Chapter 18
He was hot and sweaty and absolutely filthy, and had decided to stay in his dog form rather than shift back. It would be easier to just have Val spray him off in the back yard first.
Val had rolled his eyes when he’d just looked up at the car seat, wagging his tail, then went into the trunk and got out the big blanket that was back there for things like this and laid it out on the passenger seat so that he could jump in without destroying Val’s precious car seats.
I pulled my hand back from the faint smudge on the door, frowning at the impulse that had made me run a fingertip over it.
I should have known that it would contain some sort of memory.
This one had obviously been Taavi’s, presumably after a hike or something similar.
I’d already known not to get mud or food on Hart’s car seats, but it was good to know that he was serious enough about it that even Taavi wasn’t allowed to mess up the car.
I was tempted to touch some other part of the car, because that would be more pleasant than thinking about where we were going—which was back to Tranquil Brook.
Even though Hart had told me last week that I wouldn’t have to go back, that they could do the search of the property without me, apparently they’d changed their minds.
Hart had picked me up at my apartment at seven in the morning, and I was working myself into an anxious mess.
He’d called me just after six, so at least knowing that I was going to have to go back to Tranquil Brook hadn’t kept me up all night.
It wasn’t how I wanted to wake up in the morning, either, but an hour of mild panic before being bundled into Hart’s maroon Charger was probably going to be long-term better for my health and exhaustion levels than if he’d actually told me the night before.
But being back at Tranquil Brook wasn’t the only thing that had my stomach tying itself in knots.
Raj was going to be there.
I’d have to face him for the first time since he’d found out that I’d been invading his subconscious, sleeping mind.
And I had no idea what he was going to have to say about that.
Maybe he’d refuse to talk to me.
Maybe he’d pretend that nothing had ever happened between us in his head and mine.
Maybe I’d disappear into the ground and never have to deal with any of it.
I didn’t think he’d say much of anything in front of anyone else—Hart, maybe—but I also knew that if he did have something he wanted to say to me, he was likely to find some sort of excuse or reason to get me on my own.
I couldn’t decide if I was happy that the humiliation of having to grovel in front of Raj Parikh was being combined with the horror of having to go back to Tranquil Brook just to get it all over with at once, or whether it was just going to make everything that much more awful.
“I’m sorry about this,” Hart said for about the third time that day.
I nodded.
“It’s just that… we’re not getting what we need. Not sure what’s useful and what isn’t.”
I wasn’t entirely certain how I was going to be at all helpful with any of that, but I was fairly certain I was going to find out, probably the hard way.
As long as nobody made me go into the bathing room, I’d probably manage not to completely break down into a hysterical mess.
No, I was going to do that, regardless. But maybe I could avoid a full meltdown panic-attack.
Small goals.
The look on Raj’s face when I climbed out of Hart’s car was enough to tell me that he hadn’t known and definitely hadn’t approved of my presence at Tranquil Brook.
I couldn’t say that I disagreed with him.
I didn’t want to be here any more than he wanted me here, although I had the feeling it was for very different reasons.
My hands shook and there was a constant feeling of low-grade nausea roiling in my stomach. For the moment, I had it under control, but I was fairly certain that if I stayed, I’d end up throwing up at least once before the end of the day.
I was completely terrified of whatever I would experience—or re-experience—if Hart won the argument and handed me things to touch.
I would do it anyway, because if I could be helpful, if what I found might reveal something more about the killer or his employer, or motive…
I had to do it. For my own sense of self-worth, if nothing else.
Raj had gripped Hart’s elbow and dragged him away from me, hissing something in a low tone of voice that I couldn’t make out, although the increasingly bright pink of Hart’s pointed ears suggested that he wasn’t happy about whatever it was.
Hart also didn’t accept it, arguing back, his voice just as low as Raj’s, although there were a couple moments when he gestured widely in my direction, suggesting that he was very clearly trying to convince Raj to make use of me.
I saw the moment the shifter agent came to a decision, huffing out a heavy breath that made his shoulders drop a little. He said one more thing that I assumed was something like stay here, since Hart crossed his arms over his chest and planted his feet as Raj came over to me.
I stiffened, fear rising—I didn’t think he would physically hurt me, but I was afraid of what he was going to say to me.
He stopped a few paces away, several emotions flickering over his face that seemed—at least in my poor judgment—conflicting. I wondered about what, and experienced a flash of hope that one of them meant that he was maybe a little bit happy to see me again… or, at least, not disappointed.
“You don’t need to be afraid of me,” he said softly. “I won’t ever hurt you.”
I swallowed. “I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I’m sorry about the dreams and I’m sorry I didn’t tell you and I’m sorry I kept doing it and—”
Raj held up a hand, his features startled. “We are not going to talk about this here or now,” he said sharply.
I stopped talking, feeling my face heat.
Raj took a step closer, then cleared his throat. “Did Hart pressure you into being here?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“I mean that, Rayn,” he said, his voice firm. “If you don’t want to be here…” He trailed off, waiting.
“I don’t want to be here,” I said, half swallowing the words. “But I want to help. And if here is where I can help, then…” I also trailed off, shrugging.
Raj let out a soft huff. “You don’t have to do anything,” he said firmly. “No matter what it is or who is asking. Hart, me, any of the other agents or LEOs. Understood?”
“LEOs?” I asked.
“Law enforcement officers,” he replied. “Police. It’s FBI slang, I suppose.”
“Oh.”
“It doesn’t matter who asks you to do something, if you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. Do you understand?”
I nodded, not looking at his face, my gaze focused down on his shoes. Loafers—black ones, with thick soles and stitching around the bottoms. Practical shoes rather than fashionable ones, the toes a little scuffed, the surfaces marred by what looked like dust and dirt.
“You aren’t obligated to do anything for anyone. The minute you decide you’ve had enough, you can be done. I’ll call you a cab, if that’s what you want, so that you don’t have to stay here. Understood?”
Despite the gruffness of his tone, the words he was saying were generous, kind, concerned. They were words that cared about my well-being. Maybe not me, exactly, but at least about my health. I glanced up, finding his gold-brown eyes fixed on me. I nodded again.
“You need a break, you just say so, okay?”
I nodded again.
Raj sighed heavily. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” he asked me and it almost seemed as if his tone had softened, but that might have been wishful thinking.
“No,” I answered honestly, once more dropping my eyes. “But I’m going to do it anyway.”
Raj had me start in the offices, sitting in a chair that Hart had covered with the same blanket from Taavi’s memory, pulled from his trunk, so I didn’t have to risk accidentally touching the arms of the chair.
Every now and then, someone would pass me something—a dusty coffee mug, a monogrammed pen, a set of manila file folders for patients all assigned to the same doctor. Dr. Robert Garraway.
He had hated all of us.
Every single patient file was a wellspring of vile, vicious thoughts about the sub-humanity of every single one of them.
This one was a violent monster who needed to be subdued with nearly constant sedation, kept in near-total isolation, kept on a reduced diet, and discouraged from social interactions for the ostensible safety of others.
He was also an orc. Or, rather, he had been.
He’d died here, the autopsy—to which Dr. Garraway had referred as a necropsy in an act of final indignity—revealing that he’d barely weighed more than a human of comparable height…
meaning that he’d essentially starved to death.
Another was marked as having severe body dysmorphia, believing herself to be human when she was not.
He’d conducted repeated therapy sessions in which he’d encouraged her to give up on any aspirations of higher education or career and suggested that she resign herself to manual labor or janitorial work.
She’d been a faun, and had committed suicide in an act Garraway thought of as a fitting end, that she’d at least given herself the last dignity of removing the stain of her corruption from the world.
I’d sat in the chair, shuddering, for a good five or ten minutes before I’d been able to pick up another file after that.
Still another had been not an Arcanid, but a witch—like me—left at Tranquil Brook—also like me—by a family who didn’t want them to have the magic they’d been born with.
She’d tried to fight the ‘treatment’ Dr. Garraway had prescribed—the machines he’d used to drain her magic.
She’d complained of fatigue, nausea, headaches, joint pain…
all things I was intimately familiar with.
She’d still been alive when Tranquil Brook had been emptied—or so it seemed, since her file simply stopped, and the last date had been about four years previous.
It was a very small ray of hope in what was proving to be a nearly bottomless pit of darkness.