As she took a few deep breaths, she let her mind travel into the part of the world that very few would ever see. She blinked, letting her eyes adjust to the change in her surroundings. Everything around her looked darker, the shadow version of what existed in the “real” world. The couch that she and Ben sat on looked less vibrant. Instead of being a chocolate brown, it was a dull, lifeless shade that wouldn’t inspire anyone to buy it.
The only things that looked interesting in this space were the energies people left behind when they died. She had heard that some Conditioned people could actually see the energy of the living, too. They were called Locators, because they could use that energy to find the missing. But that ability had never been her gift. Only the signatures of the departed appeared to her.
Seven gasped as she looked around. Earlier, she had scanned the room and it had been empty. Not one bit of energy to see. Now it was filled with colors from ghost energy. Blues, purples and reds danced and exploded around her. She stood up to move closer to the source. She knew Ben would be concerned on the other end about what was happening, and she wished she could explain it.
She had no memory of what had happened to her the last time she’d been around this much intensity. Energy signatures usually looked like small dots of light floating in the air. She could breathe deeply, take them inside her, and then send them on to wherever it was they should go. But this? She wasn’t sure she could handle this—not even on her strongest day. It was as if she had stepped into an energy storm that wanted nothing more than to destroy her.
She shook her head. No, that wasn’t true. Ghost energy wasn’t personal. It was leftover “stuff” that the dead hadn’t taken with them. It had nothing to do with her whatsoever. The fact that she was there to witness and handle it was nothing more than a simple twist of fate. The energy didn’t have thoughts. It didn’t care if she was there or not there.
Steeling herself, she breathed in a little bit of the orange light just to see what it would feel like. Her lungs burned, but not much worse than they usually did when she had to use her powers to disperse ghost light. If it was all like that, then she could absorb it and survive the experience.
Nothing could have prepared her for what happened next. The lights in the room exploded in front of her like the pictures of fireworks she’d seen on the walls of Madame’s office. Not even seconds later, they boomed a deafening sound that made her fall to her knees as her hands instinctively reached to cover her ears. The whole room shook.
Oh God, what’s happening?
Her mind felt disjointed, and she tried to convince herself that she wasn’t under attack. It wasn’t working. This felt personal, even if it shouldn’t. Colors swirled in front of her eyes, and she knew she would faint. This was exactly what had happened to her the last time she’d seen this much power in one room. She hadn’t remembered it, had blocked out the experience, but going through it again brought it all back to the front of her mind.
Seven couldn’t let herself lose consciousness in the shadow dimension. She wanted to be able to open her eyes to sunlight again. When Madame put her down, her last memories shouldn’t be of the place that was a constant reminder of her own darkness.
Forcing the shift of consciousness back to the real world, Seven panted hard breaths as she tried to regain control of herself. Immediately, she became aware that she was in Ben’s lap. Well, her head was, anyway. The rest of her body sprawled out on the floor. He ran his hands slowly through her hair.
“There you are.” Relief sounded in his voice. She tried to sit up, and he stopped her, holding his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t move just yet. I have to imagine something really bad happened in there?”
She swallowed, wishing the room would stop spinning. “How did you know?”
She wasn’t the type who wept with strong emotions, but if she had been, she would have expressed how fantastic it was that she’d made it out of the shadows fully conscious.
“I knew because every mirror in the house seems to have exploded, and you screamed like you were being murdered.”
She gasped. Every mirror exploded? Now, she needed to sit up.
“Easy.” His voice sounded authoritative, and she could easily imagine him as one of the guards in Crescent, ordering everyone around. Except that where they were frightening, he was kind. Still, she’d guess that people listened to him when he spoke.
“I need to see what happened here.” She blinked to try to stop the spins. “Nothing I did in there should have affected anything out here.”
Or at least it never had in the past. Then again, this ghost energy had been strong enough to knock over clocks and move through houses.
“Well, it did. I was really worried you weren’t coming back.”
She blinked a couple of times as she let his words travel through her soul. He had worried. Hoping she could hide the emotion in her voice, she finally spoke. “Thank you. So was I. Can you please help me sit up?”
“Sure.”
He moved his hand behind her neck and pulled her into a sitting position. Before she knew what was happening, she was sitting upright in his lap. In general, embracing was a bad idea for the Conditioned. Non-Conditioned didn’t like to touch Conditioned people. The guards could touch them. But no one wanted that, for a number of reasons.
Seven shook her head. “That was a rough one.”
Once upright, she felt as if the room straightened itself and ceased its relentless spin. Well, that would teach her to touch bright-orange energy. It really had felt as if the signatures had been out to get her. That was impossible, but when they’d exploded, it had been all she’d been able to think. Seven bit down on her fingernail, a disgusting habit Madame had beaten out of her fifteen years earlier.
Maybe she was simply regressing on all levels.
“Want to tell me what happened?”
She looked up to meet his gaze. Sitting on his lap, she could smell the scent of safety she could feel coming off his body—the fragrance was like cinnamon but different. Maybe she should have known what those aromas were, but she didn’t. He just smelled as if she could finally take a deep breath around him.
“What do you smell like? I don’t know those scents.”
Her question made him grin. The heaviness she’d noticed, the constant burden in the dark depths of his eyes, relented a little. After a second, he started to laugh.
It was a small sound that quickly developed into downright hysterical bursts.
Seven felt her skin heat up to the point that it was actually painful. She’d never been so embarrassed in her life. What had she been thinking, getting so personal?
She’d made him lose his mind.
“I’m sorry, sir. I never should have asked you that. Please, forgive me.”
“Seven.” He grabbed her cheeks in his hands. “I’m not upset. I’m… well, delighted with you. Sometimes you say things that just make me so downright happy with your lack of a hidden agenda and your innocence, when you should be so completely guarded.”
Seven wished she could look down, but his hands held her face in place. “I know better than to ask something like that. I guess I’m a little out of it because of what just happened.”
His face fell into the serious expression she was used to seeing.
“Seven, I have to ask you something.”
She gulped. “Okay.”
“Do I smell bad?”
“What?” Now she wanted to throw up. “No, I didn’t mean that. Not at all. I…”
He interrupted her. “I’m teasing you, that’s all. I’m just having fun.”
The laughter started again, and after a second, she joined him. Laughter bubbled inside her until tears sprang from her eyes. He pulled her even closer until her head rested against his chest; his heaving laughter fed hers.
“Sandalwood.”
She pulled back to look at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you just said.”
“I bought some soap from a fu
ndraising activity at the girls’ school. I don’t really like scents, but this I thought smelled okay.”
He pulled up his shirt to sniff it. “Is it too much? Kind of girly?”
“No.” She would never call anything about Ben girly. “I really like it.” She sniffed again. “It’s called sandalwood?”
“That’s right. It comes from a specific type of tree with the same name.”
She smiled. “I like it.”
“Me, too.” He ran his hands through her hair. “What happened to you? Can I assume you took care of it? That’s why everything exploded?”
She sighed. It would have been nice to be able to tell him she’d done that. “No, I’m afraid it exploded around me. I barely touched it. But, Ben, it’s serious stuff. In my life, I’ve only seen it that bad once before.”
“Did it hurt you?” His tone told her he hated the idea.
“The last time it was so intense I went into a coma for a week. This time it hurt but not as devastatingly as the first time. That was a real accomplishment for me.”
Ben moved her gently off his lap before he stood up. As he stared down at her, his eyes were hard. “I’m calling the Institution and having you go home. I won’t have you hurt working on this.”
Her heart pounded hard as she jumped up. “No, please don’t do that.”
“I can’t live with it if you’re harmed because you’re doing this for me. You have a number of years left, and I’ll work on getting that stopped for you. But, I can’t let you just die here instead.”
She grabbed his arm. It was absolutely pivotal that he understood what was at stake here. “I’m going home to die, Ben. I need to do this first. I must prove to God that I did good things here on Earth.”
His silence hung between them for long moments before he spoke. “I’m more than aware of what’s going to happen to you. I spent the whole night reading Conditioned law.”
She wanted to cry, to weep with frustration. “Did you find anything that might help?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“I don’t have rights. I’m not a person. I just need to get this done. I want to achieve something spectacular before I go.” And she wanted to do it for him. She wanted to make his home safe for the beautiful little girls who were pictured, smiling, all over his walls. “Let me do this. I’ll find a way.”
Ben didn’t say yes to her request, but he didn’t say no. He took her hand and led her back to the kitchen.
“Make yourself something to eat while I clean up the mess of all the mirrors. It’s a good thing I don’t believe in bad luck.”
Seven knew there was a lot of bad luck out there, more than most people could ever digest. But she could handle it—because meeting Ben and coming to his home was the good variety. She would make sure it was. There was no other choice.
Five
Ben hadn’t slept a wink all night, not that he’d tried. He took a swig of his way-too-bitter-even-for-chicory coffee and sighed. Seven had gone to bed four hours earlier, and he hoped she rested well, even though she’d said she wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore. She had looked wiped out. As for him, he wasn’t sure he even wanted to imagine what his dreams would look like in the future. Exploding glass, screaming, and Seven so pale he’d been sure she would die in his arms.
He rubbed his eyes. They burned from fatigue. Truth was, he had no idea what he was going to do. If he let Seven stay there and combat the ghosts, then it was likely he’d doom her to injury or, God forbid, death. If he sent her home, she would definitely die. Of course, if he let her stay and she succeeded without hurting herself, she would go home to die anyway. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do about that, and that fact made him angrier than he could remember being in a long time.
He picked up his cell phone. For the second day in a row, he started his morning with a phone call to Eugene. His brother might not be able to fix anything that was going on, but Ben could at least vent to him without having to worry about getting arrested for talking inappropriately about helping the Conditioned. His brother would never turn him in to the police. Not unless he wanted Ben to report everything he knew Eugene had done.
They might have had a screwed-up family relationship, but it worked for them.
His brother picked up on the first ring. “How do you like your Conditioned girl?”
Although their father had spoken with little in the way of a New Orleans accent, Eugene had picked up a strong one over the years, seemingly by choice. Ben didn’t know whether he sounded that way or not. Eugene’s twang was one of the things that amused him about his brother, rather than some of his other affectations, which made him crazy.
“She’s going to be put to death.” It was first thing in the morning, and he already had a migraine forming. “You sent a woman to my house who is going to be executed right after she leaves.”
Eugene was silent on the other end of the phone. Ben wondered if he’d shocked his older brother into a lack of speech for the first time in his life.
“Don’t you go and get involved in this, Benedicte. You needed help. I got you help. The girls will be better off without whatever is going on at your house. Other than that, stay out of Institution business. Nothing good can come of you getting involved.”
Ben’s leg shook. It was a nervous habit he hadn’t ever really managed to rid himself of, which was why it was a good thing that he rarely got anxious enough for it to occur. Now he was too tired to care.
“It’s too late, Eugene.” He sighed. “I’m involved. She’s a sweet young woman. Young being the key word of that sentence. They’re not supposed to be killed so early, and I’m starting to think that if I’d ever thought about the fact that they get murdered at all, I would have objected before now.”
He hoped he would have. He liked to think he was the kind of person who would have said something.
“To whom would you have objected?”
Ben could hear his brother inhale on his cigarette. It was a sucking sound; a kind of woop-woop. Sometimes he wondered if, someday, he’d have to help his brother hook up an oxygen machine. Of course, they could all drown in a hurricane any day, too, so who really knew what was going to happen? God, when had he become so fatalistic? This whole problem with the ghosts had brought up all kinds of issues for him.
“I don’t know.” He didn’t like his brother challenging his moral indignation. It made him feel ineffective. “Someone.”
“Do yourself a favor, okay? Use the girl. Let her do her job. Send her away. Forget about her.”
There was a click as Eugene hung up the phone. Ben stared at it as if it were a foreign object. Had Gene just hung up on him? He wanted to dial him back and tell him what he thought of his rude behavior.
Turning to the left, he saw the picture of Dana that sat on his desk. She was smiling, holding both the girls on her knees. They’d been tiny, barely over a year old and so petite. Half him and half her. Lately, Dana had become a distant memory to him. For the first years after her death, he’d lain up at night, missing her with a pain he hadn’t thought he could endure. Now he could think of her and smile, even as his love for her became something he remembered with quiet joy—different from feeling the pain of its absence every second of every day, as though he’d lost a limb.
The girls would always remind him of her, but he knew there was life to be lived. She would have wanted that—had told him as much before she’d died—and he wanted to give the girls a complete existence, not one lost to endless grief. Even so, what the hell was he doing spending his night thinking about a Conditioned woman? Why bring her into their lives? Maybe he should have found another way.
The front door opened and slammed closed. The sound, so unexpected, jarred him out of his stupor of self-doubt.
“Hello.”
He heard his daughter Daphne’s voice. Who was she talking to, and what was she doing here so early?
“Who are you?” Ella’s soft tones reached him next.
The girls were home, and the only person they’d have been speaking to like that was Seven. He stood up so fast that he knocked his chair backward into the desk. It made a loud bang before it toppled over onto the floor.
“Shit.” He almost never cursed, but then again, lately he was doing all kinds of things he didn’t normally do.
Within two seconds, he was out the door of his office. A million questions pushed through his mind. How would he explain Seven to the girls? How would he explain the Conditioned in general? Should he explain?
The scene he walked into made him stop short. Seven sat on the floor, each of his daughters sitting on her lap. He blinked a few times as he regarded them. His daughters weren’t, in general, all that social with strangers, and yet there they were—on the floor—seated on Seven’s lap.
“Hello.” His voice cracked, which he hoped no one noticed. “What’s going on?”
His daughters’ two heads shot up to look at him. Nearly identical smiles appeared on their two dear faces.
“Daddy!”
Ella jumped up and threw her arms around him. He pulled her closer against him. Her dark-haired head barely reached his midsection, and he had to resist the urge to scoop her up as though she were a toddler and twirl her around. His heart pounded hard, as if he’d run a marathon, and he couldn’t make sense of it.
“Hi, Daddy.”
Daphne didn’t rise from her place on Seven’s lap. Instead, she scooted over until she was more fully comfortable where she sat, an option available to her now that Ella had given up her spot.
“The girls were just telling me what they like to eat for breakfast.”
He scratched his head. “They were?”
Seven laughed, a small giggle. “They ran in. Daphne doesn’t think Ms. Annie from next door knows they’ve come home. They snuck away.”
Illicit Connections (Illicit Minds Book 2) Page 5
