“Unstable?”
This time she's slower to answer, reluctant to concede any point that will let him press his request to see Green. “She's odd, if that's what you mean. Always writing down these little bits of poetry and trying to memorize them. Or sitting out in the garden and staring at the sun.”
“I need to talk to her.”
“Why?” Ms. Drowner leans forward, eyes wide in a face that seems too small for the rest of her head. “I can't see how she can tell you anything of use. Not about these… murders.”
Percival straightens, like a cat stretching—languid, but dangerous. “I'm afraid I can't discuss the particular details of our investigation.”
Martinez coughs. “That's correct. We can ask to speak with her and we don't have to tell you why.”
She blinks at them, pulls her carefully tailored sweater tighter across sharp shoulders. “Fine. I'll have the orderlies bring her down to one of the front rooms. You may have to wait a few minutes while our psychiatrist finishes up his afternoon session.”
“Psychiatrist?”
“He'll want to supervise the interview.”
“No.” Percival shakes his head. “I'll speak with her alone.”
“It would be better...”
“Alone,” he says firmly.
“We will have to observe the conversation.”
“From outside the room.”
Her lips grow thin, but her curiosity is strong. “All right.” She stands up, twitches her skirt to settle the folds. “Wait here.”
Martinez waits until the door shuts behind her. “I hope you know what you're doing.”
“Even if the medication hasn't dulled her, I don't pose a threat.”
“That you know of.”
“True.” He stretches, easing the tension in his neck and shoulders. “Better to know now, than later. And better me than you.”
“Yes.” Martinez nods. “But you'll be careful.”
“And you'll be right outside.” He says it not just as a reassurance, but because it is reassuring. Martinez's concern, although smothering, is better than the distance and unsubtle whispers from his previous assignment. Even Elliot and MacKenzie show more concern, albeit in a backhanded fashion by making it clear they considered their previous Sensitive partner an integral part of the team.
Before he can get any more sentimental, Ms. Drowner returns. “We're ready.” She motions toward the door. “If you'll follow me.”
Percival clutches the folder with his notes on the investigation and the initial photos of the corpses to his chest as they walk down the hall. It doesn't seem to be a horrible place, as far as institutions go. This part of the building has lots of open rooms, and the patients are all dressed in real clothes. But there are still crisp tiled floors in neutral colors and blank walls that stretch out like a tunnel. And they have to pass through a locked door as they enter the next wing.
An orderly and a man in a worn suit wait outside one of the doors. Ms. Drowner flops her hands back and forth as she makes introductions. “Agent Cox. Agent Martinez. Dr. Everley.”
Percival nods, certain his palms are too sweaty to shake hands.
Everley reaches out and flicks his fingers against the folder. “Do you intend to show Miss Green something in there?”
“Only if it becomes necessary.”
“May I see?” Everley's curiosity is duller than Ms. Drowner's. He is concerned more with Miss Green's health and less with finding out about the investigation.
Percival hands him the file and waits while the psychiatrist glances through the photos.
“You are either naïve or clever, Agent Cox.” He passes the folder back with a dry grin.
“You think these will upset her?” He has already mulled over the wisdom of showing charred bodies to a young woman whose sisters were burned alive.
“No. But if that's what you're here to talk to her about...” He pauses.
Ms. Drowner is canted over, trying to catch a glimpse of the photos and a snatch of the conversation. She straightens back up, smooths wispy hair back from her face. “You acknowledge that we bear no responsibility for anything that might happen in there?”
“Yes, ma'am.” Percival drawls the words, touching his forehead in mock sincerity.
She scowls, but waves her hand. “All right.”
Dr. Everley nods. “Good. We will be in the next room. There is a two-way mirror, but we won't be able to hear you. The orderly will stay outside the door. In case you should need assistance.”
“Thank you.” Percy walks a few steps down the hall as they file into a different room. Then back. Breathing slow and putting his memories to rest.
The orderly watches him with a twist in his mouth that might be amusement. “Ready, sir?”
“Yes.” Percy tucks the folder under his arm and opens the door before he can change his mind.
7
The moment what I see in my head and what I'm seeing with my eyes come crashing together is always disorienting. Things that were distant and spirit-like take on solid shapes and real smells and sounds. I blink and press my fingers against my cheeks as they grow warm.
I've seen Percival Cox enough over the years to have gotten familiar with the shape of his mouth and the strong curve of his nose. I know that his skin has more color than mine and his hair has thick waves that curl into his eyes.
But it's different seeing him in the flesh, so to speak. It's not just because I'm fond of him. If it were Martinez closing the door behind him, I would still be nervous with the adrenaline pushing hard with every thump of my heart.
The dream is real, and encountering it as real is difficult. Sorting it out is difficult too—the things I know because they're in my head and those I know because I can actually see them. The things I feel with my own hands. The things I feel with Percy's hands. For a giddy moment I'm wearing my own skin like an oversized shirt, staring out through my eyes like slits in a mask. But I pull back up to the surface and lower my hands to my lap. This is real. This is now.
If Percy notices, he doesn't let on. He takes a moment to look around the room, making special note of the two-way mirror, then settling into the empty chair on the other side of the metal table in such a way that he sits squarely between me and those watching us. “Miss Green?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I'm Agent Percival Cox.”
I smile at him as friendly as I can manage. “Nice to finally meet you.”
“I just have a few questions and then...” He pauses. “Finally?”
“I've seen you before. In dreams.” I look at him intently, hoping for a flicker of recognition. “Don't suppose you remember that, though.”
“Well.” He stops again. Does he?
“They're pretty much all the same. You. Walking in the woods. Sometimes it's daylight, but most times it's night out. You come down the deer path between the trees, and I'm standing there, waiting for you. And I'd swear you were lookin' for something, but you never see me. You just pass on by.” My throat gets tight just thinking about it.
“Yes.” He fidgets, picking at a tear on the corner of the file folder lying between us. “I remember those dreams. I don't remember you.”
“Because you never see me.” Another smile tempers the impatience in my voice. “But this is different. Not a dream where I can only stand and watch you and wish.”
“Wish?”
“Wish to be a tree so that I could brush your hand as you pass. Wish to be the breeze so I could whisper in your ear. Wish to be moonlight so I could lay softly against your lips.”
His heart beats fast and a knot forms between his eyebrows. Is this some sort of test? Sheriff Tolbert and ex-Sheriff Mains have both warned him I'm tricky. Seductive, Mains said. For certain he notices I'm watching him close, still smiling like a fool. “Are you teasing me, Miss Green?”
“Maybe.” I toss my hair back over my shoulder. “I don't get many visitors, you know.”
“I know.” The
surge of sympathy is genuine enough. He hopes it is, anyway. Surely I haven't twisted his future already. I haven't even touched him. He clears his throat. “Do you know why I'm here, Miss Green?”
I sigh, but it's no surprise he's straight to business. “They say The Salesman has come to claim his revenge.”
“A dozen bodies in the woods,” he says firmly. “Burned in such a way that folks around here are telling me stories of some long gone carpetbagger who tried to marry the wrong woman.”
Energy flickers through me and I lower my gaze, knowing otherwise he'll see the change in my eyes—the brown one turning dark as midnight, the green one bright as spring grass. “He weren't no carpetbagger, Mr. Cox.”
“No?”
“He worked an honest trade and didn't take advantage.”
“I suppose you'll tell me next he isn't gone either.”
That makes me laugh and I lean forward across the table. “You don't have to play games, Mr. Cox. I'll answer your questions plain.”
“I can't be sure of that.”
“Fair enough. But I'd guess you have to ask me anyway. So why don't you, and stop trying to lead me around to telling you what you want to hear.”
Percy licks his lips, flustered and not knowing exactly why. Except for maybe they've told him I'm a witch. And in spite of himself, he thinks I'm pretty.
The thought makes my cheeks get hot again. In spite of my teasing, I was not expecting him to see anything other than my plain cotton dress and fraying sweater or the vague twitch in my hands that is the ever-present shadow of the Magiprex.
He thinks I'm pretty.
I tuck my arms against my chest and rock gently to dispel the rush of emotion.
He clears his throat. “Is there any truth to the stories?”
“True that my somethin'-great granddad was a salesman from parts north of here. Not a real Yankee like yourself, but close enough for those that were angry about the way the war turned out. True that he fell in love with the Mayor's daughter, Emily Decker, and they eloped against her father's wishes and their better judgment.” My scars are itching and I rub them slowly. “True too that when they came back to town my somethin'-great granddaddy was snatched up by a mob and burned alive in the metal chest he used as a sample case.”
“And the rest? The oath of revenge?”
“That's just fear. Rumor. Guilt.”
“Guilt.” He frowns.
“You know how when you do somethin' wrong? Not the accidental things, but somethin' you know is wrong but you done it anyway?”
His hand, still resting on that file folder, trembles. “Yes.”
“That eats at you. Makes you try and find ways to make it seem like it was right.” I touch my scars, thinking about all the time I wasted trying to find a reason for what Mama did. “Those folk that murdered Jack Green knew they'd done somethin' awful. So the first thing they did was make it seem like their jealousy and murderin' was somethin' good. So they told that story 'bout Jack’s revenge. Made it seem like he was hateful. Like he was dangerous.”
“Then the stories about the ghost?”
“Now that's true. But he ain't never tried to hurt anyone.” I pause, cheeks flushed and trying to find my words again. The ones that ain't... that aren't so simple.
Percy digs his thumb into his temple, feeling the headache slipping back in behind his eyes. “Jack Green is a ghost.”
“Yes.”
“But he or it...”
“He.”
“He isn't murdering young women.”
“No.”
“But someone is.”
“Some one.” I break the words apart with my tongue, drawing attention to them. “Some thing.”
“Thing?”
A shrug and a half-truth, because I can feel that evil out there, but I can't say one way or another what it is. “Someone, I'd guess. Heard the stories. Knew the folks around here would be quick to point the finger at unnatural causes.”
“Okay.” He glances over his shoulder toward the two-way mirror, wondering if maybe the sheriff is right and he won't get anything but roundabout words from me. Answers that leave him more twisted up than before. But he remembers the itch on his hands, the taste of heat and blood. “Thing is, I thought there was a trace of magic out there in the woods.”
He opens the folder and lays the photos out gently. “This is what is left of Lily Blackwell and Charlotte Camstock.”
I lean in close, looking at each one carefully like I haven't seen them before. My hair slithers out from behind my ears, and I push it back from my eyes impatiently. Slap both hands down on the pictures as though I can push myself right into them.
“Huh.” I sit back in my chair and tuck my hands in my lap. Going to need to wash. “I won't be able to tell from these.”
“Tell?”
“If it were magic that burned them up like that. Someone or something.” I turn so I can look at him square with my green eye because it's always kinder than the brown one. “I think, maybe, you need to find someone with the Touch. Before you find yourself in deep.”
“What do you mean?”
“I can't tell you nothin' more than that. Not from those. Not from here.” A shrug of my shoulders takes in the blank room with its scuffed metal furniture.
Percy scowls. There's the hook. “You want me to take you out there to see for yourself.”
“Did I say so?” I shake my head. “But you had best be thinkin' hard on what sort of power can put fire to those with the Touch.”
Even he can feel the twitch of energy from the other side of the mirror. “These women were witches? Like you?”
“Ain't many like me, Agent Cox. There's a difference between them that don't burn and them that is hard to burn. But some fool with a can of kerosene and a lighter would have had a hard time doing either of them like this.” The Touch ripples under my skin again, and I lay my fingers against the nearest photo careful-like. “This is something dangerous.”
He frowns, rubs his thumb across his forehead. The lines around his eyes are stitched with pain. That's the toll of his gift, this time in response to the Touch sleeping inside me. He shivers as though a bell has been struck as his sense tries to plumb the depths of the magic under my skin.
I lay my hand over his and the room peels away. The table and chairs remain, but there is grass under our feet and sunlight pressing hot on our heads. This is a field I used to play in when I was small. Addie and I would lie out in the sun after lunch or run through the weeds in the cooler evening in the never ending attempt to fill a mason jar with fireflies. It has been years since I was here, even in my head, but there is no forgetting the sweet smell of the grass.
Percy's eyes get wide. “Stop it.”
I lift my hand away quick and the walls crash down around us. The clock on the wall hums as the second hand chases its tail around and around and around, the minute hand pacing slowly after it.
Click. Tock.
Percy touches his forehead again, but the pain is gone, the alarm his body had sounded in his nerves no longer necessary. I have shown the power in my bones. Now he must decide what to do with that knowledge.
Click. Tock.
Slowly he slides his hand back across the table 'til his fingertips just touch mine. His lips move silently so Ms. Drowner and Dr. Everley on the other side of the mirror cannot catch his intent.
Again, he mouths.
The room melts away, and this time the table and chairs go too, leaving us standing in that endless field.
He looks around, reaches down, and crushes the seedy head of a stalk of grass in his fingers. “Is this place real, Delaney?”
“The place is real, but your solid self, and mine, are sitting at a table in Greenhaven.”
“And this?”
I tap my temple. “In my head.”
Most men would be all wobble-kneed with terror by now, but Percival Cox is braver than he looks. His fingers tighten around mine, and he takes a few steps, sto
ps to look around again. “Do you come here to get away from the... institution?”
A shrug. “I go elsewhere. But this is a place I haven't seen in a long time.”
“Oh?” He looks at me. “Why?”
I lick my lips. “The places I normally go are private. Or crowded.”
“Crowded.” There is a momentary tremor of fear in his hands. Struck by the thought that I have dragged others into this place and trapped them so they are subject to my will.
The idea is amusing, if impractical, but I need him to trust me. That means showing him the truth.
The ground shivers, walls thrusting up through the grass, shedding dirt as rafters curl over us like hands closing up around a lightning bug. For a moment it's dark, then sunlight creeps through the ragged curtains over the windows. Every detail familiar as my own skin—worn carpet in a shade that hasn't been popular in forty years, the floorboard halfway across the room that cries like a cat when you step on it, the floral patterned couch and not-matching armchair.
The TV cackles in the corner of the room, and Mama stomps back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, pointing at Daddy—sometimes with her finger and sometimes with the butcher knife. She ain't the only one. There's another one of her sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette. Upstairs screaming about somethin', too.
And outside shutting the door on the tool shed and throwing kerosene against the walls like she's tossing out the dishpan.
I step out on the porch, past Addie playing with her knock-off Barbie on the steps and swingin' on the tire in the oak in front of the house.
Percy looks down at me. “These are memories.”
“That's right.” I tap the side of my head again. “Some days it's downright busy in here.”
He turns, fingers ticking against his leg as though counting. “I don't see you.”
That makes me grin. “Of course not. Because I'm here.”
The flames lick at the tool shed and the door shudders as Addie tries to break it down, but I know she is not strong enough. She never is.
The sheriff and his deputies pull up in the yard, blue lights twirling and sirens wailing. Mama runs past us into the house, hair pouring loose across her shoulders, and that wildness in her eyes that said she has come undone.
Touch: A Trilogy Page 4