He tapped her forehead.
“My head?” she asked, still a little dazed. “My brain?”
He nodded. Yes.
“You want to know about my brain?” Neve frowned in confusion, until it clicked. “My memories?”
A more enthusiastic nod. Yes.
“I think they’re coming back,” she replied. “It’s the medication, right? That’s why you told me to stop taking it?”
Yes.
“I knew it.” She held up a finger, shaking it at him. “It’s Doctor Alberich, right? That guy can’t be trusted.”
To her surprise, there was no nod. Only a general tightening of Torbin’s muscles, from his pulsing jaw to his clenched fists. He held painfully still, solid and unmoving.
“It doesn’t matter. Not right now, anyway. It’s okay.” For the first time, Neve reached out and touched Torbin, wrapping her fingers around his thick wrist. He froze at the touch, his warm brown gaze meeting hers. Neve swallowed, and slowly released him, wiping her now damp palm against her sweatpants.
Torbin looked away for a moment, then straightened and grabbed each of his wrists, one after the other. His sign for Tala.
“We need to find her,” Neve said, concern thickening her voice. “Will you help me?”
Torbin’s whole body went rigid, his eyes fierce, and he nodded.
Despite her determination to find Tala, Neve wasn’t sure exactly how they would manage it. Torbin, however, convinced her in his yes-or-no-questions way that he had an idea. She followed him out of the forest, reinforcing what she’d come to think of as her concealment chant as they emerged onto the lawn.
No one even glanced in their direction, and Neve realized it was getting easier to avoid detection. It still took a lot of focus, especially when targeting a group of people, rather than only one, but it was becoming more . . . natural, she supposed. Like she could slip into the mental space with a little less effort.
It excited her to think that she might be able to strengthen that ability like she did her memories.
Instead of heading to the french doors, Torbin led her around the opposite corner of the building to a set of concrete steps partially hidden by a low hedge. With a quick glance around, he went down the stairs, pausing at the gray metal door at the bottom. She could tell when he tried to turn the doorknob that it was locked, but he wrenched it hard, biceps bulging, and the knob gave way with a harsh crunch. He swung the door open and jerked his head toward the opening for her to precede him.
“Won’t they notice that?” she whispered, eyeing the broken lock.
He simply pulled the door shut firmly and shrugged before pressing a finger to his lips and leading her down a narrow, dimly lit hallway. The walls were concrete block with peeling paint, the floor thick, yellowed linoleum with spidery cracks every few feet. No windows, only the flicker of a row of fluorescent lights overhead. They passed a few closed doors before coming to a stop at the corner, and Torbin pressed her back against the damp wall with a firm hand on her shoulder. After a moment, he tugged her along, moving quickly across the hall to huddle next to an open doorway. Torbin had positioned her between him and the door, and he jerked his head toward the opening, widening his dark eyes to emphasize the movement.
She edged closer to the doorway and took a quick peek into the room. A man sat with his back to them, watching a bank of television monitors. Evidently, the security cameras from the whole Institute fed into this one room.
Monitored by this one person.
Torbin nudged her, an expectant expression on his face.
Could she do it? There was only one way to find out. She closed her eyes and focused on the man in the office.
Don’t see us. Don’t see us.
She took a breath and looked up, scanning the hall ceiling until she spotted a camera about fifty feet down, next to another stairway. With one last, fervent Don’t see us mentally chanted toward the security guard, she dashed down the hall with Torbin. They passed under the camera and stood against the wall directly beneath it, waiting. After a few moments, when nobody sounded an alarm, they grinned at each other triumphantly.
It worked.
Once they got a little farther from the office, Neve thought it safe enough to ask, “I didn’t even know this was down here. Do you think this is where they have Tala?”
Torbin said nothing but led her down another hallway.
“Shouldn’t we check those doors we passed on the way in?”
He shook his head. She guessed this wasn’t the first time he’d explored the basement, although he must not have been able to get too far. Regardless, he moved with assurance now, as if he completely trusted whatever she was doing to protect them.
They turned another corner and, one by one, he started opening doors. Neve took the other side of the hallway, keeping her concealment chant going in a quiet rhythm. Neve had thought the further she got from the security guard, the more difficult it would be, but it was actually like there was a mental tether between the two of them. Like once the link was established, keeping up the gentle patter of suggestion was almost subconscious.
She followed Torbin’s lead, pressing an ear to each door to listen for movement inside before quietly opening it. She found storage rooms and what appeared to have once been an office, the desk, chair, and filing cabinet thick with dust. But there was no sign of treatment rooms, no medical equipment, no nurses, and no sign of any patients.
They neared a set of swinging doors at the end of the hall and a frisson of awareness ran up Neve’s spine. Call it instinct or a gut feeling, but she knew somehow, they were on the right track. She started to push through the doors, but Torbin held up a hand to stop her, peering through a small, square window at the top of the door before he nodded once.
The silence was unnerving, but it was more than that. The further they descended into the depths of the basement, the more uneasy Neve became. It was as if something was telling her this place was bad . . . wrong. It made her skin itch, her stomach twist . . . her palms grow slippery with sweat. She swiped them on her thighs and drew an unsteady breath.
The door creaked as it swung on its hinges, raising goosebumps along Neve’s arms. They crept into a wider hallway with a half-dozen closed doors, all with plastic pockets mounted below windows crisscrossed with wire mesh. She and Torbin exchanged a weighted glance.
They were in the right place.
The windows were too high for her to see through, but Torbin checked every one, shaking his head to indicate they were empty. One door at the end of the hall stood open and she could spot a hospital bed, ceiling mounted curtains shoved to the wall, and a couple medical monitors. To her surprise, half-melted candles circled the bed, puddled wax hardened on the worn linoleum.
“What were they doing in here?” she murmured, half to herself.
Torbin inhaled sharply and grimaced as if he smelled something bad, growling low in his throat.
Neve sniffed, but couldn’t smell anything other than the same damp, mildewy odor that seemed to permeate the entire basement. They’d reached the end of the hallway where it T’d off to both sides, and Neve looked first right, then left.
“Which way?” she whispered.
Then, she heard it－at the same time as Torbin, if the jerk of his head was any indication－the slow, unmistakable beeping of a heart monitor.
Together, they turned to the left, following the sound.
It was odd that there was no staff around. Neve figured they must assume no one would ever venture down to the obviously forbidden area. She decided to be thankful for small favors, glad she didn’t have to split her concentration. The link with the security guard seemed stable, and still appeared to be working, she thought with relief as they passed under another camera.
The beeping grew louder and, without thinking, Neve reached for Torbin’s hand. He made no response other than to give her a gentle squeeze of reassurance. It surprised Neve a little how the simple touch calmed her, how the press of his palm ag
ainst hers steadied her, a reassurance that she wasn’t alone.
It was bizarre, if she thought about it. When she first saw Torbin, she’d thought he hated her. Now, he was pretty much the only one at Blackbriar she could count on.
Could trust.
They came to a room at the end of the hall and, after checking the window, Torbin opened the door. The monitor beeps emanated from behind a hospital curtain in the far corner of the room. The area outside the curtain was completely empty, except for a broken folding chair leaning against the wall.
Torbin flicked on the overhead light and it buzzed, casting the room in a sickly yellowish glow. The beeping remained steady, accented by the quiet whoosh of an automated blood pressure cuff. He stood still, head tilted as he listened for a moment, then he pulled the curtain aside.
Tala lay sleeping on the hospital bed, an oxygen cannula curled under her nose and over her ears. She had an I.V. needle in the back on one hand, the blood pressure cuff around the opposite arm. A variety of wires wound around her, some slipping beneath the faded hospital gown she wore, others clipped to two square pads at her temples. As in the room Neve had seen earlier, candles surrounded the bed, although these were brand new and unlit. Tala’s leather bracelets had been tossed on a small table near the head of the bed, next to a collection of bottles filled with fluids in various color and a large geode, nearly the size of a football, bursting with sparkling black crystals.
“What are they doing to her?” Neve drew closer to the bed, opposite Torbin. He shook Tala’s shoulder as if to wake her.
She didn’t move. Her eyelids didn’t flutter, and her heart rate remained slow and steady.
Neve leaned in and whispered, “Tala?” Then, a little louder, “Tala, wake up.”
Nothing.
“They must have her sedated.” Neve eyed the I.V. bag. “Do you think we can－”
With no warning, Tala shot up and screamed at the top of her lungs. Her eyes were wild as she clawed at her chest, ripping the wires from her skin. She yanked at the I.V. needle and blood trickled from the puncture point.
“Tala, stop.” Neve reached out to catch her wrists and calm her as Torbin grabbed her face, trying to meet her gaze. But it was as if she didn’t see either of them. The screams lessened to quiet whimpers, then, like air let out of a balloon, she collapsed back onto the bed, unconscious.
“What in the world－” Neve’s own heart was pounding, her breath coming in harsh pants.
Then an alarm sounded on the heart rate monitor, and she cursed under her breath.
“Someone’s going to hear that,” she hissed at Torbin. “We have to go. Now.”
He shook his head and reached for Tala, slipping his arms under her back and legs.
“You can’t,” she said, reaching across the bed to grip his arm. “If she disappears, they’ll come looking for her. And where are we going to hide her?”
He let out a frustrated breath.
“I know.” Neve gritted her own teeth. “I don’t want to leave her either, but we need a plan. We can’t run off with her. They’ll catch us and drug us both and lock us up. Then we won’t be able to do anybody any good.”
He hesitated, then stiffened at the sound of approaching footsteps.
“Torbin, we have to go,” Neve whispered. “We’ll come back for her. I promise.”
His jaw tightened but he gave a sharp nod. They huddled in the corner near the door as the security guard came into the room, and Neve reestablished her link to him, hiding them from his view.
They slipped out as he reconnected the loose wires, mumbling in irritation, and retraced their steps at a run. Neve only let out a relieved breath once they’d made it outside.
Torbin looked murderous. He stalked toward the lawn, but froze when Neve grabbed his elbow.
“We’ll go back for her,” she said.
He huffed, but nodded.
“But I don’t know where we’ll even go once we do,” she continued, starting to pace. “We need to get out of here. It’s pretty obvious that Blackbriar is not what it claims to be.”
Torbin waited expectantly.
“Do you know what’s out there?” she asked, waving to the surrounding forest. “Can we get out that way?”
He frowned, then shook his head, slapping a hand against the brick wall.
“A wall?” she asked. “Around the whole thing?”
He nodded.
“So, the only way out is the main entrance. Not that I’ve seen it, but there’s got to be one.” Torbin nodded as she paced a bit and thought out loud. “And they’re not going to let us walk out the front door.”
Torbin pointed to her forehead, then mimed covering his eyes.
“Hide us?” She laughed. “I’m not sure I can. Not yet.”
At his confused look, she added. “I’m not only talking about the three of us, Torbin. We all need to get out of here.”
He glanced toward the sounds of laughter and shouts from the courtyard, then back at Neve, wide-eyed.
All of us?
“Whatever’s going on here. Whatever Doctor Alberich is up to? He’s doing it to everybody,” she said. “We can’t leave anyone behind.”
Torbin shook his head, jabbing a finger toward the basement door, then at Neve, then off to the side.
We need to go!
“I know!” Neve threw up her hands. “Look,” she said, “my . . . ability, for lack of a better word, seems to be getting stronger. When we came out of the forest, I was able to hide us from a big group. I’d never done that before. And in the basement? I had a kind of connection to the security guard which enabled me to keep us hidden without having to concentrate too hard. I think－” She crossed her arms and chewed on her fingernail. “I think I can do it. Hide us all. But I need to try it out first. Practice.”
Torbin tapped an invisible wristwatch on the back of his hand.
How long?
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I will do my best. I’ll work on it. I promise. In the meantime, it would be nice if we could cause a distraction or something. Keep Doctor Alberich occupied so he doesn’t have time to do whatever he’s doing to Tala?”
Torbin’s eyes narrowed, then a slow, evil smile spread over his face.
Neve arched a brow. “I take it you have an idea?”
Torbin nodded and pounded a fist on his chest.
Leave it to me.
From that moment on, Neve spent as much time as she could honing her skills. She’d practice hiding herself from large groups . . . hiding large groups from others.
Hiding people. Hiding things.
Honing in on the tether she’d felt in the basement. Exploring it . . . stretching it and reeling it in. Over the next week, she got to know her gift and soon it was responding almost instantaneously.
But that was only the beginning.
The evening after they’d found Tala, Neve had been sitting on her bed, practicing. There was no one to practice on really, but she reached out with her tether and found she could connect with different people, and even recognize them by their link. Calum’s felt tight, electric, but Angelica’s was looser and more elastic. She was pondering what that could mean when lightning flashed through her window, followed by the sharp crack of thunder. Neve got up and approached the window. She hadn’t noticed while she’d been concentrating, but the sky had grown dark with nearly black clouds roiling across the sky. She could feel the electricity in the air, static crackling across her skin.
Rain started to fall, a light pitter pat at first, but quickly building to a torrential downpour. It pounded on the gravel walk, bent the flowers under its unrelenting drive. Another flash of lightning made her jump, her hand flying to her mouth in surprise.
Then, she saw it. Colorful sparkles dancing across her fingertips.
In awe, Neve turned her hands over and back again, watching the sparks move along her skin. Now that she was paying attention, she noticed the electric warmth running up and down her
arms. The lightning flashed again, and the sparks brightened, expanding for a second before returning to their earlier size.
“Weird,” she murmured, her gaze drifting from her hands to the sky and back again.
Could there－could there be a connection?
As if answering her question, the sky lit again with another bolt of lightning－closer this time－and the sparks brightened even more. An astonished laugh burst out of her and she closed her eyes, searching for that connection.
Could it be a tether like the one she used to hide things?
And just like that, a clarity hit her, as if her connection to the sparks had been hidden behind a curtain, waiting for her to pull it back. It was a tether, a connection she felt not only to the lightning, but to the rain and the wind as well.
She flexed her fingers, and a tiny bolt of lightning flew from one index finger to the other.
“No way,” she whispered, repeating the action.
Neve wanted to go outside, to truly test this newfound power, but a shriek outside her door had her running for the hallway. Nancy ran by her, screaming bloody murder, and soon the halls were full of patients.
“What’s going on?” she asked Peter as he raced past.
“Rats!” he shouted with a shudder. “The place is full of rats!”
Neve watched the patients run this way and that, then spotted Torbin at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall with his beefy arms crossed over his chest and a satisfied smirk on his face. He caught her eye and winked.
Torbin . . . Winked.
Neve’s cheeks heated, and a flutter of butterflies took flight in her stomach. She looked away quickly, embarrassed at her reaction.
What in the world was that?
She shook it off, taking in the mayhem around her. Nurses and orderlies were trying to corral the panicked patients, and she could hear Doctor Alberich shouting in the common room for someone to “Catch the one in the flour, for heaven’s sake!”
True to his word, Torbin had caused a whopper of a diversion, and he seemed to be pretty proud of that fact.
The rats wreaked havoc for days. Doctor Alberich was definitely kept occupied organizing the orderlies to trap the vermin. It was interesting he chose not to call in an exterminator. As if he wanted no outsiders inside the gates.
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