by Tim ORourke
Chapter One
Kiera
"What did he do to me?" I shouted at Potter.
"He killed you!" Potter said back, coming towards me from the other side of the table.
The windows in the consulting room rattled in their frames, as a steady wind blew hard outside.
"I know he killed me!" I snapped as he gripped my upper arms. I wasn't mad at Potter, I was mad at the thought of not knowing what Jack Seth had done to me before he had killed me. So many times I had looked into the killer's eyes and seen myself with him. I had watched as he had hurt me, paralysed me through fear or lust, so I couldn't fight him off.
"He's full of shit," Potter tried to calm me.
"Whatever he did to me, Seth said that I loved every moment of it," I reminded him, and the nightmarish images of Seth and me together that raced across my mind made me feel sick and violated.
Potter looked at Isidor and Kayla, who still sat around the table watching us, and hooked his thumb toward the door.
Knowing what he meant, Kayla pushed her chair back, stood up, and said, "I'm gonna go check on Sam. " Then, fixing Isidor with a hard stare, she added, "Isidor, let's go and see if Sam is feeling any better. "
"Okay, sure," Isidor said, and both of them left the room.
Once on our own, Potter looked into my eyes and said, "Don't let Seth put you in a mind-fuck. That's what he wants. "
"But he said that he seduced that pathologist into telling him my name," I reminded him over the wind that was now beginning to pick up outside. Hearing this, Potter appeared to flinch in my arms. "Are you okay?" I asked.
Potter loosened his hold on me and stepped back towards the table. "I'm fine," he said, taking a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it.
"What's wrong?" I quizzed, suspecting that he was hiding something from me.
"Honest, I'm okay," he said, breaking my stare and going to the window where he peered up into the night sky. "It looks like a storm is coming. "
"When have you ever given a crap about the weather?" I asked him, sensing that something wasn't right. "What aren't you telling me?"
"There's nothing to tell, sweet-cheeks," he said with his back to me and a cloud of blue smoke forming around his head.
Striding across the room, I went to join him at the window. "Don't shut me out, Potter. What do you know?"
"Nothing," he sighed, glancing at me, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
"You're lying," I whispered, starting to feel nervous, yet I didn't know why. "Talk to me, Potter. "
"I can't," he whispered back, staring out of the window.
It was so dark outside that I could see his reflection looking back at me, and I could see that his eyes looked darker than usual.
"You can't, or you won't?" I pushed, placing my hand gently on his muscular forearm.
"You're just gonna have to trust me," he said to the window.
"You're scaring me," I whispered, and I did feel scared. I was scared of what Seth might have done to me before tearing me to pieces. Did Potter know something about that? But how would he? We'd been together since coming back from the dead. No, Potter had left that day, the day he had gone to get my police badge and that picture of me and my dad.
"You have nothing to be scared of," he said, finally turning to face me. The look of sadness on his face frightened me more than anything. The last time I had seen such sorrow in his eyes was when he'd cradled Murphy's dead body in his arms beneath the Fountain of Souls.
"Is it Murphy?" I asked him, my voice barely a whisper as I looked into his eyes.
"Murphy?" he frowned, his eyes growing wide.
"I know you miss him," I said. "I know it's him you are thinking of when you sit and chain smoke in front of the fireplace. He was like a father to you - he was like a father to all of us. I wish he was here, too. I wish my father. . . "
"Stop," Potter said, raising his hand, and turning away. "I can't talk about this anymore. "
"Why not?" I asked, pulling him back so I could look into his eyes.
Potter stared down at me, and with a grim and troubled look on his face, he said, "Kiera, I can't talk about this right now. " Then, leaning in close, he planted the softest of kisses on my mouth.
"You know you can tell me anything," I whispered, brushing my cheek against his.
"Not everything," he whispered back.
Before I had the chance to ask what he meant by that, I heard Kayla scream.