I cringed away and glared up at him, wishing my arms were working right so that I could give him a serious right hook; unfortunately, the drugs I’d been hit with made them feel like rubber bands hanging off my shoulders. “What the hell…don’t friggin touch me, you pervert.”
His smile disappeared. “My job is to make sure you’re able to move around without getting hurt before you’re allowed out of bed. If you aren’t ready, you aren’t ready.” He started to back away.
“I’m ready.” I almost reached out to him but stopped myself just in time. No way did I want to seem weak and desperate. I had no idea if he was friend or foe for sure—maybe that really was his job and doing what he just did was part of his duties—but any guy who side-boob grazed me without permission automatically got put in the foe position to start. He was going to have to earn his way back to friend status as far as I was concerned.
“You don’t decide. I do.” He walked over to the door. “See that you don’t forget that. Try being a little nicer next time.” He snickered. “Or keep being a bitch and see where that gets you.”
My jaw dropped open as he disappeared around the corner of the doorway. Did what I think just happened just happen? It really seemed like he had tried to feel me up and then warned me that if I wanted to not be drugged I had to go along with his game. Foe for sure.
I felt sick all over again. I prayed that I was wrong about that turd, because otherwise I was going to have to kill him or at least seriously maim him, and then they’d really want to put me in a straitjacket. And they probably wouldn’t take me out of it anytime soon, either.
I got up and walked unsteadily over to the window that was covered in steel mesh. The window was so dirty it was hard to see through, but I could tell from the light and shadows beyond that the sun was going down and it would soon be dark. I lifted my leaden arms and put my hands against the thick metal screen. I closed my eyes and wiggled my fingers through the little holes so I could touch the cold surface of the glass. Someone. Anyone out there. Please answer me. Can you hear me? I need your help!
I tried to tap into The Green, but there was nothing—no connection, no energy, no hint of anything, not even the sense that there was a block interfering in our link. I felt bereft. Empty. Human. There was nothing there but cobwebs on my fingers and grit from unclean floors under my feet. And my ass was hanging in the breeze because some jerkoff hadn’t bothered to tie my hospital gown closed in the back.
I instantly felt overwhelmed with sadness, frustration, and the most acute sense of injustice that I’d ever experienced in my life. I had been put in a mental hospital because I’d refused to go along with all the bullshit that people wanted to dish out to me. No one at school, at my home, or in this place would ever appreciate who I was and what I was capable of…and the only fae who could do that wouldn’t even know of my existence, since I’d been time-slipped before they’d met me, or they did know about me but were living in another realm thousands of years prior to this one. My life was, in a nutshell, hopeless.
I tried again to reach out to The Green to feel the connection that gave me love and energy and hope…and there was nothing there. It was like I’d imagined the entire thing. That was when I realized that the worst part of the whole commitment-into-a-mental-hospital was that I was cut off completely—totally powerless and vulnerable. The spell that had protected Rick the Dick from my elements was obviously working its evil in here too. I was, for all intents and purposes, living in the void for real…and one of its trolls had just molested my side-boob.
I gripped the screen with both hands and yanked on it over and over, screaming in frustration until my fingers started to ache and my head felt like it was going to split apart. I hardly noticed when someone with strong arms grabbed me from behind and yanked me away from the window, jabbed me in the leg with a needle, and threw me back on the bed.
Darkness quickly closed in and enveloped me in my own personal hell. I dreamed of demons climbing on top of me while I was chained to a sacrificial slab, while angry and disappointed fae watched and mumbled that I’d gotten what I deserved. All of my friends took up the front row and none of them would look me in the eye. Not even Spike. And he was holding Felicia’s hand.
CHAPTER TEN
I DIDN’T KNOW how long I’d been sleeping, but I awoke to find a woman in a white lab coat sitting at the edge of my bed. She wore a patient smile and was just putting the cap on a needle and syringe. How someone could look so evil and so nice at the same time was beyond me.
“What did you just jab me with?” I asked, my voice sounding sleepy to my own ears. My jaw was heavy enough that I imagined it was made of cement. I felt like I was moving through quicksand when I tried to adjust my arms and legs to a more comfortable position. The bed was damp with what felt like a lot of sweat. Ew. I prayed it wasn’t urine.
“Something to wake you up. You’ve been sleeping for twelve hours.” She reached over and wiggled my arm. “I’m Doctor Aleman. How do you feel?”
I rubbed my face, happy to find that I was able to—meaning I was no longer tied down. “I feel like total and complete shit, if you must know. And that might have something to do with the fact that some asshole jacked me up with something.” I lifted the covers and checked out the bruise on my thigh—it was the size of a man’s fist. I wondered if it was there courtesy of that sleazy undertaker type who’d copped a side-boob feel. Whoever it was got the jump on me from behind, and I never did see his face. Lucky for him.
“I’m sorry about that, but you lost control, and it was the only way to keep you from hurting yourself.”
I frowned at her description of what hadn’t happened. “I don’t hurt myself. I’m not like that.”
She reached over and pulled my hand away from my side. My fingers were scratched and swollen from gripping the window screen, and the scar on my forearm from the self-inflicted demon sword cut was bright pink. “And I suppose this is stage makeup?”
She thought she was being cute, but I didn’t appreciate her humor one bit. I yanked my hand away. “First of all, that scar is from a sword; and yes, I did it to myself, but it was done according to a prophecy to save my friends, not because I was feeling all emo or needed attention.” I stopped my storytelling, lucid enough to realize it would only dig my grave that much deeper. “Never mind. You wouldn’t understand.” I looked away because her expression was making me want to punch her in the face; there was pity and concern there when it should have been respect. She had no idea who she was dealing with or what she was risking by keeping me here.
“I would love to understand, though,” she said. “Please explain it to me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t have time. I have to go.” What was Tim doing? Was he okay? Did he get injured riding a dragon’s air currents? How were Spike and Felicia going to survive in Ish’s time without someone’s energy to live off of? Would they turn to one another? Was I going to lose my boyfriend to a succubus?
“Where would you go?” she asked, knocking my disturbing train of thought right off the tracks.
I stared at her, trying to figure out why she reminded me of Céline. She didn’t look a thing like her, but she sure did sound like her. She had a silver elf vibe or something. Maybe she was a cool person under that stupid lab coat…a fae who hadn’t yet had the magic awakened in her blood.
The thought made me drop my guard and decide to share a little. I was so desperate to be around another fae, I got excited about a potential one sitting next to me, even though she was stabbing me with needles. In my deluded mind, I was thinking that maybe if I opened up a bit, she’d see that I wasn’t a lunatic, realize this was all just a stupid mistake, and let me go.
“Miami.”
She wrote something down on a pad of paper I’d just noticed she had in her lap. “Miami, huh? Why Miami?”
I went back to staring at the ceiling. She seemed way too eager to hear my answer, which told me that oversharing would probably be a mistake
. Just give her enough to get her off my back. “Because I have friends there.”
She lifted her pad and looked at something underneath. “I don’t see any information here from your parents saying that you have contacts out of town.”
I twisted my head to glare at her. “First of all, those people are not my parents; and second of all, they know nothing about me.” My heart was pounding hard just from thinking about the assholes who’d put me in this bed.
She blinked a few times. “If they’re not your parents, who are they?”
I mumbled under my breath as I looked back at the ceiling. “Demon-possessed assholes.”
She cleared her throat. “Do you believe in demons?”
“Don’t you?” I turned my head, hoping to see some respect in her expression. If she didn’t believe in those beasts, she was pretty damn naïve. Even non-fae people know that evil is real. It exists all around us; all anyone has to do is turn on the television and watch the news and there’s the proof. Unfortunately, this woman could have passed as a professional poker player with as much information as her expression was giving away. I had zero idea what she was thinking when she answered me.
“To be honest, I’m more interested in your thoughts on demons than my own.”
Having someone ask for my thoughts was the equivalent of giving me a truth serum for some stupid reason. Doctor Aleman really seemed like she wanted to know what I thought, and she was being so nice…so like Céline…it disarmed me.
My mouth opened and shit started pouring out. A part of my brain was trying to get me to stop, but the other part of my brain definitely wasn’t listening—probably the part that was high on their fancy psycho drugs. “Demons are real, trust me. They live in the Underworld, but they prefer to feed on humans, so they want to be in the Here and Now. They’ve breached the divide between our realms before, and they’re doing it again somehow. I have to stop it. The Overworld is overrun. Serious shit is going down right now, and every second I spend here is another second you humans get closer to extinction.”
She took a few notes and talked without lifting her gaze from her pad of paper. “Do you talk to demons?”
“Not if I can help it. But sometimes they get all up in my face and then I have no choice.” And sometimes I slice their nuts off, but that’s a story for another day.
“Can you think of an example of when this happened?”
I laughed. “Yeah. In my bedroom. Rick the Dick…the guy who put me in here…he’s possessed by a demon named Torrie. We’ve had many, many conversations.” I left off the part about how he wanted to make a demon baby with me, because I figured that might be pushing the boundaries of understanding; this woman was, after all, only human.
She was writing again. “Torrie. Interesting. And is Torrie one of your friends in Miami?”
I frowned at her question. “What? No. Why would you think I’m friends with demons?” Here I was opening up to her and she was already getting the wrong idea. Why don’t adults just listen instead of always trying to put their own spin on things?
She looked up at me, her pen finally pausing its scribbling. “I’m just trying to understand where you are right now. How you’re feeling. Where your sense of place is.”
I struggled to sit up, and with great effort finally got my back against the headboard. “Where I’m at is in a looney bin, when where I need to be is in Miami.” I threw the covers back with the intention of getting past her, but she didn’t move. “And if you would just back up a bit and find me some clothes, I could be on my way.”
She stayed put. “I think it would be a better idea for you to stay awhile…relax…do some journaling.”
I sat there with my legs bent up under me, trapped on the bed. “Excuse me, but what? Did you say journaling?” This chick was making no sense whatsoever. She was worse than Long Duck Dong or Long Cock Dong or whatever that girl’s name was.
She slid a spiral notebook out from under her stack of papers. “Yes. Write in this journal. Tell the story about your conversations with demons and the other things that have been happening to you lately.”
“Lady…,” I laughed, “you have no idea what you’re asking me to do.” She wanted me to chronicle my debut as a changeling? The war of the fae? The clash of the Otherworlds? Time slipping? Dragon riding? It would take me forever, not to mention the fact that it would reveal secrets of our kind that were never meant to be shared with humans.
She smiled patiently. “What do you mean?”
I wanted her to understand how naive and simple she was being, but still, words came out that I probably shouldn’t have shared. “In the last year, I’ve lived halfway around the world, been indoctrinated into a secret society of creatures you don’t want to know exist, wielded powers you couldn’t even begin to comprehend, and stopped a demon uprising. And right now I’m in the process of stopping another one, no thanks to the needles you keep jabbing into my body, so forgive me if I don’t really have the time or the inclination to journal my feelings. It would take months I don’t have.”
She laughed and stood, leaving the notebook on the bed next to me. “Humor me.”
As she walked toward the door, I glared at her back. “I’m not doing it.” I gritted my teeth to keep from adding any choice words to the end of that sentence.
She stopped in the doorway and turned to face me again. Her smile had slipped mostly away. “Let me put it to you this way, Jayne: until you can journal through these issues of yours, you won’t be going anywhere.”
I gripped the sheets on the bed with every ounce of might I had in my body. It was the only way I could keep from calling her the name she deserved to be called: Bitch. “I’m eighteen. You can’t keep me here against my will.” I wasn’t sure that was the law, actually, but it sure sounded good to me.
“Actually, I can. Your parents have gotten a judge to agree to temporary guardianship, as of this morning. And until I sign a document saying that you’re mentally competent, they can keep you here indefinitely.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I GUESS DOCTOR Aleman thought that making her grand statement and walking out the door was the end of the conversation, that I was just going to do her bidding like a good girl without question. Ha! As if. I’d never been a good girl in my entire life, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to start being one in the looney bin, that was for damn sure.
I got out of bed and took a moment to tie the back of my gown closed. At the small laminate dresser, I started opening up the drawers. There were several pairs of scrubs like the tiny girl had been wearing. I held up a few shirts in front of me until I found one that looked like it might fit, then I did the same with some pants. I didn’t have any bras or underwear, but it didn’t matter. I could break out of this joint commando style, no problem. I’d go all the way to Miami that way if I had to.
Once I was dressed and had a pair of socks on my feet, I stuck my head out into the hallway. The distant sound of a television was coming from my left, so I took a right. A glance at the ceiling told me there were security cameras watching my every move, so I stood up straight and tried to act casual, like I was just looking for a bathroom or whatever. The minute I came up with that plan, I realized I had to drain the snake, so my venture turned into an actual hunt for a toilet. I rubbed at an itch on my arm and found several needle punctures there and on the back of my hand. I’d apparently undergone several medical interventions without realizing it. All that did was piss me off more. I felt completely violated.
I went into the first bathroom I found—unisex with no door on the outside of it, only on the stalls—ew. After I did my business, I continued down the hall in the same direction to a set of double doors. I tried to push them open, but they wouldn’t budge. I could see through their narrow windows that they led into another hallway that had a desk with a high counter at the end like a hospital nurses’ station. There were two women working there, but neither of them looked up at me. I was tempted to knock on the glass and
ask for permission to enter, but decided against it. I needed to get the lay of the land before I started pushing anybody else’s buttons.
I reversed direction and went down the hall until I reached the TV room. My new friend and a few other people were sitting like zombies on couches watching the flickering screen. Judge Judy’s obnoxious voice was berating someone for being a bad neighbor. Continuing on, I passed another bathroom and reached a second set of locked double doors that seemed to lead into a stairwell. Booyah! Stairs! Stairs meant an exit or at least a way to get to another spot that might not be so locked down. Hope!
I turned around and almost ran into someone. “Oh, shit. I didn’t hear you…” My gaze went up and up and up until it stopped on a face only a mother could love. His nose was smashed and laying almost sideways on his cheek. His forehead bulged out like a caveman’s and was crisscrossed with red lines that looked too regular to be an accident; whatever they came from—birth or self-mutilation—they made him look like something that should have been inhabiting the Underworld. His top lip was heavily scarred too and looked as if it had been split down the middle at some point. His jaw was big enough that it reminded me of an anvil. All of this package sat on top of a set of shoulders that were wide enough to carry a walrus and a chest as thick as a silverback gorilla’s.
“Whoa. Dude.” I was suddenly channelling my inner surfer chick. My heart started beating rapidly. He could probably strangle me with his pinky finger if he felt like it.
“Who’re you?” he asked. His tone was devoid of any inflection but it did suggest a deviated septum. Robo Mountain Man With A Sinus Infection.
“Mike, back off,” said a voice I recognized. My tiny Asian friend appeared at his side and grabbed me by the sleeve, pulling me away from the door and around his imposing frame.