Ricky returned an hour after leaving, barely time for him to have made it to Gabriel's office and back.
"He won't see you?" I said.
"Oh, he did. For five minutes, during which he said exactly seven words, though admittedly he did repeat them a few times."
"What'd he say?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"So he's playing it like that?"
"Yep." Ricky headed for the bathroom. "Try texting him later. See if anything changes."
I texted Gabriel three times that day. On the third, I said, Can you answer please? So I know you're getting these? He replied with I am. I stopped texting.
I spent the day investigating my parents'--my father's--victims. Ricky helped.
I heard from Tristan twice. The first time, he left a message hinting that he was onto something. I ignored him. The guy had left a girl's head in my bed. He'd lured me to an abandoned psych hospital in the middle of the night, pretending to have kidnapped the young woman who ultimately tried to kill us. He'd turned James from a sweet former fiance into a crazed stalker ex. Call me a grudge-holder, but I was having some trouble getting past all that.
And yet . . . Well, as I'd been told--and shown--many times in the last few months, the fae didn't think like us and couldn't be expected to act like us. To them, the psych hospital and the James manipulation and even the surprise body parts were cattle prods, guiding this reluctant human in the direction they wanted her to go. We were cattle to them. Useful. Perhaps even necessary for survival. But not terribly clever.
Tristan texted later that afternoon.
Solid lead. Need GW 2 chk P Larsen visitor logs. OK?
I showed the message to Ricky.
"I find fairies with cell phones disconcerting enough. Do they really need to use text talk?" He shook his head. "You going to answer?"
"I am curious--what the hell would he need those logs for? But one, I can't trust Tristan. Two, I don't dare ask Gabriel to do anything right now. And three, I don't trust Tristan." I put the phone away. "I'll ask Lydia tomorrow if she can get the logs. I don't like going behind Gabriel's back, but . . ."
"One, he's being a dick. Two, you're doing this to help him avoid jail time. Three, he's being a dick."
I smiled at him. "Exactly."
Four hours later, we'd just returned from a late dinner when I got another text from Tristan.
Must talk. Big problem. Need privacy. Come 2 place we met 2nd time. Trust no one.
"Seriously?" I said, showing the text to Ricky. "Trust no one. Now fairies are watching X-Files?"
"He just wants you to believe."
"No shit. Well, he's officially piqued my curiosity. I'm calling back."
I did, as we walked up the stairs to Ricky's apartment. I called twice. Tristan didn't answer. The first time, it went to voice mail, and I hung up to try again. That time, I got a "number not in service" message. I called a third time, in case my redial had screwed up somehow. It hadn't. The number was no longer in service.
"Okay. Apparently, his number doesn't work anymore."
"So we're still going?" he said.
"To an abandoned psych hospital? Once was enough. I'm not playing his game again."
Inside the apartment, I slowly took off my shoes, so lost in thought that I didn't realize Ricky was gone until I looked up and saw him coming out of the bedroom.
"Okay," I said. "I know this will sound crazy, but--"
He handed me a new switchblade. "You're going to need this."
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Yes, heading to that psych hospital suggested I might belong in one. I'd like to think I'm not the dumb blonde in a B horror movie, saying, "You're a supernatural being with an agenda that might involve killing me, and you want me to come to an abandoned psych hospital at night? Well, okay, then!" It was almost certainly a trap, but I couldn't sit at home, playing it safe, when taking a risk meant answering the question: What was Tristan really up to? Proceed with extreme caution and take what I could from the situation, because if I refused, then maybe next time he tried to trap me, I'd stumble in without realizing it.
I called Gabriel on the walk to Ricky's bike. That was part of exercising extreme caution. Yes, he'd made it clear he didn't want to hear from me, but this wasn't Hey, I'd like to talk. For this, he would answer. I was sure of it.
I called and got his voice mail.
"I need your help," I said. "Just hear me out, please. Tristan wants me to meet him at the psych hospital. I'm sure it's a trap, but you know that won't stop me from going. Ricky and I are on our way. I could really use your advice, though. You're probably too busy to talk"--meaning that you don't want to, but I'll give you an escape route here--"so I'll e-mail the details. If you can talk, for a minute, I'd appreciate that, but even an e-mail reply will do. Hell, I'll take a text, Gabriel. Am I making a really dumbass move here? Is there anything I should know? Any advice you can give? Thanks."
I hung up.
"He'll answer that," Ricky said, handing me my helmet. "Guaranteed."
For once, Ricky was not right.
When I started to worry, Ricky pulled over at a gas station with a graffiti-covered pay phone. I called Gabriel from it. He answered, which took away every possible explanation except the one that hurt the most: I needed him, and he didn't give a damn. I hung up without a word.
--
The psych hospital. It had a name, I was sure, but I'd never looked it up. I would have preferred never to think of it again.
There was an unconnected local cemetery beside the hospital grounds. The first time we visited, we'd walked through it and I'd reflected that, as creepy as graveyards are supposed to be, it didn't bother me at all. But the abandoned hospital? It was the most frightening place I'd ever seen--in real life, in movies, even in nightmares.
The hospital buildings sat on at least ten acres of overgrown decay. I should have been fascinated, as I was by Villa Tuscana. I was not fascinated, except perhaps in the most basic definition of the word, where you can't look away in spite of yourself. The visions I'd had there were enough to make me not want to go back. Yet it was more than that. It was the pervasive sense of the place, a dread and terror that crept under my skin and nestled in the marrow of my bones. Whatever one's faith, death means the end of life on this earth. The prospect is unpleasant, but I figure once it happens, it happens, over and done. The hospital represented a very different kind of death.
There is no escape from the prison of the mind. I'd seen those words there. Phantom words left imprinted on my brain. Madness was inescapable. The hospital wasn't an old-fashioned lunatic asylum, with chains welded to the floors, but you'd be imprisoned there nonetheless. In my visions, I'd seen people trapped there. Women. The little girl said that I was tapping into hereditary memories. Were those women like me? Tainted by fae blood? Driven mad by it?
Could I be driven mad by it?
Like before, the chained gates had appeared locked until we got close enough to see that the lock itself was undone. The gate gave an ominous whine as Ricky swung it open.
"A word of warning," I said as we walked in. "The last time I was here, I saw visions."
"When you were with me?"
"Yes."
His gaze settled on me, not angry that I'd kept that from him. Only concerned. "Well, if it happens this time, tell me. Please. That might make it easier."
"It will. Thanks."
We headed up the overgrown road, picking our way past chunks of pavement, the grass and weeds breaking through, leaving a cobblestone of old asphalt. Trees stretched over us, the branches reaching out to one another but not quite meeting. I could imagine this road fifty years ago, in the bright summer sun, a cool and dark passage with a wind whispering through the leaves. A pretty sight, I'm sure, but I'm equally sure that no one was thinking of beauty when they planted these trees. They were a landscape transition, hiding the buildings beyond from the outside world. You'd turn in from the country r
oad, pass through this leafy tunnel, and come out in the stark, cold reality of the hospital grounds.
After a quarter mile, squat industrial buildings replaced the trees lining the road. In their day, they'd have held little architectural interest, and even as ruins they weren't any more enticing. Ugly cinder blocks with boarded-up and broken-out windows.
"Eden . . ."
The voice came as a whisper on the breeze. I turned.
"Hear something?" Ricky asked.
"You didn't?"
He made a noise that sounded like a no, as if reluctant to admit to it, reaching over at the same time to touch my hand, his closed switchblade refreshingly cool against my fingers.
"We'll go that way, then," he said, nodding in the direction I'd turned. "Whatever happens, stay close. No splitting up this time, okay?"
I nodded, and we headed along a narrow passage between two buildings. There was no path there, not even a worn strip of dirt, but we walked through and found ourselves at a gate so ivy-choked that, from the road, it had looked like a bush.
"Where's the path?" I said. "If there's a gate, there should be something leading to it. More than a gap between buildings."
"Yeah."
I took a closer look at the ivy. "I'm no gardener, but I helped ours enough to know this isn't native to Illinois. It was planted here." I eased back and looked at the thin wrought iron, completely engulfed in flora. "It's almost like they tried to hide the gate. Or is my imagination just running away with me?"
"Then we've got the same imagination." He cleared enough ivy to peer through the gate. "Okay, that's weird. We have a fenced yard of nothing."
He took hold of the gate and yanked. The ivy fell away easily. Too easily.
"Someone's opened this for us," he said.
"Yep." I took the gun from my pocket. "I think we've found our trap."
"Then it's a very strange one." He threw open the gate. "Because if someone's hiding, I don't know where."
It really was a "yard of nothing"--unless you counted weeds. The wrought-iron fence encircled a patch about two hundred feet square. And there was nothing inside except grass and weeds.
Before he let the gate swing shut behind us, Ricky examined the fence. He knocked his boot into a space between the slats and heaved himself up.
"Yep," I said. "Even if the gate mysteriously locks behind us, it's a six-foot, climbable fence. At worst, you could boost me up and over."
"Weird."
"Uh-huh. So maybe not a trap?"
He grunted, meaning he wasn't going to be so quick to dismiss the possibility. "We'll have a look around, in case there's something we're supposed to see here, but don't take a step without clearing it first."
"In case we walk into a literal trap."
He nodded. We each moved forward, testing the way as we went. I got about three paces before my sneaker nudged something unyielding. I started to bend.
"Hold up." Ricky came over and prodded it with his boot. "Go stand by the gate."
"Um, so if it blows up, you'll be the one who loses fingers? Very chivalrous, but I found it. You go stand by the gate."
He rubbed his mouth. "Sorry. This place . . . I didn't like it the last time and it's worse now. There's something that makes me want to sling you over my shoulder and carry you out, and it's bad enough that I'd almost be tempted if I didn't know you'd kick the hell out of me."
I moved closer and rubbed between his shoulders. The tension there was rock-hard. His face was just as tight, pupils constricted despite the darkness.
"What do you want to do?" I asked.
"Honestly? Leave."
"If you feel strongly about that--"
"Nah. I'm not the one with psychic powers. I'm just . . ." Another look around. "Uneasy."
"Check whatever I found, then. I'll stand by the gate."
A light kiss, and some of that tension fell from his face. "Thank you. Next time, the dangerous part is yours. I promise."
"You're so sweet."
I backed up to the gate. Ricky knelt and prodded whatever was buried. His brows pinched. He grabbed a handful of undergrowth and ripped it off. Then he kept going, clearing it and sweeping away the dirt.
"Not a bomb, I'm guessing," I said as I came close.
"Death-related but not death-causing."
It was a grave, its marker set so deeply into the ground that it was almost as if whoever planted it there hoped it would soon be covered.
I looked around. "That's what this is. A cemetery."
"For those who didn't have family willing to claim them. A necessary part of the hospital, but obviously not one they cared to advertise to the other patients."
That's why it was hidden away back here. No path to the gate, tucked behind buildings, without standing stones to advertise its purpose.
Interesting, but did it mean anything? I'd heard someone call my name. Was that to get me here?
Gabriel always told me to follow my instincts. Well, he did before he decided that my instincts were all in my head.
I eased back on my haunches and looked around.
"Want me to start clearing the stones so you can read them?" Ricky asked.
"And you say you're not psychic." I forced a smile, but my heart wasn't in it. The same sense of foreboding that niggled at him pressed down on me, the darkness closing in despite the bright moon.
I searched for an omen. Even a raven or an owl gliding overhead would have been a sign that everything was all right, that I was under someone's protection.
"Do you have your tusk?" Ricky asked. "As much as I can't believe I just said that."
He got a real smile for that. "Yes, I have my handy-dandy evil-repelling tusk, which has never actually been proven to work, but since I didn't have it when we were attacked by elves, I'll presume it does. You have yours?"
"Yep."
"Then let's start clearing."
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
There were eleven graves in the small cemetery.
The first six names meant nothing to me. I noted them, in case they turned up in our investigations. Then I hit number seven.
Given the date, it was actually the last stone set in the cemetery: 1970. The date of birth was 1901. And the name? Isolde Carew.
The Carew house. My great-great-grandmother's house. Her first name had been Glenys. Welsh, like her granddaughter, Daere. I didn't need to look up Isolde to be pretty sure it came from Wales, too.
"Liv?"
"I think . . ." I brushed my hands over the stone. "This one might have been a relative of--"
The gravestone dropped into the earth, and I tumbled headfirst, falling through darkness. I hit something hard and sharp that cut into my knees. Hands scooped me up.
"Ouch," a man's voice said. "That must have hurt."
"Are you all right, baby?" A woman's voice now.
I looked to see them towering above me. A dark-haired man and a woman with lighter hair, somewhere between brown and blond, her bright red lips pursed with concern as she squeezed my bare leg.
I know that face. I've seen it. Or some version of it. Older, much older . . .
"Better put her down, John. She's getting too big to carry."
The man lowered me to the ground and patted my head, telling me to watch my step. As I turned, the first thing I saw were stairs. Concrete stairs leading up to a massive door.
I know that door.
The mental hospital. I looked down the street and saw hulking sedans from the sixties. The buildings were in ill repair, some of the doors boarded over. The grounds were halfheartedly kept, with weeds already poking through the pavement. Mother Nature starting a tentative takeover, seeing if anyone cared to oppose her.
"It doesn't look very nice, does it, baby?" the woman said. "It used to have flowers and pretty lawns. I hate the thought of Aunt Isolde living here."
Isolde. The gravestone.
"It won't be much longer," the man said.
A deep sigh from the woman. "I
know."
They led me up the stairs. I looked down at myself. Long dark hair lay straight over a miniskirted dress. Tiny, gleaming shoes. From what I could see, I wasn't more than four.
The man reached for my hand and pushed open the door. When he did, my legs locked. I seemed to waver there, in control of the body and the mind. Then it was like falling into that grave. I stumbled and pitched forward, and this time, when I recovered, I was still there, still standing, but my thoughts had been pushed to a small corner of my brain, and hers had taken over, and all I could feel was absolute terror.
"Come on, baby," the woman said. "I know you don't like it here, but your aunt Isolde will be so happy to see you."
"She doesn't know me," the girl whispered. "She doesn't know anyone."
A firm hand gripped my shoulder. "Of course she does. Now, none of that." The man bent and whispered in my ear. "This is important to Mommy, Pams. Do it for her. Please."
Pams.
I could no longer move the girl of my own volition, but I could see the woman out of the corner of my eye. See her face, soft and pretty and worried.
I know that face.
Grandma.
A stream of memories shot back, of a kind, quiet woman in a long skirt. Grandma Jean. She'd called the man John. That was my grandfather's name, though he'd died before I was born. John Bowen. Daere Jean Carew. Which made me . . .
Pams.
Pamela.
My mother.
They led me into the hospital, and it felt as if I was me again, that gut reaction when I caught those antiseptic medical smells. But the smell was faint and the feeling was more terror than hatred, and I knew it wasn't my reaction, it was hers, Pamela's. Her shoes felt made of lead and her legs ached, but she forced them to move.
Do it for Mommy. Do it for Mommy.
But I hate it. Hate, hate, hate it!
My grandfather checked in at the front desk. Pamela stood at his side, clutching his hand. She couldn't see over the counter, but I could imagine it, having seen the ruins. After a few words to the nurse, he led Pamela down equally familiar corridors, so dingy and worn they didn't seem far removed from the ones I remembered in the abandoned version.
We climbed the stairs and walked into a huge ward. I remembered this, too. Even the beds were as I recalled them, two rows of metal cots. Only a few were in use, the rest exactly as I'd seen them, bare and rusting.
"It's so terrible," my grandmother whispered. "I can't believe they've let it go like this."