Nightmare had left my arms when I woke up, but I could still feel the warmth of her presence in the space beside my chest. The events of last night must have shaken her as much me.

I stretched, arching my back and pointing my toes, as I listened to the sound of a teaspoon tinkling against ceramic. My foot brushed against something papery and I smirked as the orange paper bag from Kelly floated to the ground. It had still been full when I fell asleep, but I should have known it wouldn't have stayed that way with Atticus and his sweet tooth.

The thought of said striking Watcher made my stomach flutter. I could still smell his scent on my hair from where he'd held me last night. It was a deep masculine aroma that had always been delicious but now made my skin tingle. There was something about remembering how it had felt to have his arms wrapped around me, that changed how that smell affected me. I could still feel the firm contours of his torso under my cheek and the swell of his bicep against my back. Combined with the thin fabric of his t-shirt, I couldn't help but imagine the sculpted physique below and the things it was capable of.

The pop of the toaster sounded from the kitchen, breaking my wandering thoughts. Instead, I became all too aware of the damp patch on the cushion from where I'd drooled in the night, and the way my tangled hair tickled my face.

I lurched up, wiping the remnants of drool from my mouth, and running my hands through my hair. Atticus had seen me look worse, especially last night, but some part of me didn't want to add another example to the vault.

Just as I cleared the mascara residue from under my eyes, he breezed into the room with a steaming cup of coffee and a stack of buttered toast. My mouth watered at the sight.

"Good morning," he said with a faint smile as he handed me breakfast. I watched him over my coffee cup as he settled himself on the end of the sofa. He was in last night's clothes, although they looked as pristine as always. He looked good, deliciously good,

"Morning." I balanced the plate of toast on the arm rest as I took a deep breath of the caffeine goodness in my hands.

"Did you stay over?" I asked, although I couldn't see any evidence of where he'd slept.

He nodded and an anxious hand ran through his hair. "I hope you don't mind." His eyes flicked over my expression. "I wanted—" he paused, biting his lip as he watched me.

"What?"

He shifted, leaning forward as he looked at me with cautious eyes. "I wanted to make sure you were OK."

I paused mid-sip and our conversation from last night echoed through my mind. Instinct told me to scold him but the memory of standing in the kitchen doorway and seeing Nightmare alive and well stopped me. If just for a morning, I'd try and put my neuroses to one side.

I swallowed the reflexive rebuke with a mouthful of coffee and asked a question instead. It had plague me since I'd gotten my memories back.

"Last week, you asked me to the flat on purpose, didn't you?"

He cast a glance to the ceiling above him and then to his black book on the coffee table.

"Not just because you wanted me to meet Aslo and Olivia, but because you knew what would happen," I continued.

With a small frown he reached for the remote and turned on the TV. I waited patiently with coffee in hand as he paused; his piercing eyes fixated on the book.

"No," he said, pausing to glance again up to the ceiling above him and turn the TV up a little further. "I didn't know what would happen, if anything. But after you fainted, I thought, given the right environment, maybe the glamour would fail."

Cautious eyes watched me under dark lashes. Despite the weight of the conversation my body flushed at the sight of him.

No one should look that good this early in the morning.

I cleared my throat in an attempt to clear my mind and focus on unravelling why the events last week had happened. "A glamour is the new memories Olivia put in place of the other ones?"

"Yes." His hand tugged at the dark, silk strands while he thought.

I wondered what it would feel like, driving my hands into his hair, pulling him to—

Bad brain! Focus.

Unaware of my flirtatious fantasies, he continued. "If you imagine your life is a patchwork quilt. Made up of millions of memories all stitched into place. A glamour is like stitching a piece of fabric over one of those memories. The original is still there, but you just need to unpick the stitching to get to it."

"A patchwork quilt? Who are you Martha Stewart?" I snorted, resting the steaming cup on the space between my crossed legs.

He shot me a crooked smile made even more devastating by his tousled hair. "You try explaining memory control on the fly. It's harder than it looks."

Slowly his smile dropped into a frown. "Olivia said you caught us moving Aslo while he was away. She had no choice but to wipe your memory. Our leaders, the Council, dictate it. It's one of the few laws we have."

I nodded as he confirmed what I'd already assumed. Even though I understood why, I couldn't shake the bitter taste of betrayal. "And the fact she wiped our little conversation? What was that, just a happy coincidence?" I sniped, the itch getting stronger with every sip of caffeine I took.

"That was inexperience and ignorance," Atticus said roughly, an anger in his voice that I hadn't heard before. "She had no right," he seethed as his eyes burned holes into the floor. While he composed himself, his gaze met mine. "But there's no known way to undo such a thing if the person doesn't know it's been done."

"That day you knew what Olivia had done, and you knew I was meant to be pissed at you, but you did nothing to try and put it right. You just went on like everything was normal."

"What exactly was I meant to say? 'Hey Anna, those memories you have? They're not real. Oh, and by the way I'm not human.' Something like that?"

I knew he was meant to live in secret but there was part of me that couldn't help but play devil advocate. He told me what he was eventually, so why would it have been so bad to have told me then?

I crossed two stubborn arms across my chest as I stared him down. "It wouldn't have been the worst way to go."

"Do you have any idea how fragile the human mind is? You saw how much it hurt when the glamour started to unravel." As he spoke, I remembered the searing pain and flinched in memory. Even the ghost of it was enough to cringe.

As if he could read my memories he continued. "And that was you doing the unravelling. Telling a human that the memories in their head aren't real... that kind of thing can drive a person to insanity. If you were going to stand a chance of remembering I had to find a way for you to figure it out yourself."

"Why push it? It seems it would have been a lot better for you if I hadn't remembered?"

"Probably, but it didn't seem right." He paused, sinking back into the sofa with a heavy sigh. "It's funny. I've done a lot of ...questionable things and I've never given them a second thought. I was following orders. But when I found out what Olivia had done... it felt... wrong. Like there was this itch under my skin."

His hand flexed, clenching with the ghost of a memory. I knew the feeling he was talking about. I'd been a puppet for it so many times before, so often in fact that now I embraced it. I figured it was better to own those feelings rather than let them own me.

"What was the point of lying anyway?" I asked before taking another languid sip of coffee.

A fleeting smile flashed on his face, like sunshine peeking through a cloudy day. "Some last-ditch attempt to throw you off the scent? You were getting suspicious. I thought if I could show you something normal, maybe you'd stop watching me so closely."

Before I could hold it in, my laughter barked into the room as I thought about the strange room I'd first walked into after the burglary. Those stark white walls, the pristine furniture and sterile atmosphere. "That was your attempt at normal?" I giggled, wiping a stray drop of coffee off the sofa from where it that had leapt free from my cup.

Atticus scratched a hand through his thick hair, a sheepish grin split across his handsome face. "I'm usually good at this, you know. I can count on one hand how many humans have suspected anything. Then you come along..."

I stifled my smile. "OK, so say I understand why you wanted to act all Average Joe, why fill the shelves with books you haven't read? Why not just leave the shelves empty?

"And that wouldn't have looked odd at all." Was his sarcastic reply.

"Better than lying."

"The truth is important to you, isn't it?"

"Yes." The word was short and sharp, but it was heavy with a million other things I wasn't ready to talk to him about.

He nodded with a furrowed brow forming a faint crease between his eyebrows. I could almost see the questions building behind his cerulean irises.

I filled the silence before he could get the chance to ask them. "So, this glamour failing, is that a fluke or am I..." I shivered at the thought of the alternative.

"Special?" he smirked.

I cringed at the word. "Yeah, something like that."

He cast me a knowing smile. He'd seen how I reacted when he said I was mercurial. This was no different. Somehow it was worse because it was like a confirmation. One anomaly could be curious, two was concerning.

"I don't know. It may be linked to our inability to get a clear read on you, or it might just be because Olivia is still relatively inexperienced. She's only been in her vessel a couple hundred years."

Only a couple hundred years... I stashed that piece of information away for later.

"You said Olivia had no choice, because I saw her with Aslo."

He looked at me and for a moment I wondered if he could see the future because the way he slowly sat up made it look like he was bracing for a question I had yet to think up.

"I know what you are, what Aslo is, and Olivia..."

"I know." He stayed quiet and slowly the pieces fell into place.

"One day you'll have to wipe my memories too, won't you? If you can."

A shadow cast across his expression as he fell silent.

I shifted away. Would it be such a bad thing to lose some of these past few months? Yes, probably. But if he could wipe away the past six years? Maybe not. It would be like a fresh start. No more nightmares, no more voices taunting me. I'd been worried that losing control over my memories would mean losing control over what made me 'me' but I hadn't thought that it could be a good thing instead. A chance to reset the clock. After seeing Mr R last night, I couldn't deny that anything that could take away that sick feeling of dread would be a good thing. No matter the cost.

I cast a glance over Atticus as he sat staring at his black book on the table. The strong line of his jaw, the way his dark hair curled slightly around the swell of his earlobe. Maybe if I could just keep a couple memories of him, hidden somewhere in my subconscious.

A girl can always use some memories of a pretty boy, I thought crudely.

I cleared my throat as a wash of heat ran through me, downing the dregs of coffee and placing the cup on the side table with a clunk.

"Any chance you could pop a few decent ones in their place? Maybe a lottery win, or a one-night stand with Adam Levine?"

He chuckled, a rough deep kind of sound that did nothing to dim the warmth in the pit of my stomach.

His eyes twinkled as he spoke. "I could give it my best shot."

"Maybe not the one-night stand. You've got no game whatsoever. It would probably end up more mind numbing than mind blowing."

"You forget, Miss Fray, I've been around a long time. I've seen a thing or two." His voice was low, a rumble that was so delicious it brought images of molten chocolate and naked skin.

"Even worse," I teased. "I could end up with all sorts of kinky shit in my head."

His countering laughter made a brief smile race across my lips before I stifled it, pressing my lips together tightly.

His laughter died slowly, his smile dimming as the seconds past. Soon a crease was back between his eyebrows. A look of deep thought knitting them together.

"It will be strange, I think. Wiping your memory." He picked at a stray feather that had poked through the fabric of the sofa. Nimble fingers plucking it free.

"Why?" I paused when I saw a flash of something dark in his eyes. Regret? Denial? Obstinacy? I couldn't place it but for a fleeting moment I relished it.

He glanced up at me, the question hanging between us. If he saw a flash of my own, he didn't say anything, so I pushed down whatever hopeful emotion was rising like a bubble in my chest. Battling with its buoyancy.

"You have done it before haven't you?" I mocked, the bubble securely strapped down. Immobilised. "Because if I wake up a vegetable I'll be pissed." I tried to joke, but I think he heard the flat tone in my voice.

He tried to smile but it didn't reach his eyes.

"Even if you were, you wouldn't know who to direct it to."

"That's worse! You're supposed to be one of the good guys. You wouldn't want to unleash me on the world. Just a five foot seven mass of poor manners and belligerence."

A smile twitched on his face but whatever darkness had flashed in his eyes was now creeping across his handsome features. Throttling that lopsided smile before it had a chance.

"Even if it did work, I've never wiped the memory of someone I've known before. I've never really known someone." His eyes focussed on the black book and he fell silent for a moment, lost in thought before pulling himself back to the present. "When I think about doing that to you, there's this pit in my stomach."

The sentence hung in the air between us as his eyes searched mine. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as my mind rushed through what his words could mean. With every beat I could feel the bubble in my chest fighting against my sense of reason, because there was something about what he'd said that called to the hopeless romantic in me. It was the same part of me that always chose a soppy rom-com over action or adventure. I'd tried to kill it off over the years but like any good love story it had stayed strong throughout every trial I'd thrown at it.

I could feel the giddy swell of hope and excitement as that suppressed side of me whispered promises of sunny days and warm cosy evenings, of being happy. All I had to do was let that bubble free and let it fill me up, carry me up, up and away from the dark I'd been hiding in.

Except the higher you fly, the harder the fall.

Like a pin, that thought burst the bubble, and like a child popping a birthday balloon, I was left with the sting of reality.

"Maybe you should just get it over with. It would probably be better to do it now than later. It's not like my mind's my own anyway. You can just hop in and rearrange my life whenever you want." I could taste the spite on my tongue. It was bitter and sharp like the chemical my mother had painted on my nails when I was five to stop me biting them. Anyone else would have flinched and apologised, but I didn't. I was used to it. Just like when I was five, and I sat and sucked the chemicals off my nails until I didn't register the taste.

Atticus sighed a sound I thought was now synonymous with my presence. "After everything I've told you, do you really believe that?"

No.

I couldn't bring myself to say it, because on some level I didn't want to give up my ace. I didn't want him to think he had the upper hand. Because as much as I believed he wouldn't hurt me, I couldn't shake the idea that he was still capable of it. Whether he meant to or not.

"I wouldn't do that to you. Not on a whim. Not if I can find any way to avoid it."

I could hear the earnest in his voice. It was hard not to.

"OK," I said tightly. "But if you do ever mess with my head again, any of you, you had better make fucking sure I don't remember."