"Funding cutbacks," my grandfather said. "I hear it'll close soon. They haven't taken new patients in over a year."
He led Pamela to the last occupied bed. A young nurse stood beside it, holding a wrinkled hand. When the nurse turned and smiled, her face seemed to ripple. Beneath her eyes, light poured, bright light. Her skin glowed with it. Her doughy features sharpened, pocked skin smoothing, teeth straightening, and inside Pamela, I stared, thinking how beautiful she was, but the thought formed only in that corner of my mind that was still my own, and the overwhelming thought instead was hate.
Get away from Aunt Isolde. Don't smile at me. Don't pretend you care. It's your fault. All your fault. I hate you. Hate you all so much.
Pamela gripped her father's hand tighter, as if to keep from launching herself at the woman, and the hate roiling through her was unlike anything I'd felt before. Black fire, consuming everything it touched.
"How's she doing today?" my grandfather asked.
At the side of the high bed, Pamela couldn't see more than that wizened hand, and I mentally swallowed, remembering a hand just like it, on another hospital bed, when I'd gone to visit Pamela after her attack. My first vision.
"She's comfortable," the young nurse said. "That's all we can hope for at this point."
"Is it . . . ?" my grandmother asked.
"She'll be free soon," the nurse murmured. "Her passing will be comfortable. I'm sure of it." The nurse squeezed the old woman's hand. "She's had such a hard life. It'll be better soon."
As I listened to her voice, I heard only genuine compassion. I saw it in her eyes, too. But Pamela didn't. The hatred scorched through her.
Your fault. It's your fault. You did this to her.
The nurse was fae--I was certain of that. Whether Pamela knew it or not, she could see though the mask and knew it as a mask, and it filled her not with fear but with a loathing I wouldn't have thought possible for a girl her age. One that chilled me to my core.
"Come see your aunt," my grandfather said.
His hands went around Pamela, and she squirmed, her hate liquefying into fear, making her protest and her father whisper, "Please, Pamela. For Mommy."
He lifted her up, and I saw the figure in the bed, and I recoiled, a scream exploding in the corner of Pamela's mind that was still mine, a scream that mirrored her own, the one screeching through her head as we both saw the figure.
It was the old woman from the hospital. So thin she seemed a skeleton wearing skin and a nightgown. Her eyes were covered with a thick bandage, but I knew what I'd see if that bandage was removed. Empty sockets.
Hair fanned out over the bed. Gray hair streaked with dark, and when I saw it, I saw another woman here, in the hospital. A woman rising from the murky water of a deep tub. A woman straitjacketed in a chair. A woman with bloodied bandages over her eyes and a mouth with no tongue . . .
The nurse squeezed Isolde's bird-thin arm and the old woman's chin jerked, as if she was waking.
"Daere is here to see you," the nurse said. "With John and little Pamela."
Isolde's mouth opened, and she made a sound. A garbled sound, like speech but not, and from where Pamela hung, in her father's arms, I could see into her mouth, the stump of her tongue--
Pamela shrieked, her scream joining the one echoing through my head. She fought, and I seemed to fight with her, clawing and scratching, then hitting the floor and scrambling up and running as fast as Pamela's small legs would take us, that scream still resounding in her head, all but drowning out the cries of her parents behind her.
Pamela turned down one corridor after another, zigging and zagging as the footfalls behind her grew distant, her parents missing her turns. Finally, she threw open a closet and flew in, slamming the door behind her and huddling in the dark, knees drawn up, gasping for breath as she shook uncontrollably.
Footsteps passed but kept going. Then the door creaked open and the nurse stood there, her body shimmering with light, features morphing. Pamela shrunk into the shadows, but the nurse only smiled and bent to the girl's level.
"Scary, isn't it?" she said in her soft voice. "Your poor auntie. She's had a hard life, Pamela, but it will be over soon. She'll be at peace, and, I hope, happy."
"Liar." Pamela spat the word, small body quaking with rage.
The woman backed up. "What--?"
"I know what you are. I see it. Behind your face. The glow."
A pause, and the nurse gave a slow, sad smile. "Ah. So you see me, do you?"
Pamela nodded, and in a blink the nurse disappeared. In her place was something my brain couldn't quite latch on to, the form ethereal, more glow than substance. I could make out a face, beautiful with sharp features and golden hair.
"Is that better, then?" the fae nurse said. "No disguises?"
She smiled, but the rage still whipped through Pamela.
"It's your fault," Pamela whispered. "What happened to her. She was tainted."
"Tainted?" The nurse tilted her head. "That's a big word for a little girl. Who told you that?"
"No one. I know. I just know."
"I see." The nurse crouched lower. "Then I won't deny it, bychan. The fault was ours. In her blood. I wouldn't call it a taint, but sometimes, when you're different, your mind can't quite manage it. Have you ever tried to hold a raw egg?"
Pamela squeezed herself tight, as if trying to block the words.
"It's like that," the nurse continued. "You can see us. You have memories. You know things you shouldn't. And as little as you are, your mind is strong. It can hold those ideas tight, like a hard-boiled egg. But for some, like your poor auntie, it's like trying to hold a raw egg. It slips and slides and oozes, and they try harder and harder to hold on, until they just can't. Do you understand, bychan?"
"I understand that it's your fault."
The nurse sighed. "It was not me, specifically, and we did try to help--"
"Liar!"
Pamela flew at the nurse. She hit her and I kept going, tumbling out, falling into darkness again, and then . . .
I bolted upright, the vision gone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
As I struggled to my feet, I felt a familiar weight in my pocket. I reached in and touched my gun and switchblade. I patted my other pockets. Cell phone and tusk, right where I'd left them.
"Liv!" It was Ricky, shouting, his voice distant. "Olivia!"
At first, I thought I was in the grave, that I really had fallen in. But when I reached out, I touched only air. I pulled out my switchblade and flicked on the light.
I was inside the hospital. In a room I didn't recognize, one without windows.
"Liv!"
"I'm here!" I shouted. "In here!"
He kept calling my name, obviously unable to hear me. I took out my phone, speed-dialed his number, and got a "customer unavailable" message. I hung up. Tried again. Same thing.
I looked around. The sequence of events that had brought me from the graveyard to there should have been of some concern, but really, all that worried me was the possibility that I was still trapped in a vision, and only because that would mean it was futile to keep shouting and phoning. Yes, that's what my world was reduced to: zap from location A to location B, only wondering, Is it live or is it memory?
The fact that I was dressed as I had been, with my phone, suggested this was live.
I set about finding my way back to Ricky. I could hear him, and the building wasn't that big.
I walked into the next room, the one with creepy human-sized cribs for patients. Ricky and I had found Macy locked in one. I could even see our old footprints in the dust.
As I turned to the door, something scraped behind me. I glanced back. Fingers poked out from the crib slats. I froze. Swallowed. Stared at those fingers.
"Is someone there?"
A muffled response, as if from behind a gag. I walked over carefully, gun in hand. More fingers appeared between the slats. Then more. I stopped short and looked at the third hand. There w
asn't enough room in that crib for two people, not unless they were crushed together--
More fingers appeared, and more, and more, reaching through the slats, beckoning me, that muffled cry turning to grunts and squeaks and snarls, the fingers clawing, one hand slashing at another, catching it in the wrist, blood spurting--
I raced out of the room and leaned against the corridor wall, panting and rubbing my eyes, the cold gun stock knocking against my cheek. Then I peeked in again. No fingers. No blood. Just our old footprints.
"Liv!" Ricky's voice.
I shouted back, as loud as I could, but he just kept calling. I pulled up the map from memory and walked. Turn here and then here and I should be in the--
I was back in the room with the cribs. And one was rocking, back and forth, on its stand. Then a baby started to wail, and I could see it inside the crib, waving pale arms in the darkness.
I walked over, my feet moving as if of their own volition, and pulled the cover off the crib. It came away easily. Inside was a little girl, blond-haired and green-eyed, maybe almost a year, ready to crawl and walk, but lying on her back, waving her fists in the air, her cries howls now, enraged and frustrated howls, her face beet-red. There was a brace on her back.
"Shhh," whispered a voice somewhere beside me. "Daddy's here. Come on, sweetheart. Let's take you out of there."
I knew the voice. Todd.
"She gets so angry," he said.
"Do you blame her?" Pamela's voice. I turned, but they weren't there, only their voices.
"No." His voice broke on the word. "I keep hoping the brace will help--"
"It's not helping."
"God, why doesn't something work? All that medicine, and they can't fix her?"
"What if we could fix her?"
"Don't," he said, his voice low. "We've been to more doctors than we can afford, and I'd work three jobs if it would help, but they all say the same thing."
"I mean us, Todd. What would you do to fix her?"
"Anything." Anger in his voice. "You know that."
"Anything?"
"Of course."
"Would you kill for it?"
"What?" Voice sharp, as if he'd misheard.
"Would you kill someone to fix her?"
"God, Pam, don't even talk like that."
"So the answer's no? Not even if it was someone who deserved it?"
He didn't answer, only scooped the baby up, and my infant self disappeared from sight, my howls turning to soft sobs as he cooed and whispered to me.
"You said you'd do--" Pamela began.
"You've been working too hard. Go take a nap, and I'm going to pretend we never had this conversation. If you want me, I'll be at the park with Eden. That's what she needs from her parents."
The baby stopped whimpering, and the voices disappeared. I looked down at the cradle.
Not Todd. It was never Todd.
Of course it wasn't. No matter how much he loved me, he wasn't that kind of person. He just wasn't.
And Pamela . . . ?
"Olivia? Are you up here?" Ricky sounded closer now.
I dashed out of the room. "Here!"
"Where are you?"
I raced toward the sound of his voice, cutting through one room after another until . . .
I swung through the door of the crib room again.
I'm going in circles.
No, I wasn't.
I must be.
A figure stepped from behind the door.
Fingers closed around my arm. I twisted to see a woman holding me.
"You aren't real," I said.
"I wish I wasn't," she said. "So many times I've wished it. Please let me be a figment of my imagination. But I'm not."
She clutched my arm in a cold iron grip. I looked at her. She was a little older than me, with snarled dark hair and dark eyes. I knew the face, but the eyes threw me, because every time I'd seen her, there'd been deep pits there, bloody holes.
"Isolde?" I whispered.
"You know me?" A faint, sad smile. "I wish you didn't. I wish you'd never seen me, not like that. Not you and not her, poor little duckie."
"Pamela."
"They're wrong, you know. When they say you can control it. You can't. When it goes bad, it goes so bad, and there is no control. Only madness. You'll see that soon enough."
I tugged again, but she held me fast.
"There is a way out. One I could never find. Or perhaps they were right--I wasn't strong enough. But you are." She gestured at my gun.
"Wh-what?"
Her dark eyes met mine. "Set yourself free."
"Like hell."
A sad chuckle. "You sound like your mother." She lifted her gaze again. "Soon you'll be like her. That's your madness. The rage can go in or it can go out. Mine went in; hers went out. As will yours."
"I'm not like--"
Isolde's grip tightened. "You're exactly like her. Fierce in your passions, fierce in your loyalties. That will become rage, and it will explode." She lifted my hand, gun rising with it. "Fight back, child. Tell them you won't play their game. End it now. You'll save so many."
I dropped the gun. It hit the floor with a clang. I looked at her straight on and said, simply, "No."
"Then you are lost. The only question is, which will be your imprisonment? Here? Bound to a bed, screaming? Or like your mother, pacing her cell for a lifetime? One will come. You cannot fight it. Remember that I tried to help."
She thrust me away, and I stumbled. When I looked up, she was gone. I reached for my gun, and my fingers shook so badly I barely dared lift it.
I'm not like them. Not like either of them.
I staggered from the room. As I ran down the hall, words followed me, bloodred words on the wall, on either side of me.
There is no escape from the prison of the mind.
"Ricky!" I shouted. "Can you hear me?"
No answer. I caught the distant thump of footsteps, seemingly right below me. I ran down a hall, into the tub room and through to the room with the straitjacket rocking chair. Isolde was there, bound and moaning, blood dripping from her mouth and eye sockets. I ran right past her to the hatch in the floor, and when I reached it, I didn't bother with the ladder. I crouched, grabbed the sides, and swung through. My arm jerked, pain ripping through. I let go and hit the floor. My ankle twisted, but I forced myself up onto my feet, and as I did, I looked up to see . . .
A solid ceiling. The hatch was gone. I blinked and looked down and there, to my left, were the damned cribs again. Fingers poked out between the slats.
I tore from the room and stopped in the hallway. I stood there, eyes squeezed shut, struggling against panic.
There is no escape from the prison of the mind.
Oh hell, yes, there was. And if one way didn't work, I'd find another.
I took out my cell and speed-dialed. I'd meant to try Ricky again, but when I heard the line ringing, I knew that wasn't who I'd called.
"This is Gabriel Walsh. Please leave a message . . ."
I rocked on my toes as I waited for the beep.
"Gabriel? It's Olivia. I know you're pissed off with me, but listen. Please listen. I need you. You promised--" I sucked in breath. No, don't remind him of that. Don't whine and accuse. "I need you. Not to come here. Not to do anything but pick up the phone and talk to me. I'm at the psych hospital and I'm . . . I'm lost." A short laugh, laced with panic. "I'm lost in so many ways. Ricky's here, and I can't find him, and it's some kind of magic. I'm trapped with these visions, and if this keeps up, I . . . I feel like I'm going crazy, Gabriel. Maybe I am. You seemed to think so, and . . . Hell, tell me that. Just pick up the phone and tell me it's all in my head. Talk me through it or snap me out of it. I don't care. Just pick up or call back. Please." I paused, then shut my eyes and let the words out, not caring how desperate and sad they sounded. "I need you."
I hung up, and I waited. And Gabriel did not call back.
TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE
Gabriel wa
s not dreaming, but it was perhaps the closest he'd ever come. The images spooling through his sleeping mind were still memories, yet bits and pieces of them, strung together like a clumsily tied rope of mismatched cloth.
He started in the car, the night before, telling Olivia she was imagining things, as a voice in his head yelled at him to stop, just stop, what the fuck was he doing, but he kept saying it, and when he saw the shock and pain in her eyes, he was glad of it. Satisfaction and shame, roiling together. Then they were back in Evans's basement, his leg bleeding as he told her to get out, escape while she could, that he wouldn't stay for her. She said she didn't care. And she didn't. It wasn't about tit for tat, helping him because he'd do the same for her. She'd believed he would have left her, and yet she'd stayed for him.
At the car now, the burning car, the girl--Macy--ordering Olivia to climb into it or she'd shoot him. Later, standing by his window, sharing a drink, he'd had to make sure Olivia crawled into that burning car only because she knew Gabriel would get the jump on Macy.
"Mmm, not exactly. But I had a plan."
"Good. Don't put yourself at risk for anyone, Olivia. Ever. It isn't worth it."
In his car again, telling her she was imagining things, saying exactly the words that would hurt her the most. You're delusional. Laughing when she said they were friends. That voice in his head screaming for him to stop, but a louder, more determined one prodding him on. You have to do this. Disillusion her. Teach her not to trust anyone, especially you. Hurt her a little now, and you'll save her that pain later.
He wasn't her fairy prince. The idea was ludicrous. If she expected him to ride in and rescue her . . .
Except she didn't expect that. She never had. And that wasn't what Gwynn had done anyway, was it? No knight-in-shining-armor there, but a selfish bastard who didn't even have the guts to try to win Matilda from Arawn. He'd betrayed his friend. Betrayed his lover. Forced Matilda to choose when she already had. Gwynn refused to share her time or attention. He'd lied and manipulated and betrayed everyone he supposedly cared about, because he didn't really care about anyone except himself.
And Gabriel said he wasn't Gwynn?
But that was their choice, wasn't it? That's what Olivia meant--they weren't really Matilda and Gwynn and Arawn. Olivia was no flighty girl, believing Gabriel's lies, accepting his betrayals. Ricky wasn't simply her friend, and he wasn't the arrogant Lord of the Underworld, either--he cared about Olivia and he respected her, and if Gabriel ever suggested the kind of pact Gwynn had with Arawn, Ricky would tell him to go to hell.
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