“What else do you know?” I asked, testing her. What was I hoping for? That she’d tell me something it was impossible for her to know, something that would prove that she was actually a demon?
That’s what I wanted: proof that this was real. Or a way to catch her in a lie, to prove that it was only a game she was playing. Surely it had to be a game.
The sane, rational part of my brain knew I should end this now. Just walk out, leave the room, start dinner. Not engage in conversation. Not encourage this insanity. What did it say about my own mental health that I was even playing this game with her?
I thought of Penny’s expression of concern and disbelief. If she could see me now, I knew she’d ask me what the hell I was thinking.
“It would be easier to list the things that I don’t know,” my mother (or the thing that was posing as my mother) said.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Such as?”
She narrowed her eyes, which seemed all black as if her pupils had blown up, erased everything else. “Why did you say yes to having us here?”
“Us?”
“Your mother and I. Host and symbiont. Why did you say yes?”
“Because it was the right thing to do.”
“No, no, no!Wrong answer.” She sprang up into a sitting position again, reminding me of an absurd jack-in-the-box. “You had a reason.An agenda. Were you hoping for closure? Reconciliation? A happy ending?”
I shook my head, took a step back. “There are no happy endings.”
There was the wicked smile I recognized from my childhood. “Maybe there’s hope for you yet, Alison. Maybe you’re not half as dim-witted as I’ve always believed.”
I clenched my jaw. “You saidus. Host and symbiont. Does that mean my mother is still in there?”
“Pieces of her.”
“Only pieces?”
“She’s a broken puzzle. I’m the glue holding it all together.”
I nodded, took a long, slow breath to try to displace the unease I felt spreading through me. “Can I talk to her now?”
“No, she’s not home.” She gripped the quilt again, wringing it in her gnarled hands.
“I want to speak to her.”
“Ding-dong, ding-dong, ring the bell all you want, shit-for-brains, worthless girl, she’s not going to answer. You’re stuck with me tonight.”
“How long have you been there?”
She took in a long, rattling breath, coughed, then leaned back against the pillows. “Oh, longer than you could conceive, with your tiny little mind, your pathetic sense of time and space. I have been here for eons. I am older than the oldest stone.”
I was shaking inwardly. “I mean, how long have you been there inside my mother?”
There it was again, the scornful shake of the head, the disapprovingtsk-tsk. “You’re asking the wrong questions.” Her voice seemed to be losing its edge. She sounded tired. Or maybe she was disappointed in me, just like always.
“What questions am I supposed to be asking?” My voice was squeaky, a little too loud, betraying my fear and frustration.
“Honestly, Alison. Do I have to spell it out for you? Lead you down the crooked path to the questions that should be oh-so-fucking obvious?”
I said nothing. Again I questioned my own sanity for even staying in the room, listening to her, playing along.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
That’s what I told myself, but deep down, I felt something shift inside me: a terrible truth beginning to settle in my chest, making it harder to breathe.
