Call Spirits in Your Past **Book Two**

Chapter 22 (Thursday)

Ana blinked, thoughts foggy like she was waking up from anesthesia. She hadn't ever had surgery where she'd been knocked out, but apparently Kwayo had. That's what his memory was.

He broke his wrist a few years ago, by shapeshifting into a burrowing owl and trying to fly, only to crash and break his wing--or wrist, when he shifted back to human form.

His mom took him to the hospital for surgery, and he'd been terrified that she'd leave him there, her weird kid who turned into a bird. But he came out of anesthesia in a hospital bed and his mom had been there to take him home.

She'd driven the whole way silent and stony faced. Didn't say a word when she parked in their driveway and stormed into their house. Kwayo crept up to their front step, sinking to the porch and holding his cast, wishing he'd had the courage to fly away.

Ana glanced around at the four of them. Kwayo still laid in bed, Dryda seated on the covers next to him. Teremki stood beside Ana, near a chair shoved to the corner. They each glanced at her expectantly, and she took a breath. "Don't expect too much."

The force of a memory rose within her. How had her brain picked it out? How had any of their minds chosen what to share? Or rather, what they hadn't shared, and why Dryda thought their telepathy had disappeared in the first place.

She exhaled, letting all the colors go.

Nothing happened. She blinked. "Is something supposed to happen?" she asked. None of them replied. Teremki wavered on his feet, so Ana pulled the chair up behind him. He collapsed into it. Dryda slumped backwards to the bed. Ana tamped down on her panic. This hadn't happened during Kwayo's memory. Or Dryda and Teremki's. She'd been standing on her feet for all of them. "Guys?" she asked again, barely whispering, and the walls disappeared.

She stumbled backwards, catching herself on the hard tile with her hands. The bed crept into black, leaving Kwayo and Dyrda suspended in the air. Then the floor dissolved into murky black, only she didn't fall. It was like her illusions were taking control. She tried pushing them back.

Dryda disappeared and her mind flashed back to the school, Dryda's capture. The empty dorm, nameless fears lurking in every shadow. She let loose a burst of yellow color from her breath, pushing away the blackness. But the color wilted like a flower and melted away, taking Kwayo with it. "Stop it!" she shouted, pushing illusion after illusion at Teremki and where Kwayo and Dryda had lain. Faces stuck for a heartbeat, striped shirts, wings, talons, pinwheeling skins--but they all dissolved. Then Teremki vanished too.

A mirror appeared. Ana stood behind it. In a jungle, then in an old castle, then beneath the sea. The scenes faded, reflecting nothing behind the mirror, except her silhouette, and she walked forward slowly, reaching out at a hand.

Her hand touched her silhouette in the glass, and it didn't feel like anything. She took her hand away and rubbed her fingers together, and felt nothing. Her fingers dissolved into the darkness and she felt nothing. She stared in the mirror, at her silhouette, and the solid fingers there. She opened her mouth that didn't exist, but the mirror's mouth opened and a color came out, bright orange in its intensity, sucking in all the black that used to be her

And she was standing on the tile. Gasping.

I think we have abandonment issues, Kwayo said.

Ana shook her head. Really? We had to share our deepest fears just to be able to talk like this again?

Dryda groaned. Teremki was still standing up, and the chair she thought she'd moved was still by the wall.

"We won't be able to talk like this much longer," Teremki said.

Really? Dryda asked. From one image?

"Yes," Teremki said, then hesitated. An image bloomed in Ana's mind. Of a little doll, gray ash in her pink pigtails, lying on the rocky ground. To the side, a small girl walked away, space swirling around her and distorting the crumbling building in the background. Ana slowly regained focus of the room again.

"But..." Dryda paused. "How does that prove we're going to split up?"

Teremki bit his lip. "This drawing wasn't a single moment. It felt more like a series of moments, building on each other. I guess it doesn't prove we're going to split up, but..." he shrugged. "I drew this girl for a reason."

"Isn't that the school?" Kwayo asked.

"So Verspri goes to the school?" Dryda asked.

Ana glanced at her in confusion. "Verspri?"

Dryda nodded, bouncing the bed slightly. "Yeah. Verspri and Tara were there in the background."

Ana shared a look with Kwayo. "I didn't see that," Kwayo slowly said.

"They did sort of blend in with the cafeteria," Teremki said, and the image appeared in her mind again. This time, she glimpsed two little people, vaguely like Verspri and Tara, just outside the distorted waves the girl was making. Over by a different, faintly glowing building, a small group of people huddled close, distinguishable only as vague silhouettes.

Why does Verspri go back to the school? Ana asked. And how? We just spent days trekking across the desert. There's no way he'd make it back.

Teremki pursed his lips. "Not without help."