Blood and Bone (Blood and Bone Series Book 1), page 19
I feel that in my heart, separate from everything else, we are meant to be.
The butler stops outside of a room with a tremendous amount of light flooding it. There is a wall of glass and many skylights in the ceiling. A sunroom, perhaps. A woman with gray hair and a wrinkled face to match the butler’s awaits us. I know she expects us, because when her bright-blue eyes flicker to my face, they light up with recognition.
“Sam, how are you?” She is also English. She doesn’t stand, but holds her hands out for me. “I was your friend once, Samantha Barnes.” Her eyes are not the same shade—they are light blue and dark blue, like mine.
I don’t release Derek’s hand or run to her; I wait for it but it doesn’t come. I do not know her face.
She swallows hard, wincing. “It’s all right, my love.”
I suck my air. I know those words. She called me those words, those names. My love. They make more sense in my head now, the accent. My skin crawls with shivers.
“Do you know me at all?”
I shake my head. “But you shouldn’t be insulted—I remember almost nothing and everything, and the stories don’t match in my head or on paper.”
She laughs at that. “I have missed you, my love.”
“Who are you?”
Her eyes sparkle. “Your grandmother, Emily Starling. I was your mother’s mother, before the accident.”
Of course, my real parents were killed in a car accident. And they were English. I recall that detail. I was alone in the world; apparently not as alone as Derek must have assumed. Unless he too has known my only living relative all this time.
She holds a hand toward a fancy floral couch. “Have a seat. We will take tea, Thomas.”
The butler nods and leaves.
Derek releases my hand, making my skin cold instantly. “If I may excuse myself, Madame Starling, my injuries would stain the couches badly. I will tend to myself and see you both at dinner.” He kisses my cheeks, whispering in my ear, “You are safe here.” He slips from the room, leaving me.
I don’t know where this game is going to take us. I sit on the couch, wishing it were slightly less firm.
“Your parents took our firm to America. They were so excited to become Americans and see the sights. They never realized how alone we were as a family, just the five of us.”
“Five?”
She nods, taking a large black book from the shelf next to her, again not moving her lower body. I am scared she can’t move it at all. She opens the book, placing it on the large glass table in front of her and flipping through a lifetime. It’s my lifetime. My parents—they match the flickers in my head. I refuse to attach myself to the images of the dead. I do not know when this reality will be a lie.
“You were so small and so obstinate.” She lifts her face, revealing a grin. “I suppose that’s the reason you are still alive, though, isn’t it?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“This was your sister, Jane. She was so sweet and calm. She was the girl every parent thought their child should be.”
It’s like being punched in the guts. She is my twin. We are identical, even the eyes.
“You were so spicy. I always called you sugar and spice; she was the sugar, and you were the spice.” Her eyes are fixated on the pictures of the small girls with brown hair and blue eyes and peacoats like Paddington Bear. A tear rolls down her wrinkled cheek. It’s slow and lonely, the only one she sheds.
“Where is she?”
Her face lifts. “Oh, my poor darling. She’s dead. She died in the car accident. The one you nearly died in too.”
“Three years ago?”
She shakes her head. “No, some time now.” She narrows her gaze, thinking. “It’s been seventeen years.”
“What!”
She nods slowly, still lost in the movie she’s so obviously watching in her head. It starts as a picture but grows into a moment with each photo. “It’s why they wanted you.”
“The government, you mean?”
“Yes.” Her tone sinks. “They wanted to test memory stimulation on you, and then they wanted to use you as a candidate for something else. Derek hasn’t explained it to me well. I don’t like hearing about it.” She adjusts herself in the chair, trying to get more comfortable, maybe. “You and your sister were best friends. What was that song you girls always sang again?” I shake my head but she nods. “You know it. The one about the bullets are made of blood.”
I scowl, wondering how she could know about a song I was given by a doctor. Did I tell her about the song? Is this a trick? “I don’t recall it.” I lie, but I don’t know why. She doesn’t scare me, but her knowing the song does.
The butler brings in the tea, offering me a cup with a drop of cream first and finishing with lemon, just the way I like it. “Thank you.” I take it, inhaling a deep gulp of the aroma and then the tea. It’s the perfect temperature to drink. The smell and the taste attempt to bring a vision, but it flickers like a radio not quite on the station. The words are lost in the fizz. I sip again, noticing the way my grandmother takes her mug, placing it down without drinking any and leaning back a bit. She smiles at me. “Biscuit, my love?”
I blink three times, and suddenly it’s there. I feel as if I’ve sat in a field and a cloud has landed atop me, blocking me in its bright fluff. My eyes don’t see and my ears don’t hear, but there are sounds and movements. They’re inside me, dancing in my head and making me believe I see them.
I squeeze my hands, to grip the cup, but it’s not there, none of it’s there.
“Where did you hide the monsters, Sam?” The question whispers in my ear.
The answer is there. I know this question, even if it is coming from a place I don’t recognize.
“Where did the monsters go?”
Black images flash in my eyes, jerking and moving quickly, like a lightning strike. One second it’s there in my eyes and then it’s gone, but the flash remains in my view.
My lips part. I don’t know what to say but I speak anyway. “The monster was gone, and I went to look—to look—to look—to look.” I am stuck there. Hot tears trickle down my cheeks. “I only wanted to look. But the pretties were gone. He took them so I followed.” The words are a whisper. “I can’t say the rest aloud or the monster will hear and he will strike all he sees. Sometimes I think he strikes even the pretties who aren’t there anymore. He speaks and shouts like they’re in the room with us, like they made him do it, but I don’t see them. They hide from me.” The world becomes a blend of shapes and colors, but my eyes won’t let me see. “I went to look and he was gone so I followed.”
“Where did you follow the pretties, Sam?”
I shake my head, swearing I feel the sting of a lash against my skin. It makes me jerk, my back straightening harshly.
“If you tell us we will let you see them again.”
I want that. I do. “I rode my bike to the water—the lake. It took me all day. I was hot and dusty. He was gone, on the boat with the pretties. But they were different.” I shake my head, forcing the image of the blue wrapping from my mind. “They were different and then they were gone, to swim without me in the blue.”
“The blue water, Sam? Were they like mermaids?”
I shudder. “The blue wrap. They were in the blue wrap, and they wouldn’t talk to me anymore. They were different, and I was the same.”
“Tell me about the swans, the way the swans circle the stars and the clouds shoot across the sky.”
The words bring a type of calm with them. I can see the swans circling the stars. I don’t know it at first. I blink in the sitting room, realizing I am alone. Derek walks in; his shirt is clean again. He smiles and drops to his knees, taking my hands in his and kissing them. He lifts my face, kissing me softly and muttering against my lips with hot breath, “I found you in the dark, and you became my light.”
He kisses and fades away.
17. ALL THE PRETTIES IN A ROW
Can you hear my voice?” I can, but I cannot respond. There’s a block, and my lips don’t work. Light starts to poke its way through my lashes, beckoning me to come to the surface. “Come back, Jane. Come back to me.” I think my lips crack a smile when I hear his voice.
I blink, trying desperately to let the light in. It blinds and shocks my eyes, but I push past the pain until I see something, a shape in the hazy fog. I blink it away like windshield wipers cleaning the mud off. He stands at the foot of the bed, giving me a look. I cock an eyebrow, moaning and trying to move my head a little. He sighs as if he’s waited all day for this. “You all right?”
I lift my hand to my head, rubbing it. Everything is washing in, hitting me like waves after a storm. He sits on the bed, rubbing my foot as his face makes a story. He’s Rory, my partner. “You had me worried this time; you were gone a long time.”
I nod, finally sitting up a bit. “Lakes surrounding the house in Geneva. She rode her bike all day, but it couldn’t be too far. She was eight, she couldn’t have ridden too far.” He’s gone instantly, leaving me lying next to the blonde girl named Sam Barnes. She’s still, peaceful looking, not at all how she seemed in her head. In there she was scared and unsure. I can feel it still on me, like I too am unsure of things. I wish I could take it away, all her memories—wash us both clean.
I wish I could go inside them and walk away scot-free, taking with me the evil they know so they can go in peace. But I can’t. I take things away with me, things like songs and habits and fears, and sometimes they become mine too.
Rory comes in, grinning at me from ear to ear. “They’ve been dispatched. You’re a fucking genius. We’ll know something soon enough. There are seventeen lakes it could have been, but we cross-referenced with her father’s friends to check on lakes he frequented or ones he avoided. The teams are dispatched.”
“Stop cussing. It just gives Angie a reason to mock you.”
He winks. “She loves me and she knows it, filthy mouth and all. Ya should hear her at home, cussing away like a typical Scot.”
“You people are sick.” I nod, not taking my eyes from Samantha Barnes’s calm face. “It would have been a place he went to. Somewhere he wanted everyone to go to—he is smug.”
“What?”
“The lake. He would have gone there, knowing they were dead and at the bottom of the lake. He would have reveled in it.” I sit up completely, letting my legs fall from the bed.
Rory gives me his arm. “Take it easy, Jane. Ya get that Scotswoman angry and it’s my arse later.”
“You like her angry.” I push off from the bed, falling forward and refusing his arm. I don’t like it when he touches me. I have a hard time looking in his eyes and not seeing the way I think about him when I’m inside them. In their heads it’s safe to look into his eyes and imagine what it must be like to be loved by something that harsh and rugged.
I land on the edge of her bed, staring at her pale lips. I can see them holding a cherry, just like her babysitter taught her to. I wish her eyes would open, and I wish her lips would speak to me. Instead, they will haunt me like the others. Too pale and too calm. No animation or life. She is alone inside that place now. She is still sitting on the floral couch in the house in France, the estate I visited once to make a place for my imaginary grandmother.
That’s how it works. For as much as they let me inside their heads, I let them inside mine.
She is number seven for me. The seventh person I have entered and manipulated. The seventh person I have controlled and convinced to give me all their secrets, at the same time I let her see mine. There’s always a moment when I glance at the glass and wish I could be the doctor behind the glass, observing. Maybe then my head wouldn’t hurt quite as much as it does now, a leftover from the haze we make of each other’s lives. But that moment is fleeting as the pain fades away and the reality of the insane act I have just committed settles in.
“She looks so young and sweet. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for her to be like her father,” Rory mutters, sounding like he finally sees her.
I shake my head. “She doesn’t know she is. She doesn’t know what she does when she sleeps. She remembers nothing. She believes herself to be a victim of him. When she thought she’d done something wrong it nearly killed her.” I run my weak and trembling hand through her silky blonde hair. “She’s not bad, not on purpose.”
He lifts me back from the bed, helping me from the room. I don’t look back. That was the last look I should take. I need to separate us now. I need to be me again.
When we are in the hallway Rory sighs again. “Are you sure you’re all right? Ya look a bit pale.” His thick Irish accent always makes me smile.
“I’m fine. Stop.” But he’s not the only one attacking me. As usual, Dr. Angie comes running from the viewing and monitoring room. “Och, lass. Ya shouldn’t be outta that room just yet. Ya know I hate it when ya do that. Ror, ya need to be on top of this. You’re supposed to be in the room until we clear her.”
“She’s meaner than she looks, Ang.”
She glowers at him. “Ya wee chicken, letting a small girl boss ya around.” She winks at me. We both know what kind of small girl I am.
Rory points at the chair. “I’ll wait out here.” I nod and let her take me in her arms. I don’t need the help, but I have to humor her or she starts cussing and soon I’m no better than all the other bloody Yanks who annoy the piss outta her or the friggin’ leprechaun she lives with. She’s a bit racist, but she sounds funny when she does it, so everyone lets it slide.
She leads me to a chair, quickly checking my eyes and listening to my heart. I breathe several times as hard as I can, in and out. She sits next to me, shaking her head. “No more, Jane. Seven is more than anyone else.”
I sigh, letting her put her fingers on my neck and arms. “I just wish I could fill the gap, you know?”
She shakes her head again. “No, I don’t. But I’m not missing most of my life.” She smiles, giving me that sweet face she always does.
It’s then that he walks in, offering me a sweet smile. His lopsided lips make me cringe inwardly. I recall every caress and every moment of them brushing against me. I know I blush every time I see the man, but I can’t help it. I know I shouldn’t use people I know when I slide into the minds of the criminals or patients, but I can’t help it. Something real brings me back easier, and more whole than a made-up story.
Dr. Dash nods at me. “How was it?” His gray-green eyes fix on me, more gray than normal. He must be upset about something.
I shrug, desperate to seem cool and casual. If only he knew about the things I imagined he has done. “I found it, the spot. It was a lake. He wrapped the little girls in blue tarps and sunk them to the bottom of a lake.”
“Jesus.” That’s his version of swearing. He’s akin to a saint, but when he gets really worked up, that’s it, he says Jesus or what the hell. I try not to say motherfucker or twat or any of the others my Irish partner and I chant regularly.
Dr. Dash shakes his head, mystified. I can see it on his face. “How long has she taken up after her father?”
“Since she was nine or ten, I think, but it was animals then, and no one knew. Her aunt came and took her away during her father’s trial, abducted her from the state house she was always running away from. She lived in North Carolina and then went to university, but she never finished, so she worked in a shop. She started killing people three years ago when her father was released from jail.”
“He was released after such a short amount of time?”
I nod. “Molestation charges were all they had on him. The disappearing girls were never seen at his residence. Everyone believed he did it, but they never proved a thing. When he got out, she went crazy. She went, from what I can understand, and tortured him. Then she killed him and stayed at that horrid old house. She lived like he was still alive, afraid of him. She would bring him the little girls like she did when she was a kid. He used her to lure them. She would take them back to his house, and they would dress up in pretty dresses and play. Last week she burnt the house to the ground when she woke covered in blood again.”
He holds a hand up. “I can’t do any more, Jane. Sorry. I don’t know how you live with that in your head.”
I lift my gaze to his. “I take things in there with me, things that will create a better memory than the ones the patients try to give me.”
“That’s actually genius.” He swallows, looking as if he might get sick. My skin is prickled from the sickness of it all, but I don’t let it be bigger in my mind than the image of him kissing me and holding me.
The door opens. “They got something. Let’s ride.” Rory nods at the hallway. I hop off the bed, fighting the dizziness. Dr. Dash grabs my arm, steadying me. I linger, feigning just how dizzy I actually am so I might stay in his grip a second longer. He smiles. “Maybe you should stay.”
I shake my head. “I’ve been living in her head for the equivalent of a solid week. I need to see this to the end.”
Rory kisses Angie on the cheek, remaining for a second to whisper something that earns him a wicked grin and a swat. She shakes her head at me. “I don’t know how you spend hours in a car alone with him.”
“He talks about you the whole time. It’s not so bad.” I wink at her and turn away.
He nudges me, glaring down. “Ya might keep some of those things to yourself. What happens on stakeout, stays on stakeout. Ya got me looking weak like a nancy to her. She won’t respect me for that.”
I chuckle, completely aware of the way their relationship works. “You like it when she disrespects you.”
He nods. “Aye, I do.” He opens the door to the roof when we get up the last flight of stairs. I remember the fear of heights and flying that came from Samantha Barnes and grin, refusing to let it get to me. “I’ll drive.”
He looks like he’s about to argue, but he doesn’t. He knows the things I take with me sometimes mess with my abilities at work. No one else knows. Turning on the engines, I sigh and let it all wash away. I have to conquer her fears in order to be rid of them. My palms sweat and my heart races, but I force it, lifting the helicopter into the air.
