Laxmi gasped, and Ellie whipped her head around to stare hard at Lily. They were both shocked. Miriam looked terrified, and Lincoln and Fischer just looked lost.
Fischer leaned forward. “What Awakening?”
“Ail’s.”
“E-L,” Miriam said. “It’s pronounced ail.”
I was listening, but I was transfixed by the sword. It was mine. It was a gift to me from an ancient god I now had to believe in as well. They were all chattering about this Awakening, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the blade.
“Why?” I whispered.
Everyone turned to me. “What?” Miriam asked.
I looked up at her and Lily. “Why? Why is that a gift for me? Why did some crusty old god make me a hellfire forged sword? Who the fuck am I that I rate a gift from a god?”
“Heph isn’t a god, not really,” Miriam said.
“You’re calling an ancient Greek god by a fucking nickname, Miriam,” I said, my eyes wide. “Are you kidding me right now?”
Lily stood up. “Ellie, you need to go to your appointment with Doctor Mederos. Miriam, Laxmi, leave the sword with them. They’ll call with questions.”
“You’re seriously just going to walk out of here?” I snapped.
She looked at me and was angry for just a tick of a heartbeat. “If I told you what happens, it wouldn’t happen. I’m sorry, Wren. I’m breaking rules to even give you that.” Her phone started ringing.
Laxmi and Miriam followed her out of the house, and Ellie moved in to give me a quick hug. “I don’t know what’s really going on, Mom. But trust they have your best interest at heart. Please.”
She glanced at Fischer and Lincoln. “Send the twins to the real library with the tutor. Take care of her.”
A moment later, she was out the door leaving the house in silence.
“What’s…what’s going on?” Lincoln asked.
“I don’t fucking know,” Fischer said.
I looked at the sword. “Lily said it’s going to trigger a vision. A big one. If the damn thing is a gift from a god, I can only imagine this is going to be a fucking disaster.”
Lincoln put a hand on my shoulder, and dropped a kiss on the top of my head. “I’ll send the tutor and the kids out to the library or the park.” He walked out of the room and down to the library we had in the house.
Fischer grabbed my hand. “Wren, we’ve known there’s weird shit going on. We knew that from the get go. Lily is trying to help. You needed a weapon the other day when you were protecting the kids, and this is her answer.”
“Whatever that thing is going to show me, Fischer, is going to change our lives forever.”
“I know, baby,” he said, leaning down and tipping my head back. “You also know it’s not going to change everything and it’s not going to give us all the answers. There’s more than we know going on.”
“Way more,” Lincoln said, walking back in. “But we need to start getting answers. Your visions, us seeing sins on skin. There’s something going on.”
“Sins on skin?” I asked.
“It…started not all that long ago,” Fischer said. “We’ve been meaning to say something. Most people don’t have a lot of them.”
Lincoln pointed to his wrist. “Bruises, mostly. Around the wrists.”
“You don’t have them,” Fischer said, trailing his fingers over my skin. “Linc and I don’t have them. Ellie, Laxmi, Miriam, the twins…all have nothing.”
“The golem who attacked me at the hospital didn’t have them. He didn’t carry Gary’s sins,” Lincoln said. “I could…see something flickering around him, something that said he wasn’t Gary.”
“I had a patient who was crawling was sins,” Fischer said. “Crawling. As in, with bugs that only I could see.”
Lincoln raised his hand. “I had snakes.”
I glanced between them. “Which of you still believes that rescuing the twins was a coincidence?”
“I don’t know what I believe any more,” Lincoln said, limping back to the table. “Everything is so insane right now.”
“If I touch that sword, nothing is ever going to be the same. Nothing.”
“You need that sword,” Fischer said. “You were attacked and had no way to defend against a supernatural enemy.”
“I agree,” Lincoln said. “I think that we all need one, but at the very least, you do.”
I stared at the two of them. “Are you sure? Are you really ready for this? Because I’m scared enough to piss myself at this point.”
Fischer grabbed my hand. “Wren. We can’t keep ourselves in the dark. We’ve already seen that the kids are in danger, even if they are versilange. Even Ellie, despite the wings and sword. If we can give them another level of protection, I think we should. If this will protect you, we should. You are not defenseless, and you’re not a risk-taker. But you’re still in danger, and we both need you to be safe.”
“I agree,” Lincoln said. “And seeing what Ellie can do with her sword and magic, or whatever it is, I can’t help but think that you’d be formidable if you had a proper weapon.” He pointed to the black sword on the table. “Like that one.”
I stared at it. Was I really ready for this? Would this give us the information, the advantage, we needed to find Ben and bring him back? Could it also give us a chance to save others from the sex trade?
“It’s up to you, Wren,” Lincoln said. “I’m greedy, so I want you to—because it will keep someone, I love safe.” His hand traced over my cheek, and I could feel the way he spoke the truth in that moment. The same truth was in Fischer’s touch on my hand.
“Everything changes,” I whispered.
“Nothing changes what we have,” Fischer said. “Nothing.”
I stared at the sword for a long few heartbeats.
Without preamble and without warning, my hand shot out and snagged the handle.
The world exploded around me.
Sebastian
Barry was fidgety. Far more than his normal nervousness, and I was not sure that I was up for this mess of a session. Not after what Hanger had said to me.
I’d been mulling what he had brought up over the past few sessions. Barry was a pedophile. There was no way about it. I pulled out my notes about him and studied them. I had five years worth of extensive notes on him, all from the session and post session.
I was bothered, deeply disturbed, by what I was realizing with them.
Despite the five years he’d been with me, there hadn’t been any marked improvement. Almost every week was another confession about his nearly giving in to the impulses. About touching a shoulder, an arm, ruffling hair. Even during our most intense session stretch—three days a week for nearly four months—he wasn’t improving.
It seemed more that he was getting better at lying about what he was doing. Better at telling me only the light details, not the ones he was really acting on.
The session we were sitting in was going to be the one that determined if I kept helping him or I turned him over to the police.
The idea that I was aiding and abetting a serial pedophile had me puking in the trash at least three times last night.
And that was separate from the twice I had vomited trying to figure out why the hell I was now so fucking attracted to both Lincoln and Wren. That felt like a horrible betrayal of my murdered wife.
Shoving those thoughts aside because I could feel the bile rising again, I refocused on the jittery patient across from me.
“You’re fidgeting badly today, Barry,” I said.
“I think I need to lay off the caffeine for a while.” He laughed.
The laugh was unconvincing. This was bad, bad, bad. I turned on the full force of my education—not just the sex therapist, but the PsychD I had earned, and the twelve plus years of practice, and the time I had spent at an inpatient facility for criminals.
This guy was now tweaking all the meters, and I was mad that I hadn’t realized this before.
“So, w
hat has you so wound up aside from coffee?”
“It was bad this week,” he said. There was a hint of pride in his voice.
“How so?”
“I had a coworker’s daughter in the office. She was so pretty.”
“What did you do?” I wanted to throw up again.
“I had her on my lap and I played with her hair.”
“And?”
“I realized what I was doing and that it was putting my job and my stability on the line. I don’t want to lose my job at all, and my stability is critical to staying there.”
Job first, then stability. He wasn’t as concerned about what he was doing as opposed to where he was doing it.
“What did you do?”
“I sent her back to her mother with a pat on her butt.”
“That was wrong.”
“Very.” He nodded. There was mirth in his eyes despite his somber tone.
“Was the pat on the butt a reaction or an exertion?”
He froze. He knew what answer I wanted, was just pretending to think about it. “I think it was more reaction than deliberate.”
That was the one he thought I wanted to hear, and the one that was wrong and a lie.
“And then what?”
He folded his hands in his lap. “I called my girlfriend. I chatted with her, calmed myself down and tried to refocus on what I was doing at my desk. I forced myself to stay in the chair at my desk and told myself it wasn’t worth the job.”
The job again.
I nodded once. “Well, you’ve taken a step back. Did this affect the rest of the week?”
“A bit. My mind kept seeing all the pretty little girls around me—”
“The what?” He’d used that phrase on purpose.
Clearing his throat, he nodded. “All of the children. It was easier for me to notice the children. More than I had in weeks and weeks.”
Weeks. Not months, not years. Weeks. “Did you act?”
“A few times. Closer to the incident in the office, but as the week went on, I got better at not reacting, trying to find that stability. I stayed in the house and didn’t go to any of my favorite places to take my mind off the situation. I watched a few movies.”
He was lying through his fucking teeth. He had ramped up this week. He’d probably gone to the playground, maybe the mall, and probably near the children’s store. I wouldn’t put it past him to haunt the one very popular big-production movie studio store, on the premise of looking for something for his non-existent niece.
I wanted to throw up again. This man had been playing me all along. It took the death of my wife and children to make me look at him in a clinical light that didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. This man had never had an intention of getting better.
He was looking for a place to brag about his conquests and perversions without being hauled in for his crimes. I was it. I was his confessor, and I was bound by law to not reveal or share any of the information he gave me.
What the fuck was I going to do here?
“So, you mentioned a girlfriend?” I took a chance.
“I did.” He smiled.
This time, the smile was deceptive. He was now lying about the girlfriend—I had a feeling that there was nothing about that relationship that was sexual or intimate. I would even have put money down that there was a caveat to the word “girlfriend,” it was merely a friend who was a girl.
“Tell me about her?”
“We met about six months ago and have been going back and forth for a while. But she’s very nice, and supportive.”
“So, she knows about your latent proclivities.”
“Yes, I was tired of getting six months into a relationship and having to explain why I go to therapy so often. So, I was up front. She’s a lovely woman. Grew up in Juniata, and moved to Rittenhouse when she got out of school. Lives there now, still.”
Something about the Juniata thing tickled my brain. I scratched a note down and nodded for him to continue.
“We see each other about twice a week. It’s nice to have her around, and she’s not put off by my diagnosis, at all.”
Accomplice. My brain was screaming at me. It also went against everything I knew women to be—it was rare to find a woman who was sexually abusive. Not unheard of, but rare. But when two abusers, two psychopaths, got together—sexually or not—they fed off each other.
I was now convinced that in addition to his unrepentant pedophilia, this man also needed to be reclassified as ASPD-S... Anti-Social Personality Disorder, type Sociopath.
“You’ve had comprehensive discussions about this?”
“Of course, Doctor. I know better than to let this go too long without an in-depth discussion and she really, really isn’t put off by it.”
“Excellent,” I said, giving him the answer he wanted. He puffed up a bit that he’d gotten my approval to be around this Juniata woman.
An idea hit me like a bolt of lightning. “Next time, I’d like you to consider bringing her to our session. I’d like to get a sense of her and what she’s like. I want to back track a second. Did you have any discussion with the coworker about her daughter?”
“Oh, yes. I did. Amberlee was wondering where her daughter was. Apparently, she had wandered off without warning, but Amberlee thought Grace was with a different coworker.”
I scribbled the names down quickly, and nodded. “You explained she was with you?”
“Yes, that I had been entertaining her at my desk.”
“Well, entertaining was a poor choice of words, but I agree with the honesty.” I tapped the pen on the notebook. “So, what do you think we need to work on here?”
“Well, impulse control,” he said. “That’s the obvious one. I shouldn’t have been so happy to see the girl in my cube, and I certainly should have sent her away.”
“Why didn’t you?” I asked. I knew, though. I knew exactly why he hadn’t done that. He didn’t want to. All the therapeutic options I had given him had fallen on purposefully deaf ears. He didn’t want to be cured, he didn’t want to be in control of his impulses. He fully intended to act on them again. If he had been sincere in seeking out this therapy, he would have been mortified in his lapse, and he wasn’t.
He was gloating.
Why had it taken me so long to realize that this guy was a total sociopath?
“It just all fell out when I saw her standing there.”
Wrong. Answer.
As soon as the door shut behind Barry, I was racing back to my office and I had Detective Haden’s card out and in my hand.
It took her just one ring to pick up—my name never flashed up on phones, I’d had the option to put ‘restricted’ in place of the name and number. It usually signaled to people there was a doctor calling.
“This is Haden.”
“Detective, this is Doctor Mederos. I have some information for you. The timing is critical on this. Have you had a young girl reported missing by the name of Grace, and her mother’s name is Amberlee?”
There was an intake of shocked breath, and a pause. “What do you know about them?”
“I think that the little girl, Grace, has been cased for kidnapping.”
“How long have you suspected this?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“When was she cased?”
“About five days ago.”
“She went missing yesterday morning.”
My heart plunged into my stomach. “Fuck.”
“What do you know about this?”
“Can you come to my office? I can tell you everything. I can’t do it over the phone.”
“Doctor…”
“I have everything here on a private, standalone server. I literally cannot bring it down to the police station. I will show you everything.” I paused. “Detective, I fucked up big time, and I want to help you find that little girl.”
She huffed into the phone. “Fine. Remind me where you are?”
“Lincoln Foster
’s townhouse.” I rattled off the address.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
She was at the door in ten, and I led her into the office, and had her sit down in front of my computer. She didn’t look happy at all, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Detective, I had no idea. Or choose to put my head in the sand, I’m not sure. But I can’t let this go on. I think that he’s connected with someone who is feeding his pedophilia and if he ever made any progress, is now back sliding quickly.”
She pointed to the note in the notebook. “What the hell is that?”
“What?”
“Juniata.” She looked stricken.
“He was telling me about his girlfriend and specifically mentioned she was raised in the Juniata section of the city.”
“Motherfucker,” she hissed. “Did you get her name?”
“No, just the girl and her mother.”
She scrubbed a hand over her forehead. “We need that girlfriend’s name. I suspect that she knows a lot about all of this. Your patient is probably just a small part of this.”
“Small part of what?”
“There’s something called The Pipeline. We’ve been trying to shut it down but we can’t get our hands on some of the players to stop it.”
“The Pipeline?” I was horrified by the name alone.
“Yeah. It’s a Sex trafficking ring for the super-rich.”
My eyes almost popped out of my head. “This is part of what Ellie was in, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Lincoln’s twins.”
“He bought them at one of the Pipeline auctions.”
“Bought?” I gasped.
“What do you think they do? Give them away? They spend days, weeks, sometimes months, breaking and training these children to listen to their owners and do as they are told without question. Lincoln bought those kids to establish himself in the community so we could get some intel. But he fell catatonic and lost his standing. He was gone too long from the auction rooms.”
I flopped into the chair next to my desk, staring at her. “So, these people…”
“Steal children, train them to some degree and sell them to the highest bidder,” she said. “This is not pretty and we’re trying to stop it. You might have a key here. A big key to a big door. All the members in this have code names.”
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