me, his eyes suddenly focused. “I just remembered that.”

I just stared at him.

“Why are we getting glimpses of memories we didn’t have before?” Lucas asked hurriedly. “Every now and then, I’m getting memories I didn’t have…minutes ago. What is that about? Is Esther Jean still messing with us somehow? Is that a real memory? Is it fake? What’s going on, babe?”

Chewing at my lip, I thought about that.

“You said something is draining magic out of Point Worth?” I began.

“Yeah?”

“Maybe whatever was keeping us in this…fog…is being stripped away, too.” I suggested warily. “If we wait long enough…”

“We’ll remember everything?” Lucas finished for me. “Like…remember the actual truth?”

“Maybe?”

Lucas continued to stare at me, as if processing that thought, working it over in his brain from beginning to end. Testing out the strength of such a theory before he settled on believing it to be true.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay. Okay. So…I’m the only person in this town whose magic isn’t tied to him, right?”

“Okay. Sure.”

“Say the magic is tied to this land. To Point Worth. He’s been siphoning off the land over the years…however many years he’s been trapped—”