Demon Marked

by Meljean Brook

  Mary-052007 will not respond to any name, but displays clear comprehension of verbal and written instructions when they are spoken directly to or placed in front of her. She performs both menial tasks and more complex operations, such as solving mathematical equations, tending the garden, or typing and sending an e-mail (dictated).

  They’d instructed; she’d performed. When they asked her to accomplish tasks that were impossible to carry out, such as urinating into a cup, they never tried to force her. The nurses simply noted “Mary’s” lack of response in her chart, and Dr. Cawthorne would write the name of another disorder in his notes, followed by another question mark.

  The second year had passed in the same way. A few weeks into the third year, the doctor had been thumbing through the calendar on his desk and making his usual, halfhearted attempts to draw out a response—

  How are you today? Pause. The rain has let up. You’ll be able to take your afternoon walk through the garden, though it will be too wet for planting. What sort of flowers should we add this year? Pause. Peonies would be lovely, wouldn’t they?

  —when he’d cut his thumb on the edge of the calendar paper. Another pause had followed the peonies as he’d stuck his thumb into his mouth, and Ash had remembered that she’d once drunk her own blood, too. She’d remembered the blade carving symbols into her face, her torso and arms. She’d remembered the knife at her chest, and the dark figure pronouncing her name—but she’d only heard the first syllable before his terrible voice had torn everything apart.

  Sitting in Dr. Cawthorne’s office, that memory had quickly faded—or she’d stifled it, just as she stifled the tremors that shook her body when she thought of that dark figure. Just enough of the memory remained, however, to remind her that she had to tell Cawthorne something.

  “My name isn’t Mary,” she’d said.

  Dr. Cawthorne’s hand dropped away from his mouth. He’d stared at her, his jaw agape. Whenever someone on the television wore that expression, a faceless crowd laughed on the soundtrack. No one in Cawthorne’s office laughed in the background. The only reaction that Ash could detect was the sudden shift of Cawthorne’s emotions: from frustration and resignation to surprise and excitement.

  But though she could sense his exhilaration, he didn’t show it. Evenly, he’d asked, “What is your name, then?”

  “Ash . . . something. I don’t know the rest.”

  “Ashley?”

  “No.” She was certain.

  He’d nodded in that same slow, calm way, but to her ears, his heart pounded almost as loud as his voice. “Until we know, may we call you ‘Ash’?”

  “Yes.”

  Smiling, he leaned back in his chair and studied her. “And you’re an American? Canadian?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But your accent is . . .” He’d shaken his head. “No matter. You’re here now, and it’s wonderful to hear your voice after all this time. Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

  “No.” She’d already told him that her name wasn’t Mary. That was all she’d had to say.

  His excitement dimmed, followed by his relief when he’d continued talking and she’d continued answering him. But by the time he’d ended the session—an hour later than usual—unease threaded through his curiosity. He’d already been jotting notes when she rose from her chair to leave.

  She’d stopped long enough to ask, “What does ‘complete lack of affect’ mean?”

  His pencil lead snapped. He’d looked up from his notebook, his face carefully blank and his emotions an indistinguishable riot. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you’ve written it about me in your notes.”

  It was one of the few phrases he’d scribbled that hadn’t been followed by a question mark. Another had been “source amnesia,” but he’d explained that while they’d been talking: It meant her procedural memory and factual knowledge remained, though she’d no recollection of how or when she’d learned them.

  “Ah.” His gray eyebrows had lifted into an open expression. A friendly smile shaped his mouth. “A lack of affect simply means that someone doesn’t display a marked emotional reaction . . . or empathy for others.”

  His conflicting feelings and facial expressions suggested that he assumed Ash would be disturbed by that explanation, and that he was trying to soften its delivery.

  She wasn’t disturbed. She’d already known that she didn’t feel anything like the emotions she regularly sensed in other people. Nodding, she’d turned to go.

  “Ash . . .” When she’d glanced back at Dr. Cawthorne, he wore a puzzled frown. “How did you know what I’d written? My notepad was angled away from you.”

  “Yes. But it reflected in the glass.”

  She’d pointed to the framed diplomas hanging on the wall behind him. He’d looked around; when he’d turned back to Ash, his smile had been bright. He’d said something about her cleverness, but she’d tasted his sour fear.

  The reaction of the nurses and caregivers had echoed his: excitement followed by unease, and punctuated with spurts of fear. They began calling her Ash, but when they spoke together in other rooms and thought she couldn’t hear them, they referred to her as “the American,” as if trying to put distance between themselves and her. Ash paid closer attention to the actors on television after that, particularly the never-ending soap operas. Mimicking those accents upset the nurses more, however. Only after she’d overheard two of them discussing how unsettling they found her tendency to watch everyone without evincing any emotion, Ash had finally understood that her American origin had never been the issue. It was her lack of affect that disturbed them.

  “Even psychopaths learn to fake it,” one of them had said.

  But Ash didn’t care enough to fake her emotions, and by the time she’d decided to leave Nightingale House, the nurses didn’t even refer to her as “the American” anymore. She’d become “that one.”

  That one, who’d caused an uproar of hilarity and shock when her clothes had vanished during a group therapy session—followed by greater shock and fear when, after Ash had noticed her nudity, jeans and a T-shirt that the nurses hadn’t seen before simply appeared on her body. That one, whose blond hair—which the nurses had kept short for easy care—had grown to the middle of her back during a walk through the garden one August afternoon. That one, who’d pulled a prank with glowing eyes, and terrified one of the nurses so badly that she’d quit her position the next day. That one, whom the nurses had found crouching atop the roof of Nightingale House one morning, and who’d given no believable explanation of how she’d climbed the turrets. That one, who’d dropped from the roof to the ground as easily as another person stepped out of her bed, despite their pleas for her to stop.

  They’d shrieked when she’d jumped—but Ash hadn’t detected any relief from them when she’d landed on her feet, uninjured. There’d only been fear, followed by hot anger.

  Another nurse had quit after that, screaming to her supervisor that she’d expected Nightingale House to treat only drugaddicted celebrities and depressed aristos, and that she’d left the government-run hospitals for a posh situation to avoid the psychos. Ash had decided to leave, too, albeit for a different reason. The answer to the one question that interested her—Who am I?—hadn’t been at Nightingale House. No answers were there—except for one, and she’d asked Dr. Cawthorne for that information during her final therapy session.

  “A posh hospital must be expensive,” she’d said. “So who is paying for my treatment?”

  He’d paled. In the months since she’d begun speaking, the wrinkles around Cawthorne’s eyes and mouth had become more pronounced. His skin had loosened as if he’d dropped weight. But although she’d frightened him at times, he’d never lost color in his face or broken out with a sheen of sweat, as he had then.

  His gaze had skidded away from hers. “The money comes from a numbered account. The donor wishes to remain anonymous.”

  “But you know w
ho it is.”

  His hands trembled. “Yes.”

  “And she knows who I am.”

  “Probably,” he’d answered, before looking at Ash with surprise. “How did you know it was a she?”

  Because a woman had brought her to Nightingale House. Ash avoided the memory of her almost as fiercely as the memory of the dark figure, but she could recall the woman’s face, surrounded by dark hair—and the eyes containing a madness that went deeper than anyone else’s at that hospital. Yet despite her obvious insanity, the woman hadn’t remained here; she’d left Ash behind instead.

  Dr. Cawthorne leaned forward, his urgency and panic rushing his words. “I cannot tell you, do you understand? It was part of the deal. If you woke up, I wasn’t to tell you anything. I wasn’t to tell anyone. But no one thought you would wake up. She said the weak halflings rarely did.”

  “Halflings? What is that?” And was Ash one of them?

  He only shook his head. “I made a bargain. So I can’t tell you, do you understand?”

  Ash had understood, though she couldn’t remember how or why she did. She knew that bargains should be avoided, but if they had to be made, they should never be broken. At the very thought of it, ice seemed to form the length of her spine, similar to the cold fear she sensed from Cawthorne.

  Similar to his, but so much stronger. A survival instinct.

  With effort, she’d suppressed the tremors threatening to shake her body, her voice. “You can’t tell me who I am or anything about her,” Ash had said. “But what do you get out of this?”

  “She knows that I once made an . . . error during the treatment of a patient. I keep you here in exchange for her silence.” He’d brought a handkerchief to his brow and mopped away the sweat. “And eventually, I’ll publish a series of papers about you. You’re a fascinating study, Ash.”

  So he was saving his own ass, and using her for his professional advancement. Ash had watched enough television to know that the appropriate response to his confession was a sense of betrayal and outrage. She didn’t feel either emotion, but she had no intention of letting him continue to use her—and if he couldn’t give her answers, she’d find someone who would.

  His relief had been palpable when she dropped the subject and they’d continued the session as usual. She’d waited until after he’d gone home for the evening before entering his office a final time, hoping to find a hint of information in that session’s notes. There hadn’t been anything useful, only a single, self-indulgent rumination that he probably intended to use for a journal article:

  The name she’s chosen for herself is appropriate—as if the fires have left nothing human, only a faint ash.

  He truly knew nothing, Ash had realized. She hadn’t chosen her own name. And whatever had happened between Before and After, Ash was certain she hadn’t burned.

  She’d frozen.

  The temperature had dropped below freezing by the time she emerged from the subway station at Sloane Square. Ash tilted her face down to let her hood take the brunt of the wind and shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. The cold couldn’t hurt her—a month of walking outside during London’s wintry nights without so much as a shiver had taught her that—but she didn’t like the feel of icy air against her skin.

  Though Ash couldn’t recall taking this route before, she didn’t need to verify the directions during the six-minute walk to the St. Croix town house. A left turn into a garden square was taken without hesitation. Although the buildings in this exclusive neighborhood looked similar to one another, all constructed of red brick and accented by wrought iron, she found the correct home without consulting the house numbers.

  So she’d been here before. Ash didn’t recognize the place, but she knew that beyond the red front door lay a marble-tiled foyer and a staircase leading to the upper floors. To the right lay the entertaining salon, which opened into the dining room. Farther down the hall, a library overlooked the small garden. Upstairs, the second level had been divided between two bedroom suites, one of which had been renovated into a modern office.

  An American woman with a face identical to Ash’s had allegedly been murdered in that office.

  After Ash had left Nightingale House, finding information had been easy. Access to that information had been her primary obstacle—but as soon as Ash had learned to memorize the numbers on the credit cards that people flashed so casually when they made their purchases, she used those numbers at Internet cafés. From there, it was a simple matter of searching for American women who’d disappeared in London. Her earliest parameters were too narrow—she’d set them to search for missing persons from three or four years ago—but when Ash had widened the search to ten years, she’d found Rachel Anne Boyle.

  The blonde in Rachel’s photo didn’t have symbols tattooed down the side of her face, but their features had been the same. So Ash had looked deeper.

  Six years ago, Rachel Boyle had worked as personal assistant to one of England’s most successful independent financiers, Madelyn St. Croix. Both Rachel and her employer had disappeared not long after Madelyn’s estranged son, Nicholas St. Croix, had returned from America and began a hostile takeover of Wells-Down Investments, Madelyn’s company.

  According to reports, Rachel had quickly become Nicholas St. Croix’s lover. Probably for his wealth, Ash thought. Ash had few needs, but after a month on London’s streets, even she recognized the appeal of a ready source of money . . . and she could see little else in him that might be appealing. Though undeniably handsome, with short dark hair and magazine-perfect features, neither warmth nor humor was apparent in his pictures—and after the women had vanished, she couldn’t detect any emotion in those press photos, either.

  Surely, when a man’s lover died in his arms, he’d feel something . Wouldn’t he?

  Unless he’d lied.

  The night they’d disappeared, Nicholas had told police that he and his mother had argued over business matters. During the fight, Madelyn had fired a gun at him—but Rachel Boyle had jumped into the bullet’s path, and the slug had ripped through her chest. Nicholas had claimed he’d been holding Rachel when she’d died, but the police hadn’t located her body or any blood at the site or on his clothing. Madelyn had vanished, too, and Nicholas became the primary suspect in their disappearances. But although the police were certain of foul play, they’d never been able to pin Rachel’s and Madelyn’s murders on him.

  Ash didn’t know if Nicholas St. Croix had killed Rachel or if he’d told the truth about that night . . . but she knew that his mother had still been alive. Ash had recognized the woman from the photos in the news reports, and terror had scraped like ice in her chest.

  Only three years ago, Madelyn St. Croix had left Ash in Dr. Cawthorne’s care.

  Ash wasn’t Rachel Boyle; of that she was certain, just as she knew “Rachel” wasn’t her name. But a connection between Ash and the American woman clearly existed, and Ash hoped to find answers in the house where Rachel Boyle had worked and—perhaps—died.

  She watched the darkened windows for movement, listened for any sounds from within. All was quiet. Though six years had passed since Madelyn’s disappearance, the property was still listed under her name. Most likely, she had an arrangement with a housekeeping service and an estate that handled such necessities in her absence. A security system probably protected the house, but if an alarm sounded, Ash would run before the police arrived.

  And if Ash couldn’t find answers here, she’d seek out Nicholas St. Croix . . . and hope that looking for him before trying to find Madelyn wouldn’t be a horrible mistake. Perhaps Madelyn had a reason for what she’d done; perhaps she was hiding from her son, and she’d stowed Ash away at Nightingale House for her protection.

  But although the man in Nicholas St. Croix’s picture appeared capable of fewer emotions than Ash, his image didn’t terrify her. So Ash hoped she wasn’t wrong.

  And she hoped that he knew her.

  The security system activated w
hen Ash broke the lock on the front door. No alarm sounded, but Ash knew where to look for the security panel, positioned discreetly behind a framed oval mirror that opened like a medicine cabinet. Inside, the status light blinked red. Ash couldn’t have recited the numbers that she tapped into the pad; her fingers simply moved in a pattern, as if she were typing an oft-repeated word into a keyboard.

  The status light changed to solid green.

  Should she have been astonished that her code was correct? Ash pondered her lack of surprise. Inputting the number hadn’t seemed any different than walking the route here. Obviously, she’d done it many times before—and her procedural memory was still intact.

  So she didn’t feel surprised, but she did wonder why the code hadn’t been changed in six years. After Madelyn St. Croix’s disappearance, why hadn’t the security company updated the entry codes?

  Perhaps they’d been instructed not to. Perhaps they expected Madelyn to return—or perhaps someone else did. A dedicated employee?

  Ash couldn’t guess, but obviously someone had cared for the house in the past six years. No dust collected on the carved mirror frame or in the corners of the foyer. The wainscoting and staircase banisters gleamed. The faint scent of cleaning wax lingered, but the air itself smelled stale, as if the house had been shut up for a while. No live-in caretaker, then—or the housekeeper had taken off for the holidays and left it empty.

  Good. Ash wouldn’t have to be quiet when she searched the rooms.

  She started in the parlor. The décor could have filled a checklist for expensive and tasteful. The requisite antique vase reigned over an ebony-inlaid table. A thick Oriental rug anchored a seating arrangement upholstered in cream silk. Two large, modern paintings featuring slashes of bold oranges and gold bookended the open entrance to the dining room.

  Had Ash eaten at that table? She didn’t know. Nothing familiar stood out to her—and she saw nothing unexpected, either. Ash wanted to spark a memory, or at least a sense of déjà vu, but she only had the vague feeling that fewer fresh flowers decorated the sideboard than should be.