“Is he dead?” Vandekamp pressed.
“Who? Bruce Aaron?” I asked, and his brows rose. I shrugged. “He left his ID lying around. Why would you want a United States senator to kill himself?”
“So, he is dead?”
Another shrug. “When I left, he was beating his own head against a door frame. Whether or not his wife chooses to call an ambulance is up to her.”
His cold smile was the most genuine emotional reaction I’d seen from the owner of the Savage Spectacle. No doubt he only let me see it because I wouldn’t remember it.
“Why erase my memory? Who am I going to tell? The next client? A party guest?”
Vandekamp circled his desk and made a note on a sticky pad.
“Are all my private engagements like this? Just...vengeance?” Nothing that could get me pregnant?
He continued scribbling.
“Do I always come here afterward? Are we always alone?” Was I looking at the father of my unborn child?
“Are you going to make me silence you?”
“Is that what you like? Women who can’t say no?”
He finally looked up, his gaze narrowed. “Do not assume I share my clientele’s fetishes.”
Was that a yes or a no? Was he saying one of his clients had done this to me?
My eyes watered. I swallowed compulsively, trying to hold back words that would show him how desperate I was for information. But the pressure was too much. The opportunity was too rare. “What don’t I remember?”
Vandekamp put his pen down and looked up at me, as if he suddenly found my questions fascinating.
“Tell me what I’m missing,” I demanded through clenched teeth. “Do you have any idea what it’s like not to know what you’ve done? What’s been done to you?”
“You’re saying ignorance isn’t bliss?” That odd smile was back, and I realized he was studying my pain, like a scientist conducting research. Yet enjoying it like a psychopath. He came around the desk again and looked down at me from inches away. “You’re upset because you can’t remember all the time we’ve spent together? All these private meetings?” He ran one hand boldly down my arm, and there wasn’t even a hint of fear in his gaze. He knew I couldn’t hurt him unless I saw him hurt someone else.
He wasn’t afraid of me.
“You know, most people think cryptids raised free are harder to control than the rest, but I think it’s just a matter of pressing the right button. And you havesomany buttons.”
I closed my eyes as he trailed one finger up the side of my neck and over my chin. “Just tell me.”
“Ask me nicely.”
I exhaled slowly and opened my eyes. “Tell meplease, Dr. Vandekamp.”
He laughed and took a step back. “No.”
* * *
Deep in the bowels of the infirmary, Pagano took me down a hall I’d never noticed before, which shouldn’t have been possible. I’d been in the infirmary half a dozen times to deliver lunch trays, that I could remember, and my duties had taken me all over the building.
Halls don’t just suddenly appear. But they can be made to disappear. Or rather, to go unnoticed. Which meant that Vandekamp had cryptids in his collection that I’d never met, or even seen. Cryptids with very interesting abilities.
Or maybe I had met them, but couldn’t remember.
My handler opened a door near the end of the strange hallway and led me into a small, unoccupied room, where a single barber-style chair was bolted to the floor. Laid out on a counter that ran along one wall was a set of gray scrubs.
“Change clothes and put the costume and shoes on the counter.”
