“It’s beautiful,” my child voice answered. “What’s it for?”
“You’ll know when the time is right,” he answered, taking up the chain to slip it around my head. “It’ll be there when you need it, little...”
His mouth moved, but nothing came out. In fact, there was no sound at all.
I was about to ask what was happening when I felt the scene growing more distant. “Wait!” I cried, to no avail. I was surrounded by darkness again. Panic overtook me as it felt like the one solid thread to my past had just slipped through my fingertips.
“What happened?” I demanded of Dr. Price the moment my eyes flew open. “Why did it stop?”
Dr. Price was sitting where he’d been when the session had first begun, but his fair skin was pale, like the color had been drained from it. “The rest of that sentence was redacted,” he replied, taking off his glasses and cleaning them on his sleeve. He closed his eyes hard, like the experience had given him a migraine. “It seems the powers that be don’t want you to know what you are.”
It took me a second to process that, but the words stuck in my throat when I finally had the presence of mind to speak. “Why?” I finally got out. “I don’t even have powers. What the hell could be so top secret I’m not even allowed to know what I am?”
“I don’t know,” Dr. Price admitted, slipping his glasses back on. “You could be a celestial being of some sort if angels took you in, but that’s way beyond my pay grade. I know about angels and demons, but you don’t fit the bill for either of those. You’re not very tall or imposing, for one thing--no offense.”
“Celestial?” I echoed. The term had been thrown around a few times during my imprisonment, but I hadn’t realized it applied to anyone other than angels. “No offense taken,” I mumbled.
“So there’s nothing I can do?” I finally asked. “How am I supposed to reform or whatever if I can’t remember anything?”
“Well, that’s a good question,” Dr. Price admitted, staring off into space, his eyebrows knit together in perplexity. “I suppose it’s possible if you’re on good behavior.”
I frowned, hugging myself. That wasn’t exactly encouraging. I grabbed my bag and stood, not sure I wanted to stick around and find out what else was lurking in my subconscious. Or rather, what had been hidden away. “Can I go?”
“Of course,” he murmured, still apparently lost in thought. “I’ll see you in two days. Perhaps we’ll learn more.”
“Yeah. Sure,” I said before leaving the room.
I really fucking doubted it.
Chapter 6
Bells
My last fewclasses were just a blur. I couldn’t focus after my session with Dr. Price, but I did pick up a few bits here and there. The professors all liked to lay it on thick that we had the chance to redeem ourselves by digging into our pasts and learning how to avoid the same shortcomings of character that had led us to this place. How all supernaturals, even demons, had their place in society.
Except apparently whatever the hell I was.
After school, I found a quiet spot on one of the rooftop overhangs above the main classroom building. It wasn’t that high up, but it made me feel secure somehow. Like it was my own little corner of a world that clearly didn’t want me in it.
What I couldn’t understand was why they’d woken me up in the first place. If I was enough of a menace to society to have nearly my entire past redacted, what was the point of even sending me here?
I’d all but forgotten about my planned meeting with Dean and Alistair, but if there was one thing I didn’t have the energy for, it was figuring out how I played into someone else’s inexplicable problems.
“Hey,” a familiar feminine voice said behind me. I turned back to look over my shoulder, surprised I’d been found, only to see Maddie coming my way, stepping carefully down the shingles. When she reached me, she dropped into a sitting position beside me and scooted forward, dangling her legs over the edge. “I swear, I’m not following you. I just like to come to this spot, too.”
“And here I thought I’d discovered it,” I laughed, scooting over to make more room for her. I studied the view of the grounds below, taking a deep breath. “It’s a good spot. If you don’t mind sharing, that is.”
“No one else knows about it, so you might as well have,” she said with a pleasant smile. “And sure. Something on your mind? Or just getting away from all the noise?”
I hesitated a moment, trying to decide whether I wanted to admit what had happened in my therapy session. Or rather, what hadn’t. If Maddie wasn’t scared off already, she certainly would be then, but I felt like I needed to tell someone just to keep from losing my mind.
“I had my first Talk Session,” I finally said. “Let’s just say it didn’t go as planned.”
She tilted her head. “Bad memory?” she asked sympathetically.
“More like no memory,” I answered, pulling my knees up to my chest as I watched the students shuffling between sections of the building below. “Apparently, my fifth birthday was ‘redacted.’”
“Redacted… how? What do you mean?” She seemed surprised, like she’d never heard of that happening before. Not a good sign.
