Chapter 20
The human mind breaks in proportion to what it endures. I’ve observed a correlation between the amount of time a person was clinically dead and their sensitivity to the supernatural, though I’m sure other factors also contribute.
Point is, I’ve never encountered somebody who has endured as much as Alexander.
“Eden’s right, a taxi makes sense,” DJ says on the ride back. “I don’t care how drunk I am—I’d never get in a random car.”
“Unless one of their friends offered them a ride?” Griffin says.
“Most of their friends stayed at the bar.” Zoey’s voice comes through the van speakers, sounding echoey. “Police already got alibis for everyone close to them.”
“And the Game Master wouldn’t shit where he eats,” DJ says, twisting around in the passenger seat to look at me.
“It takes time to possess someone. The entire process can take up to a week before a ghost can take control for even short bursts, so a smart entity like the Game Master wouldn’t pick victims who could be easily traced back to his host.”
Choosing to possess a taxi driver would give him access to hundreds of potential victims and zero obvious connection to any of them.
Bob limps up to me with his tail wiggling, and I gather him in my arms and immediately go to my room. The pain is gone, but my body feels hollow and too heavy to move at the same time. I don’t want anyone else to see me like this.
How did I feel Greg’s pain?
I pull on one of Dad’s old hoodies and sweatpants. They’re way too big, the waistband practically falling off my hips, but I don’t care. It’s just Bob and me tonight.
Until there’s a knock on my door.
I can’t tell anyone on the team to get lost, so I press my palms against my eyes. “Yeah?”
“I need to talk to you.”
My hands drop. Bob’s head snaps up from where he’s been sleeping on my bed. I assure him it’s okay, then swing my legs off the bed and open the door.
Nico stands there holding a mug.
“Donny sent me,” he says, like he needs me to know he wouldn’t choose to see me.
“Cool,” I say, because right now it’s the only word I remember how to say. My entire vocabulary has fled my brain.
Nico glances down at the mug in his hands. “I brought you… soup.”
He says it like he’s confessing to a crime, staring at the mug with enough apprehension that it’s like he thinks something is going to jump out and bite him.
I’m almost expecting to see Donny standing behind him, forcing him to bring me this soup at gunpoint.
I’d laugh at the visual if I weren’t so exhausted.
I take the mug. Steam rises, carrying the smell of chicken broth that makes my stomach grumble so loud there’s no way he didn’t hear it, but he says nothing.
“Thank you,” I say. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“I know.” I expect him to walk away now that he’s free of the mug, but he lingers. Silently.
“Want to come in?”
I step back to make space for him, but he doesn’t step all the way inside. Just leans one shoulder on the door frame and crosses his arms.
Okay, well, if he wants to stand there, that’s fine.
Bob goes from quiet to barking his head off instantaneously, desperately trying to drive Nico away with the sheer power of sound.
I scold him to be quiet, and he does stop barking, but doesn’t calm down, still glaring at Nico from his perch on my bed.
Goddamn. Bob doesn’t even hate Dylan this much.
Nico doesn’t seem bothered by it, not moving from his position in the doorway. I back up until I hit the edge of the bed and sit down, then sip the soup. It’s heavenly. Warm and salty and exactly what my body needs right now.
“What happened today,” Nico says, “wasn’t normal.”
I lower the mug, wrapping both hands around it like it can protect me from whatever he’s about to say. “I kind of figured that out.”
“I think you can make neural connections not only to entities, but also to bodies,” he says. “To all energy left behind.”
The soup suddenly feels like eating straight heavy cream. “Does that mean I’m going to feel every murder victim’s pain whenever I get near a body?”
“Possibly.” His shoulder shifts against the door frame.
“You’re more sensitive than anyone we’ve ever had on the team.
More sensitive than anybody Donny has ever met.
I want to find a way to dull your sensitivity when you go into the field.
Until we understand exactly what you can do and how to control it. ”
My whole body goes tense. “Dull it how?”
“I could rig something to make you less vulnerable to picking up things you’re not trying to pick up.” His fingers drum against his arm. “I’ve never dealt with someone who picks up this much unintentionally, so I don’t know exactly what would work.”
“Don’t dull anything,” I say. “We wouldn’t know about the taxi lead if I hadn’t—”
“I know.” His voice is firm, but not unkind. “Donny doesn’t want anything to happen to you.”
The words hit me sideways. I focus on the steam rising from the soup because crying in front of Nico would be the cherry on top of this already humiliating day. Donny caring more about what happens to me than about what I can do makes me want to do everything I can to be useful to him.
“I can’t learn how to control anything if it’s dulled,” I say, leaning forward. “If you block what I feel, how am I supposed to learn what I can really sense?”
He narrows his eyes. “You want to expose yourself to other people’s pain?”
“The Game Master is out there now, and this—whatever this thing is that I can do—could help us find him.”
He studies me. Maybe he’s trying to figure out if I actually believe what I’m saying or if I’m trying to prove something. Honestly? I’m not sure myself.
There’s no way to undo what’s already been done to my brain.
It was bad enough knowing I was going to see dead people for the rest of my life, but this?
Experiencing every victim’s pain, feeling what it’s like to be tortured and killed, for the chance of tracking down their murderer? That will be my job?
I close my eyes against the burning sensation building behind them, reaching under the sleeve of my hoodie to draw back the hair tie. The sting from the elastic sends a tingle all the way into the tip of my middle finger.
Bob has people here who would take care of him. Donny seems to like him, anyway. Donny would probably do a better job keeping him safe and happy. I could take my car and disappear. Do what I couldn’t finish before. Third time’s the charm, isn’t that what they say?
The thought wraps around me like a weighted blanket, and a lump forms in my throat.
Not because I’m scared of dying. I’m not.
I’m scared of how easy it would be. I can almost see them waiting for me.
Mom with her gentle hands and her nurse voice that made me feel like I could do anything.
Rosie bouncing on her toes, pigtails swinging, waving at me to hurry up already.
Dad with his arms open wide, ready to scoop me up the same way he did when I was little, telling me, ‘It’s okay, princess, you did well. ’
Dad told me to never give up, but I’m so tired of fighting all the time.
So tired of waking up every day and having to convince myself that being alive is worth it when I can’t even figure out what I’m supposed to be doing here, and things are different now.
Would Dad really want me to live a life filled with so much pain?
A tear slides down my cheek. I swipe at it fast.
Nico’s quiet for a long time. Here it comes. The part where he reminds me exactly how far down the totem pole I am and how my opinions and abilities don’t actually matter.
“I killed myself when I was seventeen,” he says.
He pushes off the door frame and steps fully into the room. My hand flies out to comfort Bob, desperately hoping he does nothing to ruin this moment.
“Swallowed pills,” he continues, his voice as level as Dr. Kimura’s. “Was dead for four minutes before they brought me back in the hospital.”
I try desperately to think of a good thing to say, but I don’t know what. ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t enough. ‘Me too’ feels like I’m making this about myself when he just told me something so personal.
“At least doing this job, something good can come out of all the bad,” Nico says. “It doesn’t fix what happened to me, but it does mean my pain wasn’t for nothing.”
I nod, putting the mug on the nightstand because I’m not hungry anymore.
“But I had to choose to do this.” Now his voice has that commanding edge again.
“I did it for Donny. I owe him everything, but I also had to buy into the pain. Accept that this work would hurt me in ways I couldn’t imagine, and I had to own it, or else I wouldn’t survive it. I’m good at taking pain.”
Is he saying I’m not? I lived through watching my family die. I survived one year sleeping in abandoned buildings and underpasses, and two in a car. I’m still here, aren’t I?
I can feel my brow scrunching because my traitorous face just loves to broadcast everything I feel. “I can take pain.”
“You can.” He says it like a fact, not a compliment. “You wouldn’t still be here if you couldn’t. That’s the only reason I’m not fighting Donny harder on keeping you here.”
I do everything I can to push the disappointment away before my face can betray me. “You still want me gone?”
“Donny won’t want you to go, not when he knows how powerful you are.
” He takes a step toward me, and I have to tilt my head back to maintain eye contact from where I’m sitting on the bed.
“You need to decide whether you want this. Not because Donny wants you here, or because you have nowhere else to go, but because you want this. This job will take from you until you have nothing left to give.”
The warning hangs in the air between us.
I focus on that, and pointedly not on how much Nico still doesn’t want me here.
If I give up now, what was the point of Dad holding that plastic in his teeth so I’d have a chance?
Did I really survive two years of living in my car just to give up because I’m scared?
I need to be useful. Do something that gives worth to my life. If I can’t do that, these thoughts are going to win.
“I can do this.” I stand up, closing some of the distance between us so he can see I’m serious. “I want to help people so this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
I also want to look that Game Master motherfucker in the eye and drag him into one of those jars, kicking and screaming.
His eyes hold mine for a long moment. Whatever he finds there seems to satisfy him, because his shoulders drop. “Good.”
He’s standing so close that I can see the gray ring around his irises. Close enough that if I reached out, my fingers could brush the front of his shirt.
I remember what I told DJ earlier about blowing off steam, and suddenly the concept feels a lot less theoretical.
Because Nico’s standing in my room, in this small space between the bed and the door, and I’m looking up at him, wondering what it would feel like to close that distance.
To find out if touching him would quiet the noise in my head the way I think it might.
If I’m being super honest, the main appeal of sex with Dylan was always the shower, bed, possible food, and how the whole thing made me feel numb.
Most of the time, I’d be convinced that everyone is a liar and sex never feels good unless you’re a man, but then, every once in a while, Dylan would hit a spot, or my body would respond in some rare and unexpected way that felt good.
I’d get a glimpse of what other people say sex feels like.
Or at least what they say it feels like in the movies.
I’ve still never orgasmed with a man before.
I have a feeling that sex with Nico would feel good.
The thought makes me feel ridiculously transparent.
I hope he can’t tell what I’m thinking. What’s wrong with me?
He’s only just stopped actively trying to get me to leave.
He might not hate me anymore—at least, I hope he doesn’t—but he definitely doesn’t want to blow off steam with me.
He’s the team leader. He’s serious and focused and probably hasn’t thought about me that way for even a second.
But God, he’s so beautiful. Even with that serious look on his face that tells me he’s working through something in his head, there’s something about him that makes a tingling feeling spread all the way up through my body. His gaze drops to my neck. His throat rolls.
He steps back so fast he nearly stumbles, and heads for the door. I release a shuddering breath.
He pauses, back turned to me, bracing one hand on the knob. “If you don’t want to dull your senses, then we won’t dull them.”
He pulls the door closed behind him. Only then does Bob heave a sigh and relax.