“People process things in all different ways, Mark,” I said. “I process things by drawing.”
“And the books?”
“Research. Inspiration.”
“This is all very fucked-up,” he said. “You realize that, right?”
My body felt light, as if I were made of tissue paper. A see-through woman, hardly there.
I’d made the drawings.
I’d made them but didn’t remember making them.
What else didn’t I remember?
What else had my mind blocked out?
Mark bit his lip, looked from the books and drawings to me. “Have you called your therapist?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said.
“I need you to promise me you’ll call and make an appointment.”
I nodded. “I’ll call tomorrow.”
He started making his way to the door, but as I watched him, a questionbloomed, coming to life like a poisonous mushroom pushing itself up from dark ground.
“Mark?”
He turned back.
And now it was me who eyed him accusingly.
“What were you doing out here?”
He never came out to my studio. It was an understanding we had. He didn’t come in unless I invited him out to look at something. My creative process was precious and private, and he’d always respected that.
He blinked at me. “I was looking for you,” he said.
But I knew he was lying. He knew damn well I had been in the house with Olivia and my mother.
He’d come out here to spy. To see what his off-in-the-head wife might be up to. And he’d gotten just what he’d been looking for. Proof that I was losing it completely.
I watched him leave, then turned back to the pile of drawings I didn’t remember making.
I studied the symbols I’d worked into the bees’ wings, the flies’ eyes: little spirals, a circle with a cross, a square with an X and dots in each triangle the X made.
I didn’t just recognize the symbols from my own back, or from my brother’s, or the ones that Carter had confirmed.
I’d seen them somewhere else.
I picked up the demon books, started flipping through the pages.
There they were, tucked into the back pages of one of the more esoteric books I’d ordered, one written in strange old English.
Sigils to keep you safe from daemons.
I scanned the pages.
