“I felt it too.”
But he’d been able to act. To talk through it. I had frozen like a rabbit in front of predator.
“How’d you keep moving?
“I’m several hundred years older than you with a lot more experience with these sort of things. They would have needed a lot more power behind their compulsion to affect me.”
“That was a compulsion?”
It hadn’t felt like one. It hadn’t made me want to act in a certain way. If anything, the opposite.
“There are different kinds of compulsion. Some force you to act based on a specific command. Others pull a veil over the victim’ eyes so they experience things, but it’s hazy, like they’re walking through a dream. This one put an emotion in your head and then amplified it to the point where you could think of nothing else.”
That seemed right.
My eyes fell on the body. I couldn’t think of it in personal terms. I needed to distance myself from the reality of what just happened.
“Was Robert known for that ability?”
Thomas’s face was grim as he glanced at me. “No, this is something he has never shown an aptitude for.”
“Was he the type to take his own life?” I asked quietly.
Thomas shook his head.
I stared into the night. It didn’t sit right. Deaths are always sad and leave intangible marks in their wake, but for whatever reason suicide has always struck me as something particularly tragic. It’s the type of action to leave scars on the living, making them question if something they did contributed to the death. As if they just reached out sooner or made more of an effort, it might have been prevented.
During deployment, two of our soldiers committed suicide within weeks of being due to deploy back home. It devastated the command teams they belonged to, leaving twin feelings of grief and anger that someone could do this to themselves, especially when others who had lost their lives would have probably given anything to trade places with them in the land of the living.
I didn’t want Robert to have killed himself. If it was compulsion, it was murder, which meant there would be someone to punish. Someone to seek justice from.
Thomas wiped his hands on the body’s pant leg and stood. “This is going to cause a problem.”
My eyes shot to him. “What do you mean?”
“The other applicant’s will try to pin the blame on one of us. His children are the type to seek revenge.”
“The forensic evidence should clear us,” I said.
“That may not matter. Politics are a game of perception. Elinor and Stephen are not the type to let this pass without trying to turn it to their advantage.”
I wanted to argue, but I’d seen the truth of it enough times in the human world.
“Get Liam; bring him here,” Thomas ordered. “Don’t tell him what this is about. I don’t want anyone overhearing you. He should be able to verify how he died, which will give us an advantage when others discover the death.”
I could do that if it meant getting away from the head staring at me with accusing eyes.
I moved with a purpose, careful to keep my pace down from an outright run. There was no need to let the entire party know that something was hideously wrong.
Backtracking down the long, empty corridor was an exercise in bravery. Before, this had been just another hallway with nothing sinister about it. Now it felt like the set of a horror film with the bad guy just waiting to appear.
Outside the party, I took a deep breath to compose myself. I needed people to think nothing was wrong, which meant none of the tension I was feeling could show on my face. I could do this. Just pretend it’s a simple security matter.
I stepped into the atrium, my heels clicking across the slate tiles. Liam wasn’t anywhere close. I wove my way through the crowd, keeping my eyes peeled for Liam or one of his underlings.
“Aileen, where have you been?” Caroline appeared from the crowd, looking irritated. “You disappeared. The whole purpose of you coming was to act as a buffer. You can’t do that if you’re going off into the shadows with a stranger.”
“I didn’t. I was looking for you.” It was the truth. Mostly. I had been looking for her before witnessing a man cut off his own head.
