How could Susan have not seen the truth that she truly wanted what was best for those around her? She’d never fought, and for that Susan wanted to punish her? Just like Susan had wanted to punish poor Esther. It made no sense to him.
Ernest paused and held out his hand to Susan. “Give me Esther’s token back.”
That vision he’d seen concerned him. He would hold both women’s minds and keep them both safe.
Her jaw dropped. “Are you serious?”
“She is completely broken. We don’t need you on her. The only thing left in her is a strange hatred of Fiona, which is completely unnecessary! I’m in charge here, remember?” Which he wasn’t entirely sure of, he only knew that he had to take the gun away from her. Something in him whispered that he had to help Phoenix. She needed him.
“The boss told me to leave it.” Susan bowed her head. “He said to let her keep hating Fiona, but to keep it in check.”
Ernest shook his head. “That makes no sense. Why would he do that?”
Reluctance written in every move of her hands, Susan gave him the foul-mouthed gun. Whoever had thought of putting a soul into a weapon had one sick mind. No doubt it was an abnormal trick of the worst kind.
“I do not know,” Susan said.
“Well, I am going to find out,” Ernest said, his voice a sharper tone than he’d ever used.
He tucked the gun under his arm and headed for the door.
The door slid open and he stepped into the bright white hallway that was part of the techs’ facilities. Sparse and smelling of disinfectant, the place was cold. He hated it.
Without a pause, he headed for the elevator that would take him to the lower levels where the patients were kept.
Human doctors bustled about in the upper hallway, taking notes on clipboards, and for the most part not even noticing him.
He was in the elevator and going down before he could think better of it.
But after spending a year inside her head, he couldn’t help but feel like he needed to see her in person, before . . . well, before the boss came back. Gardreel was going to do something. He was going to use her for something, and Ernest didn’t want her hurt.
Was that why Gardreel had kept Esther’s mind full of hatred toward Fiona?
As strange as it seemed, he thought of Fiona as a friend. Maybe his only friend. Almost as if she’d known he’d been there in her mind and had accepted him.
“Foolish, you are being foolish,” he muttered to himself as the elevator trucked along, then coasted to a gentle stop at the bottom. They had to keep the abnormals tucked beneath the rest of the world for everyone’s protection, but being this many levels down with them was unnerving. He swallowed hard, the door slid open, and he stepped out into the space.
Two guards turned toward him. “Short stack, what are you doing down here?” The guard on his left spoke with an accent that hinted of swamps and humidity, of voodoo and sweat-filled nights. Of demons. Ernest shook his head. Foolish.
“The boss asked me to check on two of the women,” he said, once more pulling up to his tallest height.
The other guard grinned. He was newer, and there was a lecherous bend to his lips. “Check on them, hey?”
The first guard, George, leaned across and smacked the new one. “Never talk to them like that.”
“You called him short stack!”
“I didn’t imply he was going to fuck one of the inmates, dumbass,” George said.
Ernest flushed red, because he hadn’t realized that was what the other guard was implying.
“I won’t be long. Ten or maybe fifteen minutes.” He managed to get the words out without choking on them, but barely. Sex with an abnormal? That would be . . . an abomination of the highest order.
It struck him again that he was being foolish in coming down to this level. Why did he feel the need to check on her now, after all this time? Did he just want to see her in person before she was taken away? Or was part of him worried the boss had the truth of it—that he’d been duped and would pay the price?
Yes, that was the core of it. He was good at reading faces, but in person, not across a screen. He would look her in the eyes and see the truth of her soul, and that would be that.
He would see once and for all that Fiona was exactly as he thought she was, and not the monster Gardreel and the others believed.
5
The invisible claws digging into my skull dissipated into nothing. Was the other one back then? I waited to see if the ghostly sensation I’d been living with for the last year returned.
Like a breeze against my skin, the handler’s fingers curled around my mind. Yes. He was back. I nodded to myself and picked up my pace. Slightly. Every instinct I had screamed at me to hurry, but I couldn’t hurry. I had to be what they wanted me to be. And I needed help to do it. His help. If my handler only knew that I was a good one . . .
He would know if he looked into my eyes.
I nodded at another guard pacing the hall intersection ahead of me but said nothing. They were used to me flitting about the areas we were allowed to roam.
The current of my emotions and who I really was boiled inside me, the waves getting larger, and I had to fight to keep the two sections of my mind separate. One quiet and calm for the handler, the other wild with apprehension.
Each passing second brought me closer to being found out, to being caught. Getting out of here would not be easy, but the moment was now. The Magelore, Peter, had shown me that. But maybe the three of us . . .
Sixteen attempts, sixteen, and he was in a hole in the ground so deep, I wasn’t sure even I could get him out of it.
I gritted my teeth and fought to get my head back on straight. The handler was quiet again, not fully in my head which gave me a little breathing room. But that other person who’d been in my head—I was sure it was a woman—had only been in my head for a moment, but she’d cut through the walls I’d put up. What if I’d been with her from the beginning?
I stopped in my tracks, the realization hitting me like a baseball bat to the head. “I’d be like Easter if I’d been with her.” Fuck, I’d slipped up and used her real name.
“I would never do that to you.”
The voice was soft. I’d never heard it before with my ears, but I recognized it as surely as if he’d spoken to me every day. I turned and found myself looking at a man who barely stood above my belly button. He was just under five feet tall with completely white hair and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. I’d even call them purple in a different light. Round face, round eyes, chubby body with limbs that seemed screwed on. Beautiful, though, like the beauty of a child untouched by the world.
Part of me wondered if I was seeing things. Part of me had thought my handler would look like a troll, a monster in the flesh who’d been willing to destroy a mind for their own purposes.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about this beautiful child in front of me.
He pursed perfectly plump lips. “I’ve turned the cameras off. I’d like to speak to you.”
I did a quick glance at the camera to my left, anchored above my head in the hall. No blinking red light. Hot damn, my call to him had worked.
“Why?”
“Because . . . I need to see if the others are right about you. Are you cagey? I see your thoughts every day and they are always about helping people. Keeping them from suffering. A noble cause, and you shine forth a noble light.”