The screams went on and on. Sometimes they were broken, and I imagined Kaden sobbing for breath, worn out, broken. But then they would begin again. I remembered the feel of Lady Buckhardt’s withered finger against my forehead. I remembered the dizzying, feverish heat that had filled me, invaded me, and violated me. The same thing was happening to Kaden right now, but where I had felt only an instant, for him it was going on and on. The shriveled nightmare lurking inside Lady Buckhardt’s body was—
—feasting—
—enjoying itself with Kaden.
I didn’t just sit there. I didn’t just listen to those screams. I tried, again and again, to project myself into the other side. If I could reach the other side, I had a chance of sending a message through River or Samantha. I might be able to tell Austin where I was.
Every time I projected myself, though, I felt like I was hitting a wall. Blackness would surround me, and for a moment I would hear a sound, like cloth flapping in a strong wind. And then the moment would end, and I would find myself back in my body, back in the mud, back in the dungeon.
Over and over again, I tried. I thought about what River had said: that my powers were waking, growing; that the walls were coming down. But Ginny had messed up my abilities. Maybe, if she hadn’t interfered, I would be able to reach the other side. Maybe, if she hadn’t messed with my head, I could have stopped Kaden in the locker room and I wouldn’t be in this mess.
But in the darkness, listening to Kaden’s screams, I could only lie to myself for so long. This wasn’t Ginny’s fault. This wasn’t even Kaden’s fault—at least, not completely. The only person I could blame for my abilities not working the way I wanted to was me. It made me think of Emmett, and I smiled into the blackness. Emmett had always been certain that I could control my talents, even when I had believed otherwise.
He was the one who had done the research. He was the one who had told me what I was—not a freak, not a monster, just a psychic doing latent readings. The smile faded, though; Emmett hated me now, and rightly so. There wasn’t anything I could do to change that. If I got my shit together, though, I might be able to save him from Makayla—and save Austin, and Becca, and everyone else I loved too. So, with my heart battering my rib cage and with my teeth gritted, I turned inside myself and descended to the labyrinth.
I found myself on the same cramped path, between the same stone walls, with the same row of Edison bulbs swinging overhead and casting a warm, yellow radiance. For the first time, though, I was alone. No coyote waited to guide me through this maze; Ginny had not brought me here with her power. I did not need anyway to bring me here. Like everyone else, I had made this labyrinth myself. I had hidden the things I did not want to see. And now it was time to dig them up, dust them off, and set them in the light.
At the first fork, I went right. That much I remembered from the first time Ginny had brought me here. She had—I could accept this in hindsight, even if I had not wanted to admit it at the time—wanted to help me; she had brought me here to allow me to face the past. But after that first fork, I found myself completely lost. The labyrinth split and forked and branched in a hundred different ways. That, of course, was exactly what it was meant to do. I had built this place unconsciously, but still with a purpose. Like everyone else, I had built it to hide things from myself.
I tried always turning to the right. For a while, this seemed to be working as I wound deeper and deeper into the maze. The Edison bulbs glowed in a steady line, following my progress, anticipating my direction and then darkening behind me as I passed. But eventually I found myself at a dead end. Retracing my steps, I tried the next turn. A dead end. And then another. And then another.
In frustration, I kicked the wall. Dust puffed under my sneakers, but the stone didn’t budge. There might be some psychic way of demolishing this place, of leveling the walls and opening up all my secrets. I wasn’t sure how to do it, though. More importantly, I wasn’t sure what that might do to me. People built these defenses for a reason. There were things we needed to hide, even from ourselves.
I checked the Edison bulbs above me as though they would tell me the position of the sun in the sky. How much time had passed? Time was strange in the mind; it might only have been a few moments, or it might have been much longer. How long could Kaden hold out? How long before he told them that he had given me the flash drive and they came for me?
And still this damn maze refused to give up its secrets. All right, I told myself. Take a breath. Think about it from a different angle. Maybe it was like a memory, I reasoned. It had a similar feeling—that sensation of having something on the tip of my tongue, as though I could almost retrieve it, but not quite. If that were true, then there had to be a way to call it forward.
Try not to think about it. That was the most common advice. Go for a run, take a shower, do something to turn off your brain. Great advice, for the most part, unless you were locked in a swampy dungeon and listening to your friend scream.
Oh, God, I thought, feeling despair wash over me. Had I just called Kaden my friend?
No, trying to distract myself wouldn’t work. There had to be another way. Try to find an association. I knew the memory I needed to face. I knew what it was about. I even knew, up to a point, why I needed to face it. But it was like being in bed on a Saturday morning: somehow there was a difference between knowing I should get out of bed, and actually getting out of bed. Until I came face to face with this memory, it didn’t matter if I knew why I needed to deal with it. The only thing that mattered was dealing with it.
So. Association. Well, that meant I had to think about Gage. Gage, the treacherous motherfucker. Gage, the cheater. Gage—The Edison bulbs hummed overhead, their carbon filaments brightening and then fading and then brightening again. I squinted against the sudden intensity, and when it faded, I found myself blinking and trying to adjust to the darkness, only for the brilliance to return a moment later.
Taking a breath, I tried to calm myself. Ok. At least this was better than nothing. So. Gage. I hadn’t always—
—loved—
—hated him. There had been some good times as well. Not just that first day at the beach, although that had been nice. On our second date, for example, he had gotten permission to use the local theater. Just the two of us in that huge building. It was raining, and our picnic site had turned into a morass. It would have been more like swimming than anything else—not that I was opposed to going swimming with Gage again. But Gage had just made a few phone calls, and he’d gotten permission to use the theater. All the lights were off, but he turned on the spotlight—just that one, intense column of light smashing the center of the stage—and he’d stretched out a red-and-white check cloth, and he’d even produced a genuine picnic basket. He had cheese and apples and little watercress sandwiches and sparkling grape juice, with a promise that next time he’d bring wine. I could still taste the bubbles on his tongue when we kissed, and the spotlight warmed me like a second sun. Against that bright light, in my memory I could still see Gage’s outline—just a silhouette, really—as he tugged off his t-shirt, and I remembered how my hands were cold at first and then warmed against his skin.
With a pop-pop-pop, like someone firing an air gun in rapid succession, Edison bulbs exploded. Glass flew everywhere, scoring the back of my neck, my cheeks, and my hands. Then darkness and silence descended. I risked a glance up; a single bulb glowed, far down the path. Brushing away shards of glass, I hurried towards it.
As I drew closer, another bulb illuminated—this one to the right. I turned, working my way towards this new bulb. And then another flashed to life, and I adjusted my course again. It seemed to go on like this forever, until suddenly the stone walls dropped away, and a grassy clearing opened up ahead of me. Set into the opposite side of the clearing was a door that glowed with a soft incandescence.
Yes, this was it. My hand was steady as I touched the latch. Yes. I could do this. I had to do this.
But God, I was scared.
I pushed, and the latch turned, and then the labyrinth was gone and I was deep in the memory.