Mad looks down at the thin comforter and starts picking off tiny balls of fuzz. “That was the last time I saw my grandma.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. She looks devastated.
She takes a few shaky breaths, and I watch her pull herself together, bit by bit. “So a few years go by,” she continues, “and I’ve pretty much forgotten about the fact that my grandma is a possible witchy poisoner. Or, not so much forgotten, but forced myself to pack it away up here,” she taps her temple, “but then my cat dies. Patches. And I am devastated. Like, inconsolable. And I’m crying, and petting her, and I remember getting even more upset because my tears were getting her fur wet, and I let out this sob, and I felt her twitch underneath my hand.”
“What the shit?”
Mad points at me. “That’s what I said! And, of course, right at that moment, my mom has come up behind me and she has seen the whole thing, and she watches in horror as Patches pulls herself up to standing and starts purring. And I’m freaking out. Like, losing my shit, right?”
“Right,” I agree, because holy hell I’d be losing my shit too.
“And mom glares down at me and says I knew you were like her and I want to say I had no idea what she’s talking about, but I did. I knew she meant grandma because I’d only ever seen her that mad once, that one time at grandma’s house.” Mad tucks her hair behind her ears and leans forward. “And three hours later I’m here. That was six months ago.”
“That is… unbelievable,” I say.
She nods, scratching at her wrist. “I know, right?”
“So you can bring things back from the dead?”
Mad stops scratching and holds up her arm. “Not with this thing inside me. And those injections they give us. They… I don’t know, dull the magic or the instinct. I think they keep a lid on whatever it is we can do.”
“I thought the chips were just to keep track of us.” My mind is racing at the possibility of ulterior motives. “And what do you mean ‘we’?”
“I mean I think I’m a necromancer, and I think you can really see monsters, and I don’t think we’re in here because we’re quote-unquote crazy. I think we’re in here because what we see and what we can do is real, and they know it, and we’re being studied.”
She leans forward and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“And when I say we, I don’t just mean you and me. I think this place might be crawling with creatures that aren’t supposed to exist.”
3
I feel like it’s a running joke that institutions and schools serve slop with questionable nutritional value for their meals. When it comes to Ash City Asylum, the food is downright hysterical.
A woman in a hairnet dumps a ladleful of what I can only assume are mashed potatoes into one of the partitions of my tray, and the man next to her tops it with a gravy-like substance. Greasy nausea rolls through me, and I’m fairly certain that my food is going straight into the trash, untouched, when my fifteen-minute dinner break is up.
“Enjoy,” he says with a smile. He’s missing one of his lower front teeth.
I turn to survey the cafeteria, looking for an empty table. Despite the fact that Mad and I are no longer strangers, we won’t be eating together today. The orderlies came to our room an hour ago and hauled her off for her session with Doctor Kavanagh.
“Watch this,” she’d whispered as she walked past me, and she’d reached out to grab one of the orderlies’ hands. He’d flinched away from her as if he’d suffered an electric shock, and she winked at me.
I’m the one who killed my parents, and they’re more scared of her.
I pull out a chair at a table in the far corner of the room and take a seat. There’s no way I’m going to be able to get any of this so-called food down, so I push the potato-like substance around with my spoon and watch my fellow asylum-mates, trying to figure out which ones might be supernatural.
This wing is all women. They keep the guys on the other side of the facility, and there are a series of locked doors and checkpoints between us and them. Most of the ladies here seem medicated out of their minds, and when I’d first come here I’d assumed that’s how all facilities like this operated: keep the patients just this side of a stupor to make them docile and compliant. Now, with the revelation that some in here might have powers or see things that have no business existing outside of nightmares? I wonder how many are faking it like me.
At the far end of the cafeteria, the double doors open and a guard shoves a straggler inside. He slams the door shut behind her, and she spins and slams her open palm against the glass.
“I’m not hungry!” she yells, hitting the door again. “You need to take me back!”
The guard inside the cafeteria grabs her arm before she can strike again and yanks her around to face him. “Get your food, or get tranq’d.”
“Tranquilize me,” she says, “please.”
“Shut up and get your dinner,” he says, putting himself between her and the doorway. He’s easily six-foot-five and three hundred pounds. She is half his size and probably has medication to dull her senses running through her system.
“I’m dangerous,” she says as she backs away from him.
“Yeah, you and every other cupcake in here,” he sneers, and points for her to head to the line.
She practically vibrates with frustration, but there’s nothing more for her to do. There’s no way she’s getting past him, and I watch her shoulders slump as she realizes it.
Giving up, she turns and shuffles toward the food line. Her long, curly hair is stringy and limp, and it falls in front of her face, obscuring her eyes. Her tan skin seems washed out and sallow under the fluorescent lights, and I wonder how long it’s been since she’s seen the sun.
She pays no attention to the other inmates, and none of the inmates acknowledge that she’s here, but I watch her stop halfway to the food line and cock her head. The hair in front of her face shifts ever so slightly, and I realize that she’s sniffing the air.
The girl grimaces and makes a hard turn to avoid dinner altogether, instead choosing to pull out a chair at the table next to mine and sit down with a clatter and huff.
She runs her hands through her hair in frustration, finally pulling it back from her face, and she looks up to find me staring at her. Her eyes are a glacial blue, cunning and clever, and my breath catches in my throat. They are wolf’s eyes.
“Are you going to eat that?” she says and points to my tray.
It takes me a second for the incongruous question to register. She just passed up a chance at a tray of her very own and now she wants mine? “Uh, no,” I respond and push the tray away from me. “It’s vile.”
“It’s fucking poison is what it is,” she says, and, lightning quick, moves to stand over me. “Mind if I take it?”
“It’s yours,” I say, but I put my hand on it before she can pick it up, “as long as you tell me what you’re planning. Because I want in.”
One of her dark brows arches up, and she appraises me in a whole new way. “Who are you?” she asks.
“Gray Carver.”
“Well, Gray Carver, what are you?”
A smile spreads across my face. “I don’t know.”
“Have they made you forget already?”
“No. Is that… is that what they’re doing to us?”
“Among other things. And you still haven’t answered my question.”
I have nothing to lose here. If she walks away and never speaks to me again, I’ll go about my business in this place as usual. But if she’s like me and Mad… “I see things. Nightmare things. And then I kill them.”
She leans close to me. “And what do you see in me?”
“I think I see an ally.”
She smirks. “That depends. Will you help me get out of here?”
“Isn’t that what we all want?”
“I don’t mean in the grand scheme of things, though, yes, that’s the end game. I mean now. Right this minute. I
need to get out of this room and back to mine or…” She finally tears her gaze away from me and stares at the floor, as if she’s embarrassed. Or scared. “Or bad things will happen.”
Whether it’s true or not, she believes it with every fiber of her being and that’s good enough for me. “Just tell me what I need to do,” I say, and when she looks up again there is hope in her eyes.
“Gray Carver, how do you feel about getting punched in the face?”
A chuckle bubbles up and out of my lips, but dies off when I see she’s not kidding. “Not great,” I admit.
“I need to make a scene, and tossing your tray around isn’t going to be enough.”
I glance past her, toward the guard. He’s not looking at us. In fact, he couldn’t be more bored.
“They should know better by now, but they don’t, or they don’t care,” she continues. “They change my meds and try new things, but I can feel it coming on, and someone’s gonna get hurt.”
“What coming on?” I ask, because whatever it is scares her, and if it scares her I get the distinct feeling that it should scare all of us, too.
“I don’t have much time so do you want to help me or not?” she snaps.
I push my tray toward her and say, “Do your worst.”
Without hesitation, she yanks me up by the front of my dingy asylum scrubs and mumbles, “I’ll pull the punch.”
I nod, and she screams out for all to hear, “I tell you to give me your food, you give me your fucking food!” Then she winds up and socks me right in the face. She hesitates for the smallest fraction of a second before her fist connects with my cheek, so she technically does pull back, but she is strong and as I tumble backward my vision goes fuzzy and my ears ring.
There’s a clatter as chairs tip over and hit the floor, and a worried mumbling as the other patients in the cafeteria jump up and cluster together. Someone starts to cry.
At the far end of the room, the guard mumbles into the walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder and pulls out a baton as he races toward us. “Ruby Ríos, drop! You drop right now!”
Her smile is one of hysteria, and instead of hitting the cold tile with me, she picks up my tray and flings it at the wall. It clangs against the bars that crisscross just in front of the glass, the bars that keep us trapped in here, and my potatoes spatter against the pane.
She leaps on top of me and cocks her fist back. “You okay?” she whispers, and there is genuine worry in her tone.
“I’m okay,” I whisper, and though I’m gonna have a monster of a headache later, I don’t think that matters as much as getting her back to her room. The relief that washes over her is palpable.
The guard reaches us, slamming the baton into the side of her head and yanking her arm back to keep her from punching me again. She goes limp, and he throws her to the floor next to me. He cuffs her hands behind her back and depresses the button on the walkie-talkie again. “Get a medic in here. I’ve gotta take Miss Ríos to solitary.”
Her eyes are unfocused, no doubt from the hit. I’m not surprised to see tears well up, but when she mouths thank you I realize they’re not from pain but from gratitude.
The guard drags her up and away from me. She moans. “It’s coming.”
“Shut up,” the guard barks, and jerks her toward the door.
I pull myself up to sitting, hating that there’s nothing I can do to help her. Ruby’s glassy gaze is directed behind me, toward the windows. Parting to let them through, the other patients huddle and comfort each other against the sudden chaos that Ruby has wrought.
“It hurts me,” she says, over and over.
I turn to follow her gaze and realize that she’s not talking about the rough treatment.
She’s talking about the rising full moon.
4
Here’s the good thing about getting punched in the goddamned face: you completely miss the travesty served as dinner and it gives you a chance to sneak out after dark, explore this nightmare hellhole, and raid the kitchens for something resembling real food.
Sitting up, I swing my legs off of the bed and rub the grit from my tired eyes. The cold light of the full moon filters in through our one tiny window, slicing across Mad’s empty bed. It has to be nearly midnight. She’s never been gone this long. It’s got me a little worried.
With her revelation that there were more… I struggle with the words supernatural creatures, but what else should I call them?… roaming around this place, plus my encounter with Ruby today in the cafeteria, there’s no way I can sit in here, locked away, and wait for whatever fate the doctors and scientists in charge might dole out. We need to escape.
After the scene with Ruby earlier, the rest of the patients and I were all herded out of the cafeteria whether we were finished with our gourmet dining experience or not. Despite the guards and orderlies that had flooded the hallways, it had been barely controlled chaos.
A particularly skittish guard had brought me to my room. He’d held me as far away from him as possible as we maneuvered through the crowd, and a muscle in his jaw ticked every time I glanced up at him. I’d never seen him on the floor before, but the way he tensed up around me… all I’m saying is that whoever’s in charge may want to re-evaluate this hire because this guy was abnormally frazzled by teenaged girls.
Or, he knows that at least some of us aren’t normal.
An orderly shouted for him as he was closing me in here, taking his attention away from the task at hand. When, instead of the familiar click of the lock, I heard the slap of his boots on the tile fading, fading, fading as he raced away from my door to help with whatever situation was brewing down the hallway, I crept back toward the door and tried the handle.
It swung open easily.
Major slip up for the new guy.
My stomach growls.
Food first, then. Exploring after.
I put my ear to the door, alert for any sound just across the threshold. The metal is cool against my bruised face, a makeshift ice pack for my injury. After fifteen seconds of nothing but silence from the other side, I gently twist the knob and open the door.
The hallway is dark aside from the faint red glow thrown by the emergency exit signs above the doors on either end of the corridor. The tile is uncomfortably cold underneath my bare feet, but I don’t really have much choice in the shoe matter. You take what they give you here, and they gave us nothing.
I peek around the corner before I continue on, and, finding that hallway empty as well, move as quickly as possible to its end. I knew this part wouldn’t be the problem. All the danger lies ahead. Twenty feet away, a security station fronted by a large glass wall gives the night-shift orderlies a perfect view of the hallway.
Someone’s inside. I can see their shadow move along the wall opposite the station. So I get as close as possible and then duck underneath the sill, crawling along on my hands and knees to get to the other side.
“You bringing anything to solitary? She’s howling down there. Maybe some food will shut her up.”
I freeze mid-crawl. Whoever’s inside the security station is talking about Ruby. I’m sure of it.
“Nah, man. The way she clacks them teeth? You hand her anything, you won’t be getting your hand back.”
Though I know it’s stupid, I have to see who’s speaking. I poke my head up and peer into the room. Two men sit with their feet up, eating burgers and shoving fries into their mouths with greasy fingers. The one with a scruffy beard picks up a fry and points it at the one with glasses.
They don’t pay me enough for that shit. Let her starve.”
Around a huge bite of burger, Glasses says, “Fair enough.”
I duck back down. Assholes. I’ll bring her food myself.
When I break out of here, they’re getting their tires slashed. Or, if I’m lucky, they’ll reveal themselves to be demons. Then it won’t be their tires getting slashed.
It’ll be their throats.
***
I’m five st
eps into the cafeteria when I realize that I’m not alone.
The room is dark aside from the moonlight, and I remain still as I let my eyes adjust, straining to pick up any movement in the shadows. For a long moment, nothing stirs.
Then I hear it again. A clanking from behind the serving station, back where they keep the fryers and prep stations and coolers.
A wedge of light slices through the darkness as someone opens a refrigerator.
Whoever it is, they’re not worried about getting caught, and I am intrigued.
Careful not to make a sound, I move toward the serving station and peek around the corner. Whoever it is is mostly blocked from my view, but in the harsh white light, I see a pair of pale legs.
Something drips and spatters on their foot, the dark juice marring the skin as it rolls to the floor.
Faster than I can blink the legs are suddenly in front of me, and I realize it’s not juice they’ve spilled. The red is too bright, and the liquid too thick.
It’s blood.
Every cell in my body screams at me to race for the door, but a small voice in the rational recesses of my mind whispers that there’s no chance of escape. I can’t outrun someone who can move as fast as this girl.
“Hungry?” she says, and I look up to find her tearing into a hunk of raw meat. The blood drips from her fingers and runs down her chin, and she smiles, revealing sharp, pink-stained canines. Revulsion rolls over me in waves, and I instinctively scramble back.
“You’re a vampire.”
She ignores me, turns back to the ’fridge, and bends down to search through the condiments that sit on the shelves of the refrigerator door. “You’d think they’d have some hot sauce to spice up this bland shit.” She glances over her shoulder. “Don’t let me stop you. Get in here.”
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