Page 4 of Memories of the Lost

“Migraine?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“D’you mind if I try something?”

“Go ahead.”

He took her left hand and pinched a point between her thumb and forefinger. “Okay?”

“Mm.” Nothing stopped the aura once it began, but it didn’t really hurt, either. It was just blinding and strange. If anything could hold off the migraine itself, she was willing to try.

He kept pressing the skin on her hand. “Tell me if the pressure is too much.”

The sensation was solid, a focus point, and after a little while—two minutes or ten?—the rumbling threat started to ease. The aura pulsed, true to its own schedule, almost twenty minutes to the second every single time. It covered her right eye in bright geometric rainbows—then ceased. She kept her eyes closed a moment longer, and Liam kept pressing the spot on her hand. She took the compress from her eyes. Waited. Nothing.

“Wow.”

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said with some sense of wonder. “Is that acupressure?”

“It is.” His hands dropped to his lap.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“Part of my job.” He flashed a quick, rueful smile. So appealing, a little diffident, and she didn’t think it was feigned. It offset the dazzlement of his beauty.

“You’re an acupuncturist?”

“Not exactly.”

“You don’t want to say?”

A shrug.

“Okay. Well ... um ... thank you.” She dipped her head sideways. “Twice.”

He held her gaze. Such clear irises, somehow guileless. A disturbance rippled in the air, just out of sight, a soft shift in time, maybe, a shimmer of green and blue.

“Right, then,” he said. “You good now?”

Tillie nodded. “Are you here with someone?”

“No. I ducked in to get out of the rain.”

“Can I buy you a coffee or a beer or something?”

The smile was slow. “Yeah.”

“Let me tell my friend.”

They stood together. The quickest way through the room was through the narrow space by the painting that had captured her earlier. She could almost hear it, and planned to pass with her eyes averted, but as if it carried its own alarm, it called her attention. She slowed. Stopped.

Pinks and greens and turquoise. Blocks and shapes, almost abstract but not. “It’s not my usual thing,” she said. “Why can’t I stop looking at it?”

“I like it,” he said. “The children, the cat, the sense of the forest, lurking. Dangerous and inviting. The colors are great.”

That sound returned, muted, a call, a faraway roar. The buzzy sense of disconnect crawled up her neck, and Tillie felt like she couldalmostsee something, feel something, like she wanted to speak. No, she wanted to climb through the painting into that other world. “Ugh.” She straightened, rubbed the back of her neck. “It just gives me such a strange feeling, like ...” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I can’t call it in.”