Nyx shrugged. “But the nurses do…”
“Your point?”
“We do what we do best, honey.”
“My allure doesn’t work on them. They’re warded against it.”
Nyx rolled her eyes. “They’re warded against whatever magical power you have that draws them in. But look at you, honey. You have a natural allure… it’s the same way I draw in my prey. There isn’t anything magical about what I do that enthralls someone’s attentions. It’s all about the appeal… the draw… embodying their every fantasy and luring them in.”
“You’re suggesting I seduce a nurse?”
Nyx smirked. “Why not? Once you do, you’ll have them between a rock and a hard place. They’ll have to do what you want or risk being found out.”
“I don’t know if that will work.”
“It will work if you work it, girl.”
Chapter Eleven
One of the downsides to being immortal is that you accumulate a familiarity with music from every era. How is that a downside? Because, at least in my experience, there’s hardly a moment that passes by when I can’t relate something that happens to a song. Now, on account of Nyx’s suggestion that I “work it, girl,” the voice of a mid-1990s RuPaul was serenading me in my mind. Less annoying than Edwin—but when I found myself shimmying my ass, imagining my hospital gown was a glamorous dress as I sashayed my way to Cain’s office, I couldn’t help but think there might be something to Nyx’s plan. If I had someone on the inside, someone who could sabotage the system that would trigger my collar, I’d be able to get out of this place in a matter of minutes. Or, perhaps even easier, I could just convince the nurse whom I’d target to simply let me go. It would probably involve some blackmail—but I wasn’t opposed to that. I wasn’t here by choice. But if it meant getting out of here without amassing a body count, it was worth it. After all, I still had other plans after I escaped. I still had to figure out the whole demon situation. I’d have to work with Annabelle and Hailey one way or another. Generally speaking, the less murder you commit, the more likely people are willing to work with you. It’s strange, I know. But what can I say—humans are strange that way.
I knocked on Cain’s door.
“Come in,” he said, obviously too self-important to bother standing up to open the door himself.
I stepped inside, still bobbing to the music inside my head, and closed the door behind me.
“Why don’t you be seated, Miss Brown?” Dr. Cain said, gesturing to a deep purple velvet chaise sitting against the wall. He was seated cross-legged in a high-backed chair that was upholstered to match.
“Do all your… patients… sit here?” I asked.
“Most of them,” Dr. Cain said.
“Kind of gross. Touching the fabric. I mean, considering the fact that half the people in here never shower.”
“The chaise is vacuumed daily, Miss Brown. Though, considering that you’re invulnerable to germs, I highly doubt you’re nearly as perturbed by the cleanliness of the chaise as you’re pretending.”
“True. I’m just looking for something to bitch about.”
Cain smiled. “Well, at least you’re honest about that. If you keep that up with everything we have to discuss, you’ll be quite successful in your treatment.”
I nodded. “Good to know.”
“So why don’t you tell me why you were so inclined to come to Nyx’s defense earlier?”
I shrugged. “I just think it’s crap. She wants to be treated like a woman. Why not accommodate that?”
“I’ve explained my reasons.”
“Your transphobic reasons…”
Dr. Cain cocked his head. “Nyx is from a species that has no gender. How can he be transgendered? Technically speaking, he has no gender at all. Only the appearance of one.”
“All the more reason to simply accommodate her wishes.”
“You don’t strike me as the social justice type, Miss Brown.”
“I’m not. I mean, I could care less about injustices in the human population. So long as they don’t impact me, you all are free to mistreat one another however you wish.”
“I have to admit, he was an odd choice for you to choose as a friend. Given his history and general disdain for vampires.”
I chuckled. I wasn’t about to tattle on Nyx for attempting to stake me with her stiletto. That would probably get her thrown into solitary. And, the asylum wasn’t all that different from prison—at least what I imagined prison must be like from binging episodes of Orange is the New Black. The worst thing you can be is a narc. Not to mention, I wouldn’t betray Nyx that way.
“I’ll just say she and I have a lot more in common than you’d think.”
“I can see how that might be the case,” Cain said, steepling his fingers.
“We’ve both had… unusual things make us different than the rest of our kind. And we both eat humans.”
Dr. Cain pressed his lips together. Clearly, being a human himself I imagined he wasn’t particularly keen on ever becoming a meal to either of our species. Still, he knew what he was getting into when he took this job. If he found our diets offensive, he was in the wrong line of work.
“I simply mean that both of you are holding onto something of your past. While in different ways, you’re allowing things that happened to you define you today. It’s no wonder you react violently when pressed.”
I took a deep breath. Clearly, he didn’t believe I was actually possessed by my brother. He thought I had some kind of multiple personality disorder, or maybe a brand of vampiric schizophrenia. “You’re talking about my so-called daddy issues?”
“Care to tell me about that?” Cain asked.
“My father belonged to an Order that was dedicated to eliminating my kind. Both my kinds, in fact. They hated witches and vampires. The last time I saw my father, he was trying to kill me.”
“I can understand why you’d have issues with your human father… but I think there might be another father whom your issues are more wrapped up with.”
I laughed. “You mean my sire? Nico?”
Dr. Cain nodded. “He left you. Not once, but twice. Once for two decades. Again, so he could become human and die.”
“Did Annabelle tell you all this?”
“It’s common knowledge in our world what happened, Miss Brown. Everyone knows about the vodouisant who went missing only to reemerge thousands of years in the past as a vampire.”
I nodded. “So, maybe I am pissed he left.”
“And you don’t feel guilty about the role you played in his demise?”
I shrugged. “He was going to die anyway. Why would I feel guilty? I didn’t want his powers to go to waste.”
“But might it be that more than acquiring your powers, you attacked him so you could, in some way, make sense of why he was leaving you? So you’d have a reason to blame yourself for it?”
“That’s some fucked up reasoning, Doc.”
“Is it?”
I took a deep breath. In truth, it wasn’t as far from the mark as I wanted to believe. But vampires don’t love. I couldn’t expect Nico to love me like a father. It would have been unfair to demand that of him. Still, I had to admit—if anyone had replaced my real dad in my mind, it was him.
“I think it’s still connected to my human father,” I said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, my father hated me.”
“For being a witch and, later, a vampire?”
“Before that. He never cared for me much. Edwin was his favorite. But with Nico, I was always his favorite. No matter how many people he’d sired through the centuries, I was the one he kept by his side. I was the one he trusted to revive him when the time was right. Not Ramon. Not anyone else. Me.”
“Then might it be that the voice you hear, the voice of your brother, has returned to your mind as a way of keeping your old resentments alive?”
“My old resentments?”
“Toward your
human father. We tend to create resentments as a kind of defense mechanism. It’s a way we try to protect ourselves against being hurt again. So when your second father—when Nico—left you, you revived your old resentment to avoid feeling left, feeling abandoned… again.”
“Except for the fact that I’m actually possessed by my brother. He isn’t just some voice in my head.”
Dr. Cain grinned. “How do you imagine you got possessed by your brother?”
Cain clearly didn’t believe me. But at least he was willing to entertain the possibility. Probably as some sort of thought exercise. But it was better than having to play along with his delusion that I was… well… deluded.
I told him what happened. How I went to hell not to save my brother, but to trap him. To make sure he couldn’t move on. So I could survive.
Dr. Cain lifted a finger to his chin. “So you think Edwin is torturing you because he’s suffering from some kind of trauma?”
I shrugged. “PTSD is a thing, right? What’s more traumatic than centuries of hell?”
“A fair point,” Dr. Cain said. “But losing people who should care for you—not just losing them, but being left by them—that can be traumatic, too.”
“Your point?”
“The point is this: maybe it doesn’t matter if you’re really possessed. Or if the voice you say you hear is a diagnosable condition. Truth be told, as a vampire even if you were schizophrenic, our human pharmaceuticals wouldn’t do much to help you. So what if we forget diagnoses? Let’s just focus on why this voice seems to have such an impact on you.”
I rolled my eyes. “You try having someone telling you to do the most barbaric, macabre things imaginable every time you sit down to eat and see how long it takes before you go bloody mad.”
“Why can’t you just ignore it? I mean, if you don’t pay it any attention, won’t he eventually give up?”
“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. I don’t know.”
“Maybe he gets under your skin because, at some level, the violence resonates with you. It speaks to the anger and resentment built up inside you. And giving in to that… it feels good, doesn’t it?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said. “I’ve done a lot of things that you would think are horrible. I try not to kill—most of the time. But that’s more because I don’t want hunters on my case, and leaving a lot of bodies behind tends to do that.”
“Or perhaps because you were human once… something that Nyx can’t say. That has to have some sway over you.”
I shrugged. “I don’t have a soul. Or a heart, for that matter.”
“But you have a memory. And issues like anger, resentment, and love are matters of the brain, not the heart. So far as I know, a vampire’s human memory remains intact after transition. Correct?”
I nodded.
“Then you are as capable of anger and happiness, love and hate as any human.”
“We don’t love,” I insisted.
“Why do you insist on that? I’m told you have a boyfriend. One who, for all intents and purposes, has left you more times than anyone. But you keep bringing him back. You keep holding onto him. From what I’m told, you even went to hell to get him back.”
“He keeps me company.”
“Or, you love him.”
I bit my lip. “Just not possible.”
“Why not?”
“Because it just isn’t.”
“That’s not a reason. Has it ever occurred to you that you cling to this whole idea that vampires aren’t capable of love because it’s a lot harder to come to grips with the fact that no one ever loved you the way they should have? Not your earthly father. Not Nico. Not even your boyfriend. If you simply discount love as impossible, then you have no obligation to love. You feel no reason to share an emotion that others have withheld from you.”
I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I took a deep breath. This fucker was good. Full of shit, but good. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
Dr. Cain nodded. “Perhaps another day.”
“So you aren’t accommodating Nyx’s desire to be treated as a female because she’s never been human?”
“We’re talking about you, today, Miss Brown. But I’ll say this much: Nyx is exhibiting a lot of human-like sentiments. But for Nyx, he doesn’t have his own human history.”
“Her human history,” I said, clearing my throat.
“Fair enough,” Dr. Cain said. “She is experiencing humanity for the first time. And coming to grips with her gender is really the first hurdle. I’m not accommodating her gender preference because she isn’t the one demanding it. You are the one who told me what she felt. What she needed. Not her.”
“So you’re trying to force her to stand up for herself?”
“To assert herself,” Dr. Cain said. “To come to grips with what she’s feeling, why she feels the way she does. If she’s going to integrate into the human world—which, frankly, she must, since she can no longer return to her own kind—she’s going to face a lot more hate out there than a doctor who is reluctant to use the proper pronouns.”
“So if she tells you she wants to be acknowledged as a female, you’ll accommodate her?”
“Of course,” Dr. Cain said. “But until she advocates for herself, she won’t be ready to face the world. Trying to integrate with a new species is challenging enough. But to integrate as a trans woman…”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine…”
Dr. Cain nodded. “So please, Miss Brown. Don’t speak for Nyx in group. You’re only going to delay the breakthrough that’s coming. You may think you’re helping her, but she needs to stand on her own two feet.”
“The way she rocks those heels,” I said, “standing on her feet isn’t a problem. Have you seen how well she gets around in those heels? Damn. In a century and a half even I’m a bit wobbly on eight-inch stilettos.”
“You don’t strike me as the stiletto type, regardless,” Dr. Cain said, grinning.
“I prefer my boots.”
“You realize it was at my recommendation that she was given those shoes to begin with? I’m not the hateful man you’ve imagined.”
“Why did you let her have them?”
“Because she insisted,” Dr. Cain said. “And once she insists on being called Nicky, I’ll accommodate that, too.”
Chapter Twelve
I was sure I resembled a deer in headlights as I walked out of Dr. Cain’s office. It didn’t go at all like I’d expected. I still thought he was off about a lot of things, but he sure had a knack for poking at the sensitive spots.
“Mercy Brown,” Nurse Rutherford said as I passed the nurses’ station. “You have a visitor.”
“Well about damn time,” I said. I’d been here four days and Ramon hadn’t bothered to stop in. A four-day span without a visit wouldn’t have been a big deal under normal circumstances. But considering the way I was brought here, without my consent, after Edwin had seized control of my body and went on a homicidal rampage through the French Quarter, I sort of expected he’d be by as soon as possible to know why, of all places, the asylum was preferable to simply taking me home.
Courtesy of the nurse, I received a thorough pat-down before I could enter the visitors’ room. I mean, what did they think I was going to do? Sneak something out? I suppose, just like if I were in prison, if I’d managed to make a shank or something, they didn’t want to put my visitor in any danger. Still, it struck me as rather senseless. My fangs, my speed, even my beauty—those were my real weapons. If I wanted to hurt someone, I wouldn’t need a weapon to do it.
I was mildly shocked to enter the room and see not Ramon, not even Annabelle, but Hailey staring back at me.
“You?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I know, probably not who you were expecting.”
“I figured Ramon…”
Hailey bit her lip and looked off to the side. “Yeah, he couldn’t make it.”
“What aren’t you telling me?
Is Ramon okay?”
Hailey grimaced. “Yes, and no.”
“He hasn’t gone off the wagon again, has he? I swear, his pension for dismemberment…”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?” I asked, widening my stare at the young vampire.
“Annabelle staked him.”
My jaw dropped. “With her soul-blade?”
“Thank God, no. With a regular stake. Buried him at his usual spot, in your courtyard.”
“Why the hell did she do that?” I wasn’t that worried; Ramon had been staked before. It involved a temporary trip to vampire hell—a place he knew well and would leave again once the stake was removed. What perturbed me was that staking Ramon was my job. He was my responsibility, not Annabelle Mulledy’s. That girl thought she was the fucking policewoman of all things supernatural, and it was more than a little perturbing.
“She said he couldn’t be trusted. His track record…”
She had a point about that. Before I’d lost my compulsion abilities, that was the only thing keeping him in check. After I went to hell and came back possessed, trying to help me seemed to keep him strong and focused. But now that I was locked away, I could see how it might be a trigger for him. I sighed. “Well, that’s true, I suppose.”
“Plus,” Hailey added, “he came after us. When Annabelle brought you here.”
I grinned a little. All this time I’d been angry at Ramon for putting me here, but he’d tried to stop it from happening. He got himself staked for it—which, I have to say, was kind of sweet. “How did all that go down, anyway? Why am I here?”
“Annabelle was pretty pissed when Edwin emerged. She thought he was in hell.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I’d told her that I needed her to open a gate there so I could save him. In truth, I was hoping to get rid of him. The last time I’d gone there with her, I tried to capture him in a fetish and he ended up possessing me instead.”
Hailey scrunched her brow. “How were you going to exorcise him from yourself and leave him in hell?”
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