Haven shows up at school the next day, looking rather pale and limp, but still assuring everyone that it was just a flu and she’s fine.  Then she mentions that she was sick enough to black out and forget large chunks of time.  No one around her says any version of “holy fuck, no, that’s not normal, why didn’t you go to a doctor, in fact let’s get you to one right now!”

Lots of things cause memory loss, and they’re of varying seriousness and danger.  There’s also various kinds of memory loss, from losing details or general clarity to wholesale ‘nope, the whole time period is gone.’  Haven describes the latter kind.  If a fever is so bad that it takes every shred of memory from an entire night, then your brain has been cooked to the point of being damaged and you need a professional.

Obviously, we know Haven has been paranormaled into amnesia, but the other characters don’t know that. 

Haven talks about how she had some trippy dreams while she was sick and mentions ‘blood and gore,’ and that makes Ever get dizzy and almost remember stuff.

“That’s exactly how it starts.” She nods. “I mean, I didn’t pass out until later, but still, it definitely started with a major dizzy spell.”

Guys, please promise me that if you ever pass out or get dizzy out of the blue, you’ll go see someone?  A nurse at least.  Please?  I luffs you all and randomly getting dizzy and losing consciousness is not something to laugh off.  It could be majorly serious.  Promise, please?

Ever has no cares about the fact that she fainted out of the blue, and even though everyone wants her to go home (not to a doctor, just home), she insists on staying at school.  Damen roundly ignores her, because this is a crappy YA romance novel and apparently respectful boyfriends are for other books.

Damen takes her to his house, without getting permission first.  He just up and takes his girlfriend – over her protests and while she’s potentially very sick – to his own house.  Because that’s not manipulative at all, right?  Oh, wait, no, it totally is.  He’s cutting her off from authority figures and her friends and isolating her at a time when she’s fairly vulnerable, also leaving her no method for leaving because they’re in his car. 

This kind of shit here, this isn’t just about potential violence.  It’s not like you can say “oh, well he wouldn’t do that” and call it all okay.  This is the set up for emotional manipulation.  Being isolated can feel threatening, and if at any point she decides she wants to leave, she’s entirely dependent on him to do that.  If she’s uncomfortable or annoyed or doesn’t feel safe or just plain old wants to go to bed in her own room, she can’t leave without his assistance.  That fact is, in itself, creating both threatening and forcing her to be dependent on him.  She’s trapped at his house, but she can’t piss him off because she’s trapped at his house.  If she’d freely consented to going, that would be different.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever go to someone’s house.  But it’s not the kind of thing that you can force on someone and then call perfectly innocent.  And that’s even without throwing in the fact that he could literally do anything to her right now and no one would even think to start looking for her until much later that night.

Ever, of course, does not care because she is a brainless shell of a person, but that doesn’t make his actions any less creepy.

Damen’s house now has stuff in it, and Ever of course doesn’t remember being there.  Damen insists that she has been there, after they went ‘surfing,’ and I’m still boggled by that whole lie he’s spinning.  It’s weird on so many levels.  The more lies he piles on, the more serious her ‘memory loss’ becomes, so he should be trying to downplay her missing time and make it seem like she forgot something forgettable.  But at the same time, Ever isn’t the least bit concerned about her missing memory, because no one in this book thinks that blacking out for huge chunks of time is a big deal.

They spend a while being cute as he tries to take care of her, but the book can’t fool me.  Taking her to a doctor would be care; this is just playing house.  Then Ever suddenly realizes that he’s hella suspicious, what with all his skills and talents and laundry list of past residences.  She gets suspicious and demands to be taken home, which he does for her.

She gets home and tells her aunt she was just having an ‘overwhelming orphan feelz’ day and left school.  Sabine believes her, because that’s a perfectly reasonable excuse to leave school.  Then Sabine gives her a peach sweater that Sabine had in her car for ages and ages and just now found.  Ever realizes that Damen had a picture of her wearing that hoodie at his house, and gets super creeped out by that.

Next day at school she ignores Damen, because…I don’t know, is the one picture enough to report him for stalking?  It’s definitely creepy and counts as stalking in my book, because he was taking pictures of her months before he actually met her, but I don’t think it constitutes a legal charge.  That usually requires proof of a pattern of repeat behavior.  Getting mad and avoiding him might be all she really can do in this case.

Since Ever refuses to stop and listen to him explaining anything, he…randomly makes everyone in class pass out?

What?

Just

What?

…What?

NO I’M NOT DONE YET, WHAT THE FUCK, DAMEN?

Weeks and weeks of patiently pussyfooting around this chick, and now at the drop of a hat he’s like “nope, fuck it, magic mindfuck powers time.”  Over…over what?  He doesn’t know she knows about the picture; when they talked about it she seemed to think it was recent.  And she’s randomly changed her mind about him several times so far, and he took each even with aplomb.  But now – now – he wants to pull this kind of shit?

There’s no point to this.  There is absolutely no point to this.  The author got bored with what she was writing and realized it was time to step things up, so book, magic mindfuckery.  Who cares if it doesn’t make sense, nothing else has so far!

“Fine. Just remember, you asked for it.”

Oh, and he’s going to be even more of a dick about it, too.  Great.

“Omigod, you killed them! You killed everyone!” I shout, my heart pounding so fast I’m sure he can hear it.

Did the book just forget that she can see auras and read minds?  She should know they’re just asleep, even if she is freaked out.

I scoot to the edge of my seat, my eyes fixed on the door, plotting my escape.

“You can try, but you won’t get very far. You see how I beat you to class even though you had a head start?” He crosses his legs and gazes at me, his face calm, voice steady as can be.

Wow.  Just…wow.  Okay, so what I complained about before was pretty subtle (but no less real, subtle doesn’t mean inconsequential), but this is just blatantly threatening and cornering her now.

Damen, you were creepy and annoying until now, but you have officially crossed the line in to pure jackass.

Also, he can read her mind, so his past acts are now no longer ‘annoying,’ they’re super fucking manipulative.  Sorry, there’s no way to be privy to a girl’s thoughts, not tell her that, seduce her, and then call yourself a good guy.  Even if you had honest intentions, you didn’t have honest actions, so you’re not honest.  Intentions ain’t magic.  (Although apparently everything else on this boy is.)

“Because I’ve never lied to you.”

“You’re lying now!”

’‘I’ve never lied to you about anything important,” he says, averting his gaze.

If anyone ever says this to you, punch them in the face and leave.  Unless they’re magic whatevers threatening to keep you in the room, in which case…well, I think don’t poke the dragon rules apply, but he’s still no less of an ass.

No one else gets to decide what’s important to you or not, and anyone who thinks that ‘white lies’ don’t count is probably stretching the definition of unimportant anyway.

They spend a ridiculously long time with Ever trying to run away and Damen just appearing at her destination going “come on, just calm down and listen to me.”  I say ridiculous because, well, it’s annoying to read.  Ever should be trying to get away from him, of course, that’s perfectly reasonable of her, but he’s an assface and his methods are horrible and I just want this whole scene to end.  His repeated uses of pointless magic and his “hey, c’mon” attitude are so disingenuous that it’s impossible to take his pleas of ‘listen to me’ seriously. 

Ever finally remembers what she was with him and Haven, and Damen insists that he was trying to suck the ‘infection’ out of her tattooed wrist because that was killing her.  I know he likely doesn’t mean literal infection, but he should point out that he’s using an analogy, because otherwise that’s just stupid.

Ever has a moment of reasonability as she thinks that he’s had hundreds of years to perfect the art of lying, so she doesn’t want to trust anything he says.  She calls him a vampire, but he says “nope, that’s silly, vampires aren’t real.  I’m an Immortal!”  Yeah, because that’s so less silly.  *eyeroll*  He helpfully explains that immortal means…he’s lived a long time without dying.

Jee, thanks Damen.  That was so informative.  How about you cover your magic powers instead or, you know, HOW YOU FUCKING BECAME IMMORTAL?

He then tells her that he was the one that woke her up after the car crash so she didn’t die.  She apparently forgot about that part, too, because this is the first we’ve heard of it.  I honestly thought it was an EMT or something that woke her up.

She yells that she hates him because he made her a freak and let her family die.  He says that she was the only one of her family still ‘slightly alive’ enough to save.  Ever cares not about that and goes on about how it’s his fault that her life is ruined.  Um…not sure how that works, since without him her life would be over.  I guess dead doesn’t count as ‘ruined life’ in Ever’s book.

Basically, this girl’s priorities are ‘better dead than socially outcast.’

And she thinks she doesn’t need therapy?

She screams that she hates him and wants him to leave until finally he does, but he magics up a whole parking lot full of tulips as he goes.  Well, that’ll be fun to clean up.  Great job, Damen, you’ve impressed your girlfriend but made everyone else’s life miserable.  That doesn’t actually speak well of you.