[6: TO THE DEAD]

MALCOLM KHALAJI WAS RUBBING OFF on Seong-Jae far too much.

That was the only reason he could explain why he was standing outside Johns Hopkins and about to badge his way into the psychiatry ward for entirely personal reasons.

Reasons he had lied to Malcolm about…but it had been necessary.

If he was careful, Malcolm need never know the truth.

And Seong-Jae could keep him safe.

Yet he did not know which was more morally questionable: lying to Malcolm about where he was, or lying to Sarah Sutterly’s parents so they would call ahead to the hospital staff and grant him visitor’s access as an investigating detective on a case still in progress.

When his reasons for visiting Sarah were entirely personal, and might well uncover things he did not want to know.

Getting inside, at least, was surprisingly easy. A flash of his badge, a check of his name against the allowed visitors logged by Sutterly’s parents, his name in the register, and he was being shepherded through gated, sterile hallways with automatically locking doors, yet décor that said they were still trying to pretend this place was half rehabilitation center, half prison, with the same cold white lights that brought back far too many memories of curling up on a cot and shivering while he lost half his body weight in cold, painful sweats.

He pushed the memory away.

That, right now, he did not need.

That wound could stay sealed, while he picked at another old scar until it bled.

If he were honest with himself, he should have done this long ago. But engineering access was one thing; facing the fucking PTSD flashbacks was something entirely different. But Anne Newton, silent and motionless as she was, was giving him no choice.

She demanded with those blank, unblinking eyes.

Those eyes that had looked at Adam, and been drawn in by the same superficial charm and subtle offer of control, of abandonment of free will, that had once worked so well on Seong-Jae that just seeing it again, reflected in someone like Adam, had nearly made him sick on the spot when he had stood in that church gymnasium and met those cold, knowing gray eyes.

And so here he was.

Standing in the psychiatric ward, while a bulky orderly in white scrubs unlocked the door to Sarah’s room and gave him a mistrustful look.

“Thirty minutes,” the orderly grunted. “That’s the time limit. Knock when you’re ready to leave.”

Seong-Jae answered with a nod. “I understand,” he said, and stepped inside.

The door swung closed behind him, latched, and locked with a dark finality.

The room he stood in was sizable, clean, but modest, simple furniture in soft-sided, rounded molded white plastic with no sharp edges or breakable, detachable bits, a desk and a chair and a little dining table, a bookshelf lined with paperbacks, the bed made of rounded, inoffensive white-painted piping with a thin institutional mattress. Familiar; far too familiar, except he remembered walls painted seafoam green, while these were a sort of bland, inoffensive muted sky blue.

Sarah Sutterly huddled on the bed in a corner; she did not look as if she had been mistreated, but she still seemed miserable, tired, dejected, and she scrunched in on herself more and eyed him warily over the top of the softcover fantasy novel she clutched in both hands. Her lank black hair fell into her pale, starkly vivid green eyes, the roots beginning to show a russet brown; her eyes were sunken, shadowed.

Seong-Jae held himself perfectly still, hands in plain sight, and stayed near the door so she would not feel threatened with him enclosed in her space. “Hello, Sarah,” he said carefully. “Do you remember me?”

“You’re that cop,” she answered immediately, a hoarse croak. “You were there, you…you…” Her voice broke. She squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head swiftly, before she took a breath, slow and her lips moving in the outlines of numbers, three-four-five, six-seven-eight before she opened her eyes again, steadier, clearer. “What do you want?”

“I am not here to harm you, or to make things any worse for you,” Seong-Jae said, and almost hated himself for feeling that sick empathetic tug in the pit of his stomach at how forlorn she looked, locked away like this in her institutional whites, when after what she had done to so many queer boys, the pieces she had left them in… He forced his thoughts aside, struggling to remain detached. “I just want to ask you a few questions. May I sit?”

She nodded, but still eyed him warily. Seong-Jae pulled the chair out from the desk and sank down in it, still keeping space between them, and leaned forward with his elbows propped on his knees, regarding her steadily.

“Your parents gave me permission to speak with you,” he said. “On the grounds that I not distress you, and not attempt to force you to incriminate yourself further.”

Her fingers clenched on the book. “Can I do that?” She lowered her eyes, staring at the pages. “I mean…they said I’m crazy and locked me up in the loony bin. ‘Mentally unfit to stand trial,’ I think those were the words.”

“You are not crazy,” Seong-Jae said firmly. “You simply need help that you did not get earlier.” He studied her more closely, searching for tell-tale signs—marks, flinching. “Are they treating you poorly here?”

“No.” She bit her lip, jerking her face to the side, staring pensively at the wall. “They’re really nice to me. Nicer than I deserve, after what I did to Nathan and…and…to Darian and Zack and the others, I…I…”

Her voice rose higher and higher, pitched, broke, fell into a half-sob that she swallowed back and sealed with compressed lips, staring blankly at the wall with her eyes wet and her entire slim body trembling. Seong-Jae waited, giving her a moment to herself, before continuing.

“Sarah.” He said her name just firmly enough to get her attention; just enough for her gaze to dart back to him. He held her eyes steadily. “I cannot absolve you for what you did. I cannot minimize the consequences of the lives lost, or the terrible nature of the crimes against them,” he said slowly. “But that does not mean you are not deserving of help. That you did not deserve help long before this.”

Her lips trembled; she glared at him. “Yeah, well…getting help now doesn’t bring anyone back to life, does it?”

“No. It does not.”

“At least I’m locked up where I can’t hurt anyone else. Padded walls and all.” She flashed him a scathingly sarcastic smile, before sniffling and looking away again. Everything about her seemed to dull, listless and colorless. “What did you want to know?”

Seong-Jae hesitated, then asked, “Do you remember what you said to me, as you were arrested?”

“Kind of.” Her brows drew together. “The meds mess with my memory a little, but…I remember recognizing you.”

Recognizing him?

The day she had been apprehended with Nathan McAllister locked in her basement?

“How?” he asked. “We had never met before then.”

“He showed me your picture.” She stressed that singular pronoun, yet the weight on it was more than just emphasis; it was almost reverent, but in that reverence was a sharp and cutting fear edging her haunted stare. “One green, one blue. His eyes.”

She said it like a prayer.

And Seong-Jae’s stomach dropped out.

“You met him?” he demanded breathlessly. “Tell me. How did you know him?”

She darted her tongue nervously over her lips, shaking her head. “He started coming to Nathan’s concerts a little over a year ago. Just showed up.”

A little over a year ago.

Thirteen months before moving, Seong-Jae had put in his request to transfer from the LAPD. The paperwork had simply taken forever to process, not to mention wrapping up his open cases or transferring them to other detectives. He had spent a long year packing up his life to carry it cross-country without leaving behind any loose ends.

Had…had Sila preceded him?

Had he truly arrived in advance to wait for Seong-Jae in Baltimore?

How had he even known?

His breaths were coming too swift, too shallow, and he swallowed roughly, trying to calm himself. Deep down inside, he felt as small and huddled as Sarah, frozen and wary and tense. “Did he tell you his name?”

“No. He was really weird.” She closed the book and hugged it to her chest. “Really pretty, like…so pretty he almost didn’t look human. His skin was vampire-pale and he had this long blond hair, almost white…and those weird eyes. And he said—”

“‘The wind should not have a name,’” Seong-Jae finished, throat dry. “‘Only a whisper, known to a few.’”

Her eyes lit up, a strange, slow smile on her lips. “You do know him.”

“Better than you would even know,” Seong-Jae whispered, leaning toward her intently. “Tell me more.”

“He just…” Her fingers tightened on the book, her face practically shining, all fear and bitterness gone. “He would talk to me. It was slow and quiet, but the more he talked, the more he made sense. About how some people truly love you, but others…” He mouth turned down at the corners, her voice darkening. “They just use you. You’re invisible to them until they need something from you, and when they’re done with you they throw you away after they’ve taken all your love and all your heart.” She bowed her head, hair falling to curtain her face. “He told me Nathan was doing that to me. That he was using me for gratification, the way I loved him and came to all his concerts….but I was always pushed to the background when he had a new boy to give his love to.”

She pressed her lips together, falling silent, unseeing eyes staring at her knees glassily; Seong-Jae thought she was done, until her shoulders stiffened, words dropping to a whisper.

“The pale man…he had this way of breaking down normal things until they looked really bad. Until me being in Nathan’s life as his friend when his boyfriends were there for something else…it just…it turned into this awful thing with me never being enough. And then somehow now one was enough to love him right.” She made a choked sound. “I don’t even know when I started thinking it. That if Nathan’s boyfriends weren’t there, I would be enough…and if I couldn’t be enough, I’d make someone who was.” Her fingers were digging into the book cover now, her knuckles white. “By the time I got to that point, it just…felt so natural. So right. Like it all made sense, when if I look at it now I don’t even know who I was.”

Seong-Jae felt as though he were looking at a warped mirror image of himself; of what he could have become. “I know,” he murmured, and the words felt as raw as confession, flaying him. “That is how he works.”

“But how do you work?” she whispered. “He said that’s what you do, too. You’re the dragonfly, aren’t you?”

Seong-Jae closed his eyes, his heart, his chest, his entire body heavy. “…yes. I am.”

“He said you used him up and threw him away and left him to hurt alone.” And even if that was Sarah Sutterly’s voice, the accusatory note in it belonged to him, speaking through her lips. “That you stepped into the light and left him in the dark.”

“He is not incorrect.”

“He said you should know it’s okay.” Her breaths shuddered loudly. “He likes it better in the dark.”

Seong-Jae opened his eyes, regarding Sarah. What had Sila done to this girl? Had he spent all his time working on her just so she would one day deliver this message?

Or had she simply been collateral damage, something to entertain himself while he pulled his strings and played his games?

Was the ruin Sarah’s life had become entirely Seong-Jae’s fault?

“Sarah…has he come to see you since you were incarcerated?”

“No,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to see him.” She shrank back again, wedging herself into the corner. “He scares me. He makes me scared of myself.”

“You are safe here,” Seong-Jae assured. “No one can see you without your parents’ permission. But if he tries…” He wet his lips. “Please tell the institution staff to contact me. I will leave my information at the desk.”

“Okay,” she agreed with a tiny nod. “If they’ll listen to me.”

Seong-Jae did not know what to say. He felt at once numb and entirely stripped to expose all the painful parts of him he had kept shielded from the light.

And he could not stay here.

“Thank you, Sarah. This has been very enlightening,” he said, pushing to his feet. “Please take care of yourself.”

He rapped on the door, then positioned himself in front of the window inset in the door so the orderly could see him. But Sarah’s voice floated at his back, tugging at him as if pulling on his shirt tails.

“Mr. Dragonfly?”

“Yoon,” he corrected softly. “My name is Seong-Jae Yoon.”

Even if he wondered if it was, truly. If Seong-Jae Yoon was just a mask…

And deep down he was the dragonfly, fluttering helplessly with his wings prisoned in grasping fingers.

“Mr. Yoon,” she repeated slowly, voice small. “Do you hate me? For what I did?” She sniffled again, gulping loudly. “He said you’re gay…and…I killed a lot of gay guys, it was…it was awful, I hate myself…”

Seong-Jae made himself look back at her. Made himself push past his feelings to process the girl in front of him, huddled small with her eyes streaming and her mouth a bitter twist of self-loathing. He did not have an easy answer. He did not know if he could ever be content with an easy answer, when both what happened to Sarah Sutterly and what she did were tragedies that never should have occurred.

And he only shook his head, and gave the only answer he could.

“I hate what you did,” he said. “I do not hate you.”

She only stared at him, her eyes wide. The door buzzed, popped open…and Seong-Jae let himself out, back into the real world, the present, the now waiting for him to deal with it when he could not even deal with his own past…let alone cleanse one girl of her sins.

But I cannot forgive you, either.