by R. L. King
Stone expected her to start screaming, but to his surprise she didn’t. Instead, she settled back to her pillows with a resigned sigh. “Whatever,” she mumbled.
“Is it okay if we turn on a little light?”
“I don’t care.”
Verity flipped on the nightstand lamp. It made only a faint glow, but it was enough for her and Stone to get a better look at Brittany and the area around her. She had shoulder-length, mouse-colored hair, a pale, thin pixie face, and no identifiable expression. She’d pulled the covers up to her stomach, revealing a white T-shirt. The wall next to her bed had no photos, clippings, or other decorations.
Stone shifted to magical sight and took a quick look at her aura. Surprisingly, it showed no red flashes indicating agitation or illness. It pulsed a faint pale orange, perhaps a little dimmer than a standard aura, but not unusual.
“Brittany,” Verity said, still using the soothing voice as if speaking to a frightened child or animal. “I have a friend here with me. He’d like to ask you a few questions. Would that be okay?”
“Whatever.” She pulled herself to a seated position with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up, and her arms wrapped around them.
Stone noticed now how small she was—she couldn’t have been more than five-two—and wondered how she’d managed to murder her mother in such a violent way. I guess it’s not difficult when the victim’s asleep, he thought, picturing Madison McClain again. Madison had only been eight when she poked a sharpened pencil into her mother’s eye.
He rose from the other bed and pulled the room’s single chair around so he was sitting next to her. After a moment’s consideration, he dropped the illusionary disguise and pulled off his black knit cap. “Brittany, hello. It’s good to meet you.”
She made a noncommittal noise and didn’t look at him.
As Verity watched the door to make sure no one was coming, Stone leaned in closer. “Listen,” he murmured, “I know you didn’t mean to kill your mum.”
Brittany shrugged.
“I’d like you to tell us what happened on that camping trip. Something happened, didn’t it? Something unusual.”
Another shrug. “We went camping. We went on a hike. Then we came back home.”
“Did anything happen during the hike?” Stone watched her aura closely for any changes.
She hesitated, and for just a moment, so fast Stone wasn’t sure he’d seen it properly, her aura twitched. “No,” she said. “Everybody asks me that. Nothing happened.”
“You didn’t go anywhere you weren’t supposed to? Didn’t sneak out after dark for any reason?”
Another twitch, this time accompanied by an uncomfortable shifting of position on her bed. “No.”
Stone tightened his focus on her aura. He didn’t think she was lying—not purposely, anyway. When mundanes were under a magical compulsion, they sometimes showed signs of discomfort when questioning came close to the compulsion’s subject. “Come take a look at this,” he murmured to Verity, catching himself before he used her name. They’d agreed they wouldn’t reveal their names to Brittany, even though no one would be likely to believe her if she told anyone about their visit.
He took a deep breath and considered. “Brittany…I know something happened. I think you do too, but something’s preventing you from talking about it. We want to help you.” Like Verity, he pitched his voice to be as comforting and persuasive as he could. His years in the classroom had honed it into an instrument he could play with every bit as much skill and control as someone else might play a musical one, and he drew on all that training now—with a little magic thrown in to help. “You want to be helped, don’t you? You don’t want to stay here and hold on to this terrible secret for the rest of your life. Please—tell us what happened. If you don’t, then more bad things might happen to other people.”
Her gaze came up, settling on him for the first time since he’d entered. “You looked different before.”
“I did. I don’t want to keep secrets from you, Brittany. We want to help.” He could see the slight waver in her aura growing a bit stronger, so he kept talking in the hope that he could continue to disturb it and perhaps knock free whatever block had afflicted her. “Did anyone else ask you about what happened on the hike?”
She rolled her eyes. “Everybody asks me that.”
“Have they ever mentioned what they think might have happened?”
She made a mirthless laugh. “They think we had a murder pact.”
“A murder pact?”
“Yeah. They think we all went up there and agreed to come back down and kill people.” Her tone and expression suggested she thought that was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. As soon as she finished speaking, though, she dropped her gaze back down to her hands.
“You didn’t do that, did you?”
“No. That’s stupid. Why would anyone do that?”
Stone exchanged glances with Verity again. Her answers didn’t trouble him—they were consistent with some kind of mental or magical block—but the fact that she seemed completely unfazed by two strangers entering her locked room in the middle of the night did. “Did you kill your mum, Brittany? Do you remember doing it?”
She shifted again, her face returning to its flat expression. “I don’t remember.”
“Do you remember going to the school the Sunday night when you returned from the trip? Making a circle with your friends in an empty classroom, and chanting?”
“Not my friends,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“They aren’t my friends.” Louder this time.
“What do you mean? You’re saying the others aren’t your friends?”
She shook her head emphatically.
“Why did you go on the camping trip, then?”
No answer.
“Brittany, please tell me. Why did you go on the camping trip?”
“My mom made me.”
Verity tapped Stone’s arm, but she didn’t need to. For the first time since they’d arrived, Brittany’s aura showed visible signs of agitation.
“That’s not true, is it?” Stone kept his voice soft. “There was some other reason you went along.”
“Was it a boy?” Verity asked suddenly. “Or a girl? Somebody you liked?”
Brittany’s aura leaped, flaring bright red and then settling back to its usual pale orange.
Once again, Stone and Verity exchanged glances, this time of triumph. Perhaps they’d found a way in—something that disturbed her but wasn’t covered by whatever was preventing her from speaking. He nodded to Verity, indicating for her to take the lead.
She did it smoothly, sitting on the edge of Brittany’s bed with the familiarity of a girlfriend sharing a confidence at a sleepover. “It was, wasn’t it? There was somebody on that trip you wanted to be close to.”
“Go away. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
“We won’t tell anyone. I promise. Come on, Brittany, please tell me.”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“Hmm…” Verity stared into space as if thinking hard. “Let’s see. I don’t know if you like boys or girls, so I’m going to make a couple of guesses, okay? Was it Jazmin…or maybe Joe?”
“Go away!” she said, louder now but still not shouting. She scooted backward until she was pressed into the corner between the two walls and glared at Verity. “Get out! It’s none of your business!”
Stone had noticed something, though: aside from the agitation in Brittany’s aura, he spotted the glitter of tears in the corners of her eyes. Verity had obviously scored a hit too close to home. He slid his chair a little closer and leaned in again. “I think she’s right, isn’t she, Brittany? I think it’s got to be Joe.”
The girl bowed her head, wrapping her arms around her knees again. Her shoulders shook, and her aura continued to erupt. She mumbled something Stone couldn’t hear.
“It was, wasn’t it? Did you go off somewhere with Joe? H
e left to use the bathroom, didn’t he? Did you go with him?”
She jerked her head up and glared at him. “Are you stupid? Why would I go with him to use the bathroom?”
“Well, I don’t know. If you didn’t go with him then, did you go some other time? Brittany, we’ve got to get to the bottom of this. A lot more people might get hurt if we don’t. You don’t want that, do you?”
Her head dropped back to her knees again. “I don’t care…It doesn’t matter…”
Verity studied her for a moment, then got up and moved to the other side of the room, indicating for Stone to follow her.
“There’s something going on in there,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it, but it’s there.”
“Not a block?”
“Not exactly. I don’t think I’m skilled enough to deal with it completely, but maybe we can kind of…work around it a little. Do you want me to try?”
“By all means, please do. I’m getting nowhere, except to find out she apparently had a thing for Joe Buchanan. Whether that’s relevant or not, I’ve no idea.”
“I think it might be—at least enough that we might be able to use it to get to at least some of the rest. Keep an eye on the door, will you?”
Stone backed off, reinforcing Verity’s illusion with a silence component so no one would hear Brittany if she got loud again. When he finished, he leaned against the wall to watch.
Verity sat back down on the bed. “Brittany,” she said gently, “I’m afraid we really need to get this information from you. And I think you want to give it to us. I think something might be preventing it. Could that be true?”
No answer.
“Brittany?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice was barely intelligible with her face buried in her knees.
“Maybe that’s true, and that’s okay. Tell me about Joe, Brittany. Come on—you can’t fool me. I’m really good at picking up stuff like this. I promise I won’t tell anybody else. Tell me about Joe.”
Brittany made a sound halfway between a sob and a snort. “He…I was stupid.”
“Why were you stupid?”
Her head rolled back and forth. “I just was.” She jerked her head up again. “Why are you here? It’s the middle of the night. I don’t recognize you. You’re not the regular nurse.”
Verity hadn’t dropped her disguise yet, so she still looked like the kind, chubby nurse in the blue scrubs. “I’m not the regular nurse. I’m not actually a nurse at all. My friend and I are really worried about some stuff going on out there in the world, so we came to you to see if you could help us figure it out.”
Brittany studied her for a moment, then dropped her head back to her knees. “Whatever. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. They’ll never let me out of here.”
“Maybe they will, if you help us. I don’t know. It’s not up to us to decide that. But is it okay if we talk to you for a while, even though it’s the middle of the night?”
“Whatever,” she said with a shrug. “I can never sleep anyway.”
“Okay. Maybe we can help you with that, at least, when we’re done talking. So can you tell me about Joe? Why did you say you were stupid? Because I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it,” she said bitterly. “He never noticed me.”
“Joe didn’t? So you had a crush on him and he didn’t notice you? That sucks. I’ve been there too.” Verity glanced at Stone when she said that.
“I never existed for him. Not since middle school.” She was mumbling again, and Stone had to strain to make out her words.
“So you decided to go on the camping trip because you thought you might get the chance to be alone with him?”
Brittany gave a weary nod. “It doesn’t matter anymore, though.”
“It didn’t work? Or did it? Maybe you two went off somewhere together, alone?”
“I wish.”
“Was he interested in the other girls? Jazmin, or Allie?”
She shook her head.
“Maybe the other boys?”
A more emphatic head shake. “He’s not gay. Andre’s gay, but not Joe. But…”
“But what, Brittany? Come on, you can tell me.”
Stone was fairly certain that by this point Brittany had forgotten he was in the room, and that was fine with him. Verity had a real talent for this kind of work. He could often get through to someone with a combination of charm and sheer force of personality, but Verity had a deep streak of empathy that he found more elusive. It was what made her a good healer, and would probably make her a good counselor if she ever turned her talents in that direction.
Brittany sighed. “He broke up with his girlfriend.”
“Joe did?”
“Yeah. Right before the trip. I wasn’t gonna sign up. I never sign up for stuff like that. But…”
“But you thought you might be able to catch Joe on the rebound—get him to notice you, and maybe help him get through the breakup.”
She snorted again. “Yeah. Stupid, huh? I never told anybody that before. But I guess it doesn’t matter now.”
Verity didn’t respond to that. Instead, she sat back, glanced at Stone again, and then said in a firm but kind voice, “Brittany—I’d like to try something if you’ll let me.”
“Try what?” Her suspicious gaze met Verity’s.
“A…kind of hypnosis. Don’t worry—it’s completely safe. Have you ever heard of repression?”
“You mean like when somebody hides something so much they don’t even know it’s in there? We studied that in Psych.”
“That’s exactly right. And that’s what we think you’re doing—repressing something. That’s why you say you can’t remember. I know you’re not lying about that. But I do think I can help you bring it out, if you let me.”
“If I let you.” She rolled her eyes. “Nobody asks me if I’ll let them do anything. They keep asking me all these questions, and making me take these pills—they even try to check to make sure I’ve swallowed them, so I can’t flush ’em like I did at home. Nobody cares what I want.”
“I care what you want, Brittany. Let me ask you a question, okay?”
“Whatever.”
“Suppose you had a locked box with a secret inside—one you couldn’t tell even if you wanted to, because you’d lost the key and couldn’t open the box. Other people tried to open it, but they couldn’t either. But then you found out that a whole bunch of people were going to get hurt—maybe even die—if you didn’t reveal the secret. Would you want to open the box and reveal it?”
“But I can’t. You said so.”
“That’s true. You can’t on your own, because you don’t remember where the key is. But suppose somebody came to you and said they could help you find the key. All you’d have to do was let them. Would you do it?”
She didn’t answer. Stone, watching her aura, saw it flare again. “Careful…” he murmured.
Verity nodded, acknowledging his words without taking her eyes off Brittany. “Would you let them, Brittany? Even if it made you uncomfortable? You wouldn’t want all those people to get hurt, would you?”
“I don’t want anybody to get hurt. But I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have any secrets.”
“I think you do…and I think they’re hidden so far down that you don’t even know you have them. Aren’t you a little bit curious to find out what they are?”
Her eyes flashed. “You’re lying about saving people. How could anything I know save people?”
“I’m not lying. I promise. Something dangerous is going to happen if we don’t figure out what went on out there at the lake.” She gave Brittany’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Will you at least give it a try? You have my word it won’t hurt.”
For a moment, the girl didn’t answer. She looked utterly miserable, drawn up into the smallest ball she could manage, clutching her blanket with her thin fingers. Then she let out a loud sigh. “Whatever.
Okay. But I’m telling you, it won’t help. Nothing can help anymore.”
“You’re awesome, Brittany. I mean that. Okay, so let’s do this. We—”
“Wait!”
Stone had been switching his attention between watching Verity work and glancing out through the door’s tiny window to make sure no one was in the hall. Every time previously it had been deserted, but this time he tensed when he spotted movement. A tall, bony woman in scrubs had just closed the door across from them and was now heading directly for Brittany’s room, clipboard in hand and followed by a young man in a security guard’s uniform.
18
Stone exchanged frantic glances with Verity, pointing toward the door. Why would a nurse be coming now, in the middle of the night? The room had nowhere to hide—the beds were too low to scramble beneath even if that had a chance of working, and it didn’t include a closet. And unless the woman spent only a brief time in here, trying to maintain an invisibility spell would be risky. Bloody hell, things had been going so well so far!
Only one solution presented itself, and he’d have to act fast. He made a “hurry up” gesture to Verity.
Verity leaned in close to Brittany. “Listen,” she said. “The nurse is coming for some reason. Please don’t let her know we’re here. I know you don’t believe me, but we’re the only ones who have a chance of helping you. If you trust us, please don’t reveal that we’re here.”
There was a brisk knock on the door, and then the key rattled in the lock.
Verity leaped up and hurried over to stand next to Stone, dropping her illusion on the door as Stone began weaving one of his own.
It was all up to Brittany now.
The door swung open to reveal the nurse, an older woman with short, graying hair and a long, horsey face. “Brittany?” she called. “Wake up. I’ve got your sleep meds here.” In addition to her clipboard, she carried a tiny paper cup. She moved into the room while the guard stationed himself in the doorway to keep an eye on the interaction.
Of course. As far as the rest of the world knew, Brittany and her friends had committed multiple horrific murders, so they wouldn’t send a nurse in without backup. Stone, standing next to Verity on the far side of the room behind the illusion he’d cast of an empty space, watched tensely as the nurse poured water from a plastic pitcher on the nightstand into a cup. Please, Brittany, don’t say anything about us. He was certain the illusion would hold—he’d always been good at them, and he’d gotten even better since he came back from Calanar—but if the girl started talking about nighttime visitors, they might beef up the security patrols and keep a closer eye on her, making their mission here difficult if not impossible.