Maybe it was camouflage, or that eerie stillness.Sorcery.
Or maybe he was just part of the furniture now.An appliance, an appurtenance like the rest of this luxurious, pampering deathtrap.“I don’t like it very much here.”She didn’t even have to ask who’d put her in pajamas.Getting dressed while knocked out was kind of par for the course nowadays.“But I suppose you’d say it doesn’t matter.”
“I’d sayat least you’re safe here.”Erik still didn’t move.“But…”
The pause brought Liv up short.She didn’t need breakfast—or maybe it was dinner, an unanswerable question like how many walls really made a prison cell—for her brain to work, really.
Although she might have liked a stack of pancakes.Still, her stomach did a slow roll as well as gurgled, and good luck eating anything now.“But you don’t think so.”
“They came right for you, Liv.Even Dakshi noticed.And you were screaming.”Now he moved, shoulders rolling as if settling his weapons, stretching his neck to one side, then the other.Just like Daniel’s preparations; maybe it was a guy thing.“Abouthim.”
Is that what happened?She shuddered.“Is that usual?”
“No.”He all but bit the end of the word off.
She’d never seen this man truly angry before.It was partly gratifying, partly terrifying, and all new.She didn’t need those new senses—ESP or whatever crap the weird rainbow fire had done to her—to feel it.No, his rage circled the room like a restless panther, just looking for something to sink tooth or claw into.
Newwasn’t the word for those senses, though.The longer this went on, the more inevitable getting knocked unconscious and carried off by monster hunters seemed.It had all been there from the beginning; even Gramma Poe wouldn’t be surprised.
You got a bit of intuition to you, just like your mama.
“My mother was killed by a monster,” Liv heard herself say, dully.“My father died in a car accident when I was six, and when I was ten my mother… well, I spent the night at my grandmother’s.I shouldn’t have, it was a school night.But Mom said yes when I asked, and I’ve always thought she maybe…” She shuddered, and could barely believe she was telling someone else the whole awful tale.“Anyway, everything was locked up.All the security dowels in the windows and the patio door, too.It should have been impossible.Unless the… the killer had a key, they said, or unless he came down the chimney.”Liv didn’t want to say the next part; it curdled in her throat, hot and bitter.“She was torn apart.”
She wasn’t telling the story correctly, God knew.Who could explain finding their mother in bite-size bloody bits spread over a living room of to-order furniture you’d helped her put together?My little mechanic, Mom used to call her.Make a list, check it twice, huh Livvie?
The pajamas did nothing against the cold.Oh, it was nice and toasty in this padded jail cell, and so warm she really didn’t need the blankets.Still, Liv shivered.“I lived with my grandparents after that,” she continued, inadequately.“Mom was… it tore her intopieces, Erik.You know of anything that does that?”
He turned, slow and fluid, eyes mere gleams in the dimness, answering theoneiros’s glow.The window behind him was full of falling snow.
She was beginning to hate winter.
“Some things,” Erik said, quietly.“Let me guess.Your mom was special.”
“Oh yeah.”Every little girl’s mother was special, though.“She knew things before they happened, sometimes.She could tell where lost stuff had ended up most of the time.Gramma joked about it until Mom was killed, then all she ever said wasdon’t let anyone know what you know.Words to live by, right?”
“And you had bad dreams.All your life.”Again, he didn’t sound surprised.The tone of quiet, flat confirmation was either comforting, or terrifying as all hell.
“Yeah.So did Mom.”Liv found she was hugging herself again, cupping elbows in her palms, tense as a violin string.“Nightmares like your mother, Gramma said.”
“She might’ve been a potential, Liv.Or not.Sometimes psychics aren’tlirai, they’re just tuned in.”
“That makes it even worse.”In fact, it made Liv guilty as fuck, because she’d asked to go to Gramma Poe’s.I hate school,she’d moaned.Don’t make me.
A therapist would call it survivor’s guilt, the result of trauma, and adult Liv—not to mention her psych degree—knewno eight-year-old was responsible for a parent’s murder.Irrational as it was, though, the shame, thesinwouldn’t go away.
Ever.
“I know.”And the way he said it almost seemed like Erik did, in fact, know.“Because you can’t help but wonder if the thing was after you.”
Oh, God.He understood far more than she gave him credit for.An uncomfortable feeling, to say the least.“Maybe you should just let them have me, Erik.”
Tiny blue lights flashed deep in his pupils, clearly visible in the gloom.“That’s not an option.”
“Who are you really trying to save?”It felt eerily inevitable to be standing in a dark bedroom having this lunatic conversation with an armed monster hunter twice her size, too.
Go figure.
“Spoken like a truelirai.”At least the tight, taut misery was gone from his voice.He even sounded a little amused, if you listened closely.
