I realized the cafeteria was emptying and cringed. “Shit. Speaking of ghouls, I forgot, Dr. Price moved our session to after lunch.” He had asked me to come in a couple extra days a week once he’d found out about the whole imprinting thing. I wasn’t sure if he thought he needed to keep a closer eye on me, the guys, or both. “We’re still on for movies later, right?”
“Definitely,” she said, smiling as she stood up. “Enjoy your session with Dr. Dreamy, as practically everyone calls him.”
I rolled my eyes, but the fact that my psychologist was drop dead gorgeous hadn’t escaped me. He’d earned the name, too. Between his pensive gazes and the sexy little quirk he had of messing with his glasses when he was deep in thought, it was admittedly hard to focus on the sessions sometimes.
I just really,reallyhoped his psychic abilities didn’t extend to telepathy when I wasn’t expecting it. Or at least, that his code of ethics prevented it.
I made my way to his office and knocked, since I was still a couple of minutes early. I couldn’t help but be a bit nervous as to what we might uncover in today’s session. He hadn’t tried to pry into my past memories since the first time, and I could tell the incident had thrown him. He hadn’t even brought it up, but there was plenty to talk about with the imprinting drama going on.
When the door opened, though, Dr. Price wasn’t the one on the other side. This time, it was a towering chalk-white man with solid black eyes and shoulder-length hair the color of ashes. He was dressed all in black from head to toe and wore the sternest expression I’d ever seen on a person. He made the wardens look almost friendly--“almost” being the key phrase here.
“Miss Bells,” he said in a slow, deep voice. “I’ll be replacing Dr. Price today.”
For some reason, it felt like all the air had been sucked from my lungs. “Oh. Uh, cool,” I said, unsure of why I felt so disappointed.
“You may come in,” he said, standing aside and holding the door open. I couldn’t tell if he was watching me because his scleras were the same inky color as his irises, but I sure as hellfeltwatched as I warily inched by him.
I took my usual spot on the couch, but the room felt different. Colder. If I hadn’t recognized the furniture, I wouldn’t have thought I was in the same place at all. All the warmth Dr. Price brought with him had evaporated, and there was something about this guy that immediately had me on edge.
“Is Dr. Price sick or something?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound as personally concerned as I was.
“He is indisposed for the week, yes,” he replied, settling into Dr. Price’s chair and picking up the clipboard that had been leaning against it. “You can call me Dr. Andrianakis.”
Indisposed? That sounded...ominous.
“Nice to meet you, Dr. Andrianakis,” I said, not quite sure if that was a lie. I felt uncomfortable like I had the first time I’d come to this office, only the prickly energy in the air seemed to suggest I had a reason.
I told myself I was just being paranoid again. The school was designed to keep criminals in, so I imagined they’d have even more vetting to keep themout. “So, is this going to be the usual kind of session?”
“Not exactly,” he replied in that creepy, even voice. “Dr. Price was far too conservative with your sessions. We will be accessing more memories today, and you will open your mind up fully.”
I frowned, not sure I liked the sound of that. “He said the point was to go slow. And there are memories he couldn’t access,” I warned him. The last thing I wanted to do was surprise him with whatever kind of barricade had been placed in my mind.
“That won’t be a problem,” he replied calmly, but he wrote something on his clipboard. “Miss Bells, how was your day?” He didn’t ask like he cared, he asked like it was his duty to find out. At least Dr. Price seemed like he gave a shit.
“You can just call me Bells,” I offered. It wasn’t typical, but then again, most students at least knew their last names. “It was okay. I’m starting to get caught up in my classes.”
For some reason, I felt like I needed to justify myself to him. For all I knew, the administration had sent him to keep an eye on me. I didn’t want to believe Dr. Price would sell me out like that, but I barely knew him, even if I did feel otherwise.
He frowned slightly over my name, the first I’d seen of an expression on his stern features, and it seemed like he wrote that down, too.
“What about your living situation with the vampire and the werewolf?” he asked, folding his hands on the clipboard. For the first time, I noticed his nails were black, too. Actually, so were the tips of his fingers. Or maybe they were a very dark blue, like they’d been frostbitten.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about him knowing about that, and I assumed if he knew about my living arrangements, he also knew the reason behind them. It was only a matter of time before word got out that Dean and Alistair had both imprinted on me, or at least that they thought they had. I still wanted to put it off for as long as possible.
“It’s going fine,” I said, unable to help but feel guarded. Holding back in therapy was probably enough to get me on the naughty list, but the dude was putting off all kinds of creepy vibes and the sooner I got out of the room, the better. “No fights to the death or anything, save for them fighting over which of them gets to use the shower first in the morning.”
He didn’t writethatdown. Interesting.
“Good,” was all he said. He pulled a smartphone from his pocket and tapped the screen a few times, no doubt to pull up the app that controlled the room’s atmosphere, but he seemed to be having trouble with it. By the time he managed to dim the lights to the point where the room was nearly pitch black, he looked like he was ready to snap the phone in half.
I blinked. If he was this frustrated by some technological issues, he was really going to have fun with my mind blocks. I settled in and tried to get comfortable. With Dr. Price, it was easy to get into the meditative state needed to delve into my mind. His voice was so soothing, it was practically automatic. All of a sudden, I felt clumsy.
“Close your eyes,” Dr. Andrianakis said in what seemed to be an attempt at a calming voice. Nothing about him could ever be calming, though. Being locked in a room with him felt like being locked in with a black hole.
I did as he said, taking a deep breath to steady my nerves. What the hell was wrong with me? I slept in the same block as two of the deadliest creatures in school without feeling so much as a jitter.
“Now, Miss Bells, do you see the blinking red light in the darkness?” he asked.
