Page 27 of Memories of the Lost

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Wulfecombe

Sage’s superpower was her extraordinary memory. It stretched to her very earliest days. Unfortunately, because she’d lived through a number of traumatic things and had then skulked around too long in the half light of lostness, she carried a load of unfortunate memories. She tried not to visit those things too often, but she was wise enough—now, anyway—that she didn’t try to wall them off, either.

The upside of her memory was that she remembered good things, too, like the way her mother used to lean in to kiss her at bedtime, tucking her in with three kisses—one to her forehead, one to her nose, one to her cheek. She always took a breath on the last one, as if inhaling her daughter.

Sage also remembered the first time she tasted chocolate. She must have been three or so, and a neighbor had brought over a cake, layers and layers of chocolate—cake and icing, cake and icing, tiny layers of crumbly texture, and a drizzle of purest chocolate over the top. She was a fussy eater, always, but that cake had broken through every barrier she’d ever imagined.

She knew now that chocolate cake was not always the easiest to make, but the fine ganache icing and the drizzles had knocked her brain right out of her head, turned her into a being of pure sensuality. Theadults had found her adorable, taking pictures of her licking her fingers, chocolate smeared over not just her face but also her hair and clothes.

At four, her life had been upended with a brutal and devastating twist that left Sage marooned in a lonely world. That loneliness had led her away from that sensual joy, down a long and crooked road. At fifteen, she’d discovered the cursed forgetfulness that addiction offered, and wandered away from the tethers of her mother and her village, lost in the city on her own.

But at the age of twenty-seven, at the bottom of one of her darkest days, she’d stopped in front of the shop of a chocolatier on a London street. It was a tiny place, tucked between two expensive boutiques, but the external wall was violet, and gold lettering proclaimed its purpose:Madame Alain, chocolatier.

The smell of it wafted out, rich and deep. Alive. Forgetting that she would not be welcome in her current state, ragged and unwashed, she allowed it to lure her inside. She had no money. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten.

And yet. She stood in the center of the tiny shop, surrounded by the textured scent of chocolate, and breathed. Breathed all the way to bottom of her soul. It stirred the shriveled parts, the pieces twisted and neglected, and they began to breathe with her, take on life.

A woman spoke from behind the counter. “Here you are, dear,” she said. “A sample.”

“Oh,” Sage said, hauled back to reality. “I don’t have any money.”

The woman lifted a sanguine shoulder. “I have plenty of samples. You look like you could do with a little sweetness. Try this one. It has a little orange.”

Sage accepted the gift, taking a small bite, the smallest she could manage so that it would last. It melted in bits on her lonely, starved tongue, and as if it were enchanted, it awakened her mouth, bright orange and sweet ganache and slivers of dark bitter chocolate. She savored it, tasting something for the first time in years. She was, for a moment, genuinely alive. Alight.

The woman smiled, as benevolent as a fairy godmother.

It didn’t happen that day or even that week, but not long after, Sage found her way into a rehab to help her detox, and then into a halfway house where she worked at a vegan café for two years. When she trusted that her light was truly, completely flickering within, she went back to Madame Alain and asked to be her apprentice.

It was the most potent decision of her life, and no one would ever convince her that there was no magic in the alchemy of chocolate. It had healed her, that kiss of chocolate, awakening her to life as surely as the prince kissing the sleeping princess. Not that she’d ever wanted a prince, of course, though she’d found quite a pretty princess.

This morning, she’d come to the shop early, before dawn had fully broken the horizon. The town was sleeping, only the odd stray cat out hunting, and she’d let herself in to the old building to commune with the ghosts who’d not yet taken themselves to bed. She felt them rustling, reliving their times in these kitchens. She didn’t mind their company as she pulled out ingredients, feeling a taste on her tongue, something elusive. Cream, of course. Dark chocolate, but not the darkest. Butter. Something popped, clear and bright. Yes, butter for caramel? No, toffee.

Hmm. She hadn’t done much with toffee. Paula loved caramel, so she usually stopped there, but if the magic was urging her to make toffee, there must be a reason.

Toffee, it would be. Magic bites for someone who needed them.

CHAPTER TWELVE

New York City

The unfulfilled promise of sex after Liam left made Tillie restless and prowly. The work she should have done earlier was lost to the strange fugue state, for lack of a better description. She didn’t know what else to call the lost time. Her stomach twisted in worry.

The best use of her restlessness was painting. To keep herself centered, she started Spotify on the Bluetooth speakers she’d installed in the corners of the studio, then changed into painting clothes. As was her ritual, she rounded the studio, looking afresh at each of the paintings, standing in front of each at a distance to check its impact and balance while also reminding herself what she was doing.

The woman nursing a wolf cub was one of the best this round—dangerous and moody, with what one critic called her “exquisite elevated sensibility.” The others, too, had a spirit to them—the owl-mermaid girl was lost at sea, navigating home by the light of the moon. One showed an old woman offering food to the fairies, and in the shadows was a girl who’d grown too large for the world of the fey, chained to a tree.

Not all were dark, though most of them had an edge, but even the dark subjects held a reverence for nurturing. It didn’t take an expert to interpret her longing for her mother. The woman feeding the fairies hadArlette’s face and body, a chubby woman walking toward a fantastical barn with magical goats trailing behind.

So far, so good. She needed four more. The series felt tapped out, as if she was ready to move into the next phase of work, but needed to finish this one first.

The table in the middle of the room was scattered with the cat drawings, and she leafed through them, suddenly intrigued by the possibilities. The wise, human eyes, the long whiskers. She often painted dogs and goats and little cats, but this one was very different. Curious, she picked up a thick stick of graphite and started to sketch—

Then she remembered the weird afternoon, the lost time. Sticking AirPods in her ears, she dialed Jon. He picked up immediately. “Hey!”

“Are you busy?”