Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
“Jessica!” The attendant held the door as I raced out of the restaurant into the chilly darkness in the street outside. The night air was freezing; the cold seeped into my bones immediately. I shivered, looking left, then right. Damn, she moved fast. I was sure I’d been right behind her.
There. I spotted her pink body-con dress. “Hey, Jessica! Wait!” She had already crossed the street, heading to a waiting double-parked taxi a few stores away.
I stumbled forward on my heels, quickly searching the street for any sign of Donovan and the Andresanos, but I couldn’t see him anywhere.
Where had he gone? He should be right outside.
He should be here, right next to me. I felt almost lost without him, like he was an anchor, and I was a ghost ship on rough seas.
My vision wobbled, and fog crept in. If Donovan wasn’t next to me, how did I know he was real or not?
Stop it! I screamed at myself. Pull yourself together, you idiot.
The pink bodycon dress was getting away. I stumbled after her. “Jessica!”
Jessica turned and saw me. “Ugh, it’s you.” A sneer spread over her face. “What do you want?”
I crossed the street quickly. “I heard they found Audrina.”
She stared at me. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.”
“Is she okay?”
She snorted. “Of course she’s not okay. You don’t seem to know how to use your ears to listen, Susan, because I’ve told you all this before. Audrina has serious mental health issues.”
I stared at her for a second. “You’re not going to apologize for accusing me of kidnapping her?”
“Why the hell would I do that? I wasn’t wrong.
” She sniffed. “She was in your apartment at some stage; I know that for a fact. And whatever you did made everything worse, so why the fuck would I apologize to you? She’s even crazier than before.
” Jessica looked away and shuddered. “And not even in a good manic pixie dream-girl kind of way. In a gross, smelly, food-stains on her shirt and blotchy tear-stained face kind of way. It’s disgusting.
” She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t even bear to look at her. ”
Listening to her talk about her own daughter like this was insane. “She’s your daughter,” I breathed out. “You’re meant to protect her.”
She shrugged. “I am protecting her. From herself.” Jessica’s eyes were hard blue marbles, devoid of any shred of empathy. “And from you. Your crazy is obviously catching.”
A streetlight flickered above us, plunging us into darkness for a second. The pink pink sound of the lights unsettled me. I licked my lips nervously. “Audrina’s not crazy.”
“Of course you’d say that.” Jessica laughed coldly. “You’re a great big bag of crazy yourself, Susan.” She jabbed a finger towards me. “A lot of this is your fault. You encouraged her. You enabled her delusions.”
I shook my head. “Audrina doesn’t have delusions.”
“She does. She thinks she can be a famous singer,” Jessica sneered. “It’s the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard of in my life.”
“It’s not?—”
“Girls who look like her don’t get famous. And you encouraged her to think she could. She thinks magic is real.”
It is, I wanted to scream.
…Was it?
Was any of it real?
Maybe Jessica was right. Darkness hemmed in all around me, tunneling my vision.
At the end of the tunnel, Jessica jabbed another finger at me.
“You live in a fantasy world, Susan. You want Audrina to believe in pixies and fairies and unicorns, because you’re fucking batshit crazy just like she is.
It might be too late for Audrina, but I’m not having you anywhere near me when reality comes crashing down on you. ”
I mouthed helplessly. Phantom voices surged out of the blackness, echoing Jessica’s words. Reality comes crashing down. Crashing down.
Like my house, Bayview Cottage, crashed down around me when I caught Vincent in bed with Seraphina. Like my world crashed when I’d been arrested.
The phantoms mocked me. Locked up, locked up.
“I’m not crazy.” I blinked, looking down, the pavement beneath my feet morphed from blacktop to uniform beige scuffed with black marks.
The corridor of the hospital. I shuffled slowly down the hall, trying to keep my body moving. The drugs they pumped into me made it hard to think and difficult to move. How was I supposed to escape if I couldn't run?
My lips felt numb. My whole body felt numb, in fact, it was so cold I could barely move. It was like… it was like…
When Peter the warden caught me trying to escape, he stabbed me with a syringe filled with muscle relaxants. The sensation was identical—icy cold skin and heavy limbs. I was terrified.
Reality tipped sideways as my perspective changed again. Was I really standing here? Or was I back in the serenity room at the hospital, screaming at the walls?
“Look at you,” Jessica’s face leered at me from the darkness, lip curled, sneering. “You’re a fucking mess, Susan Moore.”
Suddenly, her face morphed, turning silver-blue. Her eyes bulged until they were giant black orbs, her blonde hair grew green and stringy, and the face of the sea witch cackled loudly.
I stumbled on my heels, rearing back from her. “No. N– No! You can’t be here!”
“The Chosen One.” The sea witch waved her snake-like tentacles in my face. “You think you're the Chosen One? You’re just a crazy human woman. A little fish nugget. Come here, little nugget!” A tentacle swung towards me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Jessica’s high-pitched voice sounded so close, but I couldn’t see her—all I could see was the flailing tentacles of the sea witch. She was going to eat me.
I screamed.
No, it wasn’t the witch. It was Peter, holding a syringe.
“Bitch, get away from me! Help! Someone, help!”
Something smacked into my head, and everything went black.