(Blood and Bone, #1) Blood and Bone (14 page)

I don’t know if I have words for something so horrific. He died slowly and in agony over the course of days and then was eaten by his cats. Did they even wait for him to die? I remember reading something that said they wouldn’t even wait—if given the chance, they’d eat you now. She seems content in the knowledge too. Obviously, that’s creepy.

She stirs in her seat. “How have you been?”

I shake my head. “I hardly know. I’ve been lost, I guess, so not so good. But my life was great. I worked in a little shop and dated a loving man. I had a best friend and a cat. It was good.” I still want it back.

She looks wounded. “That’s real nice, I guess.”

“The minute I found out who I was, I came here.”

“I’m glad you came. It’s been real hard thinking you was dead.”

I hate that she has lived through this, especially since she is the person who was my savior when I needed her.

“Are you okay for money?” I ask it, not certain if we are close that way or not. But I have some savings.

She smiles wide. “I got a letter when you was declared dead. It had a check for compensation. I couldn’t even spend the money in this lifetime if I tried.” She pauses, blushing. “Lord, I s’pose I’ll have to give the money back now.”

I shake my head. “No. They won’t make you pay it back. You earned it with pain and suffering.”

She grins. “Well then, yeah. I’m just dandy.” Her bitter grin fades into a real one. “Better now that you’re here. Can you stay long?”

“Not this time, but I’ll be back, I promise.” I lift my finger, pointing at the door. “There’s a man from the government waiting for me outside. I just had to come and see you. It’s part of my treatment to get my memory back.”

A worried look joins the wrinkles on her face. “You still working for them?”

I nod slowly. It’s a lie, but it might help her sleep better to know I have a job. “They’re just trying something to jog my memories. My father is a trigger for me, apparently. I just need a few details.”

Her brow furrows, but she stands hesitantly, leaving the room without speaking. She’s gone for several minutes, leaving me alone in the room. My eyes start to wander, taking a trip across the walls of the small front room. Pictures of me, my aunt, and the cat line the walls. My school pictures start young: ten, I’d say—maybe even younger. They go to university and military. The three of us are one tiny happy family in the group shots.

There are very few pictures of me with my mom before she died, and none with my father. As far as these walls tell, he never existed.

She clears her throat when she comes back in holding a file folder. She grips it in a way that has me convinced she doesn’t mean to give it to me. But she holds it out with a trembling hand. “I will not discuss it, but I think some answers are in here.” She takes my hand in hers when I stand and reach for it. Her blue eyes fill with emotion as she speaks gravely. “Leave this in the past, Sam. This doesn’t belong to you anymore. It never was yours; it was always his.”

I nod, letting her wrap her frail arms around me once more. When I close my eyes and inhale her, I swear I’m back to being a kid. “I missed you so much,” she says.

“Me too. I didn’t know what it was, but the hole in my heart feels so much smaller with you here.”

Her voice sounds wet when she mutters into my neck, “Don’t stay away so long this time.”

“I won’t. I’ll be back before you know it.” I hold her, trying to convince myself of the reasons I could stay here with her. I haven’t felt like I was at home in ages, and in this home I do.

She kisses me on the cheek. “Can you stay one night?”

I nod. “I’ll go tell the man with me to come back for me tomorrow.”

“You can sleep in your old bed. It’ll be like before you left for college.”

I sigh into her, agreeing and anticipating sleeping in my old bed and being away from all of this for one night. I slip from her arms and head for the front door. I open it, waving at Rory. He climbs from the car, cocking an eyebrow.

“Get a hotel; I’m staying with my aunt tonight.”

“Seriously? You couldn’t have told me that half an hour ago?”

I lift my middle finger up out of my pocket. “Here’s my apology.” It’s the crudest thing I’ve ever done, that I recall.

He grins as if he expected nothing less.

I turn back inside, closing the door and leaning my back against it.

“I can make falafels. They were your favorite when you were little. No meat, ever.”

I nod, not bothering to tell her I eat meat just fine now. Her excited smile and lit-up eyes are the best image I have seen in a long time.

When I go to bed that night, I am at perfect peace. My eyes are heavy, too heavy to read the file folder. I fear there is terrible stuff that will ruin my sleep, so I leave it, not wanting to ruin the perfect day. My room looks like maybe it hasn’t changed since I left, a very long time ago. There are posters of people I don’t recall, and figurines. The bedspread looks old, and yet it’s softer than any I have slept on. The window overlooks the yard next door, with a large tree between the two houses.

I climb into the small bed, noticing the lack of comfort but recalling it in some way. I fall asleep quickly, dreaming about Binx and Derek and a plate filled with spaghetti.

My sleep is restless, and at one point I lift my head, unsure of where I am. There is a shadow of a man standing in the corner. I
blink, unsure of his actually being there or not. I part my lips to scream when I realize there truly is a shadow cast by a man.

Derek steps into the dim light of the alarm clock, putting his finger to his lips.

I don’t move. It’s similar to being hunted by a lion or a panther. Seeing him in the shadows makes me lean more toward panther. His eyes are filled with all kinds of crazy. When he sees I’m not going to scream he relaxes, still keeping his finger to his lips.

The look on his face grows soft and peaceful. My eyes fuzz out, but the image of him smiling at me from the shadows gets stuck in my head. I feel things, like his hands holding me and air whooshing around my body. Wind and heavy air hit my face as I jerk as if going downward.

My eyes open as my head drops back and I see the family photos, but they’re upside down. His breath hits me in the face as he takes each stair to the main floor. My eyes flutter, and I lose a second.

Suddenly the room feels different as everything spins and cool thick air drags its way across my body. I lose everything there, all sense and consciousness.

When I wake I’m in the back of a moving car. Derek is driving. Seeing him makes me smile, but something feels wrong. Waking is still a foggy mess for me. I don’t remember why we got into the car. I don’t remember why we aren’t in the Mercedes.

My head spins, and I have to replay the last couple of memories to figure out that I shouldn’t be in any car with him. It’s hard when he’s the only thing I recall for years. I instantly trust him every time I see him.

He glances back at me, smiling. It isn’t the one I love. It’s not a full smile—his heart’s not in it. “You’re awake.”

“What are you doing?” I almost want to ask what he’s going to do to me, but I think starting off accusing him of things is a bad
plan. I don’t know what makes him snap. He’s always been sweet to me. I haven’t ever seen him lose his mind.

He lifts the folder from my room. “Do you know the effort it took to make this go away? Do you know how hard it was for me to take this from you? Why can’t you see that this was the whole reason for it all?”

My heart stops. “What’s in that folder?”

His expression changes. “I’m going to show you.”

I sit up, rubbing my eyes and trying not to vomit. “What did you give me?”

“Your sedative.” His eyes find me in the rearview. “I have tried to protect you from yourself for years, Jane. Years. Everything is for you. If you say you’ll trust me and won’t fight me on this, we can turn around and drive to a new place. We won’t have to discuss this anymore.” He pleads with his eyes.

I shake my head. “I need to know. I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

A defeated look crosses his eyes. He doesn’t talk again. I curl up in the backseat, contemplating what chance I have of escaping. It doesn’t look good. I’m lethargic from the sedative and not nearly as strong as he is.

When he stops the car I realize my eyes are closed; like an idiot I’ve relaxed. It’s hard not to. He makes me calm. He’s still the person in the world I trust the most.

I stretch, looking around. Instantly I’m panicked. We are parked outside of a small house. My father’s house.

My heart starts first, followed by my mouth drying out and my eyes watering. He sighs, staring at the house. “Don’t make me do this,” he mutters.

“Okay. I trust you. I don’t want to go in there. I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t make me go in there.”

“Don’t lie to me, Jane. I know you far better than you know yourself.” He doesn’t look back, but I can hear the emotion in his voice. “You’re making me do this because you don’t believe I have your best interests at heart.” He takes a few deep breaths. Each one echoes in the silence of the car, torturing me with its intensity. When he’s worked himself up enough, he gets out abruptly, ripping open the door.

“Don’t do this. I don’t want to do this. Let me come with you. I’ll be good. I’ll stay with you forever.”

When his hands come for me I fight and scream, but the difference in us is remarkable. He drags me, kicking and screaming, from the car. I know I make contact with my flailing legs and arms but he doesn’t flinch. I scratch and bite but his hands are strong, nearly as strong as his will. He flips me over his shoulders, carrying me inside. He kicks the door open, letting light into the dank space. When he gets inside the small front room, he closes the door. I scream again, but he lowers me, clamping a hand over my face. “Shhhhh. You don’t want to disturb the energy here. Let it lie; it’s better when it’s calm in here.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t even care. I just want out. My insides feel like a bomb has gone off. He holds my back to his chest with his arms wrapped around me, making me face the room like I am facing a fear of the dark or monsters.

He leans his mouth down close to my cheek, speaking in my ear with breathy whispers: “When I met you, you had to sleep with the night-light on. You were the only agent I knew of who went days without sleep because of it. The dark scared you.” He’s trembling, but he doesn’t stop. He walks us farther into the house, pushing me forward with his body. “This living room is where he usually got you to do things for the camera. He filmed it.”

The word
diddle
suddenly burns in my head. I gag on his hand, losing my fight as all will and strength is sucked from me. I flop onto
my knees as images of the camera flicker in my fuzzy memories with jerks. Words float into my head, words and images. A sweaty fat man talks slowly, talking about how he wants things done. Hot tears fill my eyes. They’re desperate to block it all out. They want this to end. They don’t want me to see. But the problem is the things I see are inside me. My tears can’t block them out.

“Your aunt’s file was mostly from after the police got involved. It’s essentially the police report she was shown. I have added the pictures you had from before the police got involved. The ones you made me keep, even though they have burned a hole in my heart just by existing.” His voice shakes.

I hear the rustling of papers as a heavy sickness covers me like a cloud of very bad things. They’ve waited for me to come back. The cloud sat on the ceiling, building and gathering strength so when I came here it could rain down on me. I open my eyes, realizing I have been watching a movie in my head. The papers from the folder are spread across the wooden floor, snapshots of the evil inside me. The vileness of my soul has been captured on film. They capture a young girl doing things she shouldn’t know how to do. Hands and faces, body parts I refuse to see. I can’t see her face or her tears. I refuse to see her.

Horrors of the worst kind sit there, taunting me with the possibility I remember all of this but have repressed it.

Derek takes my hand, forcing me to stand, and pulls me into the hallway. Every inch of my body clamps and tightens, squeezing and crying out for our feet to freeze. The hot tears won’t stop, and my mouth won’t open. It’s clamped in protest. He opens a door at the end of the hall. Muted light floods through dirty windows, making shadows on the wooden floors. Shadows that become monsters, or rather feed the ones that are already here, lurking.

I know this room.

I know this evil.

“This was your room. I made sure everything ended here for him. It was the only way. He needed to go in the worst way possible, but I wanted to make sure he went here.”

The room is bare, but I can still see it all. I can still see the small wooden bed and the little plastic bin for my clothes that was shaped like a dresser but not one. A poor child’s dresser. My father always said it was an upgrade from a box. My eyes dart to the closet where the other bin was, the secret bin. I was never allowed to touch that bin. It was for the shows. They were the only things that made him happy. He never hit or hurt me when I did the shows in the pretty clothes.

I back up slowly, feeling my stomach gurgling. I turn, running from the room. I leap out the front door, losing my stomach onto the gravel and weeds. I heave until there’s nothing but tears leaving my eyes next to the ropes of spit and drool.

Derek’s hands are there suddenly, holding me. My soft whimpers become sobbing. I don’t know how to get past this moment. It feels like a cage that has been lowered over top of me, trapping me back where I once was, stuck in my head.

My heart is burning and my stomach aching, but even worse is the way my blinding tears make a mess of the view I have of the world. They make it pretty with a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors. He rubs my back, and I now see how far he would go to love me and protect me and save me. I finally understand his obsession with my memory and the bad things I have saddled him with. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know why I made him know those things and let myself forget.