Dark Legacy

by Anna DeStefano

  “There’s…there’s nothing wrong with our family.”

  “Really? Then why are you shaking, Mom? Like everything I say, every horrible thing I’m thinking, hurts you—physically hurts you. Why did Sarah and I have to hide all those years exactly how much we knew and felt about everyone else, so no one would know we were there, somehow, in their minds? Why have I been avoiding you for months, so I wouldn’t upset you more? Why do I feel like if I let myself explode right now, I might take both of you and this entire house with me!”

  Sarah’s laughter was back, as if Maddie’s twin was enjoying the show.

  “You have to calm down,” Phyllis insisted. “You’re talking like—”

  “A crazy person?” Maddie’s glance to Jarred challenged him to deny that’s exactly what he saw.

  Phyllis stumbled to a nearby chair, the fear and fight draining out of her. Until her expression was the kind of blank page Maddie had seen too many times.

  “It is crazy…” Phyllis mumbled through her tears. “It’s not true. It can’t be true…It was just a stupid piece of paper. A family myth. Witch trials and public executions…because someone hundreds of years ago thought she could read people’s emotions and make them do whatever she wanted…it’s crazy…”

  “A myth?” Jarred asked as Phyllis’s rambling petered off. “Reading…”

  “People’s…feelings,” Maddie finished, childhood secrets bubbling up until they found the crack that Jarred had become in her control. “Sarah and I have always…felt more than we should…”

  “There’s a fix…” Her mother was rocking now. Forward and back, her arms wrapped around herself like a child. “There has to be a fix…The doctor said they’d try to help Sarah. Then, if you needed it, they could help you, too.”

  “Help with what?” Jarred demanded. When Maddie could only stare at her mother, he knelt in front of Phyllis. “Help your daughters with what?”

  Phyllis swallowed, her head shaking, her gray-green eyes vague. Glassy. She was gone, the same way she’d left Maddie in the hospital ER ten years ago. The way Phyllis was always gone whenever knowing the awful truth about their family had mattered most. “I did it all for Maddie. For Maddie and Sarah…Sarah was asleep. Gerald was dead. Then the scientist at the research center said he might be able to find some way to stop…the legacy. And I couldn’t lose Maddie, too. It…it’s crazy. It can’t be true. It just can’t be.”

  Phyllis couldn’t help Maddie. She’d never been able to. Maddie was on her own, same as always, finding the answers she needed. And without her mother’s help, Sarah and the Trinity Psychiatric Research Center were Maddie’s last hope.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Your mother thinks all this has something to do with one of your ancestors being persecuted in the witch trials?” Jarred followed Maddie out of her mother’s house.

  He tripped over the uneven brick sidewalk and glanced back through the open front door. Phyllis was no doubt still sobbing in the den, unaware that they’d left.

  “Did you hear something?” Jarred asked.

  “Something?” Maddie stopped beside his car. Dug into her purse for her phone. “You mean like a menacing bird swooping down on us, only it’s not really there?”

  “What?”

  “Sorry.” She shrugged, pressing send. “Must just be me.”

  He grabbed the phone and flipped it shut, disconnecting the call.

  “What the hell’s going on, Temple?”

  “What the hell are you doing talking to a patient like that?” She figured sarcasm was preferable to pitching another nutty. “You’re losing your edge. Your professional boundaries. Get in your car and head back to your sane life before you lose even more.”

  Maddie grabbed for her phone, missed, and her fingers brushed the back of Jarred’s hand. The shock of the contact rattled her already-misfiring brain. A rush of confusion. Jarred’s confusion. His determination to stay with her. To earn her trust.

  Her palm smacked his chest. His cheek. “Wake up and get the hell away from me. Before—”

  He caught her next slap midswing. Grabbed her shoulders. Shoved her against his car.

  “I’m awake, damn it! Enough to know that what your mother just said makes her more of a candidate for a psych hold than you are. Except—” His body brushed against hers. His eyes closed. “—I believe more of it than I should. And I’ve felt enough today to wonder if the parts that I don’t believe might be true, too. And I can’t help feeling…”

  When he opened his eyes, Maddie was lost. Falling into all that soothing blue. He wasn’t judging. Or blaming. Or moving away. He wasn’t letting her go despite her rigid refusal to lean into his touch.

  “Please.” Things inside her began to soften and flow the way they did whenever he was near. But survival instincts clamored for her to run. To stay safe. Even though there was clearly no safe anymore.

  “I can feel it, too,” he said.

  He’d said that before, at her apartment. She hadn’t believed him then. She still didn’t. She couldn’t.

  “You…You can’t be…”

  “Feeling what you do?”

  He stepped away from her body, but not her mind. Not the place he was making for himself in her heart.

  “I…” She watched her hand reach for his cheek. A weak, needy gesture.

  You big baby! her twin’s voice jeered.

  Maddie curled her fingers into a ball.

  “Damn it!” She dropped her fist to her side. “I’m not doing this.”

  He grabbed her hand back. Kissed her fingers one at a time until they opened.

  “How long have you been hearing the voice in your head?” he asked—then he caught her reflexive jerk away. He pulled her against his chest. Her fingers clenched in his sweater. “I can…feel when it’s there, Maddie. When you’re not yourself. I have no idea what that means. But after what your mother said…”

  “The…legacy.” Maddie struggled to get the word out. To get away. “The stupid legacy. Lies. Always another lie, another excuse, until I don’t know what’s real. Except I can feel…hear…see things that aren’t me!” He wouldn’t let her go. I’m here, his voice said in her mind. Then she was holding on. Curling close. Needing him to tell her it was real. That she was real. “She…My mother won’t admit it. Sarah’s gone. My father’s gone. And she still won’t—”

  “I believe you.” He tucked Maddie’s head beneath his chin.

  And it was just that simple, that horrible, being believed. Having someone accept that she was lost and scary and freakishly messed up. Someone still willing to hold her, to kiss the crown of her head and be a buffer between her and her mother’s broken mind. Maddie’s tears left soundless trails down her cheeks, wetting Jarred’s shirt. Staining him with the proof that she was broken, too.

  “It’s real, Maddie.” His breath was warm against her hair. “You have to accept that, or—”

  “Accept?” She inched away, as far as she could with the car behind her. She wiped her eyes and her nose on the soft suede of her coat sleeve. A hiccup followed. A laugh, misting the frigid air between them. Broken giggling. Tangible proof that her mind was slipping away. And Jarred was her witness to it, while something in his gaze was breaking, too. The part that had still thought he could help her.

  Which brought them full circle to what she’d intended to make crystal clear that morning. That she was in this nightmare alone, and he could go to hell for making her want it to be any different.

  “Good-bye, Jarred.” She grabbed her phone, edged around him, and headed toward the street. She redialed the car service she used sometimes for trips into Boston.

  The click of Jarred opening his car to leave was the loneliest sound she’d ever heard. But it was the right thing. For him most of all.

  “I programmed the Trinity Center’s address into my GPS,” he called out. “Just before I brought up the directions to your apartment. I’m heading there next, with or without you.”

&
nbsp; Maddie stood at the curb, her back turned. But she could still feel his concern. His warmth. His presence in her mind. Wrapping around her. Calming the chaos and pushing back against the angry residue of Sarah’s brittle thoughts.

  Maddie turned back.

  “Need a ride, or should I just wait for you there?” His arched brow was a casual, flirtatious castoff. As if she’d simply been walking by and they’d never moved past the easy connection that had been so natural the first months they’d dated.

  No baggage. No dark secrets. Just two minds, two souls that fit better than anything she’d ever known.

  No more barriers.

  No more safe.

  No more careful.

  Maddie jumped at the sound of her phone flipping shut.

  “Tell me you’re not ready for this.” Jarred stared out his windshield at the Trinity Psychiatric Research Center. “And we’ll come back in the morning.”

  “No,” insisted the terrified woman sitting beside him.

  He’d never seen Maddie look truly scared before. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the imposing brick building looming above the parking lot. Her head tilted to the side, her hair shadowing her features.

  “Screw this.” She shoved her door open and pushed out of the car.

  So much for scared.

  “Slow down.” Jarred jogged to catch up with her. “There’s no rush.”

  Except he’d felt it, too, since leaving Phyllis Temple’s house. Since before that. The pull of this place. The conviction that the answers were here. That they’d always been here with Maddie’s twin.

  He caught Maddie’s elbow just outside the center.

  “Sarah’s in a coma.”

  “No”—Maddie’s head jerked side to side—“she’s not.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I hope she’s better. I hope they know how to help you here, but—”

  Maddie pulled free, but he caught her chin. Turned her head until he could see her eyes. Flat. Dilated. Drained of the life usually simmering there.

  “I think they’re killing Sarah here,” she whispered.

  Jarred nodded, accepting her truth as his own. He turned her loose. “Then let’s go see what we can do.”

  Maddie pushed through the glass doors leading inside. He followed. It was either keep up or get his head bashed in when the door swung back toward him. No one was stopping Maddie in her current state. Which didn’t bode well for the bookish receptionist posted behind the entryway’s partition. It was a stark, contemporary reception area. Gray walls devoid of artwork. One severely stylish black chair to sit on. No cushion. No houseplants. No magazines. A no loitering sign would have been redundant.

  “Do you have an appointment?” asked the bun-wearing fiftysomething woman behind the half-open partition.

  Maddie sucked in a deep breath, held it for several seconds, then silently exhaled. Admirable restraint, considering the day she’d had. Jarred was on adrenaline overload.

  “I’m here to see my sister.”

  “And your appointment time would be…” The skeptical receptionist ran a bony finger down the schedule in front of her.

  “We don’t have an appointment.” Jarred eased between Maddie’s clenched fists and the partition that wouldn’t protect a rhinoceros from her next explosion. “But if there’s a doctor we could speak with—”

  “I’m a fucking doctor.” Maddie’s nails dug into his arm.

  Agitation wasn’t the right word for what he was sensing in her. It was as if something dark and hateful had been taking over the closer they got to the center. Something less Maddie.

  She marched toward the glass door leading past reception. When she tried to open it and it wouldn’t budge, she yanked the thing harder, shaking the frame.

  “If someone doesn’t let me see my sister soon, I’m going to—”

  “What do you think you’re doing!” All ballsy exasperation, the receptionist pressed a button and released the door’s locking mechanism.

  Maddie pulled it open, but the receptionist had planted herself in Maddie’s path, her finger raised.

  “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave,” the woman insisted. “This is a private clinic. We have strict visitation policies. Whoever you are, whoever told you could just—”

  “I’m Madeline Temple, and you people are doing God knows what with my sister somewhere in this place.”

  Maddie looked ready to rip the woman’s finger off. She flinched when Jarred grabbed her arm. The air tightened around them, her fury coiling like back draft ready to engulf whatever was in its path.

  “I’m going to see her,” she said to the receptionist. “I’m going to speak with her doctors. Tonight. Or someone here is going to…”

  Die!

  The threat came out as a growl, directly in Jarred’s ear. Or had it been a menacing whisper in his mind? He’d heard that tone before. Twice, in fact. Each time Maddie had lost herself that day.

  “Temple?” The receptionist’s condescension dissolved. “You’re a…”

  The woman’s hand rose to her throat. She choked. A wave of crimson spread across her washed-out complexion.

  Jarred rubbed his own fingers against his neck, remembering that morning when he’d pissed Maddie off, only to find himself unable to breathe.

  Die! Maddie’s mind whispered again.

  “You’re…” the receptionist croaked. “I can’t…”

  “Stop it!” Jarred spun Maddie around.

  He yanked her away from the other woman.

  “What are you…” he started. “You’re not…”

  The dull-eyed woman standing before him couldn’t be attacking a stranger. Maddie couldn’t be able to choke people with her mind. That sort of thing only happened in sci-fi novels and overhyped TV thrillers.

  “Jarred?” The Maddie he knew was coming back. She started trembling. “Help me. I can’t stop her. I can’t…”

  “Can’t stop who?”

  “I can’t breathe!” the receptionist gasped. “I can’t breathe…Make her stop!”

  “Maddie?” Jarred shook her, hard. Harder! “Let me help you, before—”

  Die! Maddie yelled, only this time he was certain that her lips hadn’t moved. And her eyes had gone flat again.

  “Maddie?”

  “Help me,” the receptionist begged.

  Let go, now! Jarred sent the command with his mind. This isn’t you, Temple. You don’t hurt people, you help them. Don’t do this!

  Maddie flinched. Her body relaxed. Her gaze misted with confusion. He looked over his shoulder to see the receptionist choke once more, her eyes bulging. Then her hand dropped from her neck, and she bent over, taking in several wheezing breaths.

  Jarred’s body grew numb.

  He hadn’t been imagining it all day. He really had been there in Maddie’s mind. Or she’d been in his. One, two…three times now. And this time he’d intentionally tried to reach her.

  I can feel…hear…see things that aren’t me, she’d said at her mother’s.

  “Jarred?” She swayed in his grasp. “What…What happened?”

  “You…went away.”

  Whatever she’d just become had been someone else. He was certain of it. Whoever had attacked the terrified receptionist still standing between them and the inner workings of the center, it hadn’t been Maddie.

  “Away?” Maddie leaned closer, surprising him not just with her unguarded acceptance of his touch. But with how much he wanted her closer. He wanted her thoughts whispering inside his head again. He needed to know he had his gentle healer back, instead of whatever she became when she was raging and wanting to tear the world apart.

  “You went away,” he said as gently as he could. “Like at your mom’s earlier. It was the same thing that happened when you were with Phyllis. And when we were at your place, and you—”

  “And I wanted to die…” Maddie shied out of reach, and it was like a part of Jarred was ripped away. “No. I wanted to kill. What’s
happening to me?”

  “I…I’ll go find a doctor…” The receptionist backed away, the way someone would from a feral animal. She scurried down the hall, around the corner and out of sight.

  Jarred motioned Maddie to follow. She hesitated, her fear of doing what they both knew she had to do ripping at him. Then her spine straightened. She slowly stepped over the threshold and into the center.

  “Let’s move”—he couldn’t stop his hand from caressing the small of her back, slight pressure that urged her to pick up the pace—“before Nurse Ratchet comes back with reinforcements.”

  “Where should we start?”

  Jarred skidded to a stop at the simplicity of her question.

  “Wait here a second.”

  He headed back to the reception desk and found a center phone list, complete with a diagram of the building’s floor plan on the back. Nice touch. He carried the laminated sheet back to Maddie. Turned it so the floor plan was faceup.

  “What?” She frowned at his expectant look.

  “Where do you think we’ll find your sister?”

  “What!” She glanced down at the sheet.

  “You’re connected to her. Somehow. Some way. That’s what happened with that receptionist when she said you couldn’t see your sister. It’s what’s been drawing you here for months, right?”

  Sarah or something that was happening to Sarah was destroying Maddie. Jarred kissed Maddie’s hand and placed it on the floor plan.

  “Focus on your sister.” He had no idea what he was saying, but it felt right, all of it. Touching Maddie again. Feeling her accept his help. Telling her to keep searching for the truth instead of shrinking back into her mother’s denial.

  “Where’s Sarah?” he urged.

  When Maddie’s haunted eyes fluttered shut, he felt her…pulling inward again. She inhaled, and her consciousness seemed to spread out as she released the breath. She did it again. He caught the rhythm and followed, his touch still on her hand. He wanted her to know she wasn’t alone. Or maybe he was the one who needed reassurance.