CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Yes, heading to that psych hospital suggested I might belong in one. I’d like to think I’m not the dumb blonde in a B horror movie, saying, “You’re a supernatural being with an agenda that might involve killing me, and you want me to come to an abandoned psych hospital at night? Well, okay, then!” It was almost certainly a trap, but I couldn’t sit at home, playing it safe, when taking a risk meant answering the question: What was Tristan really up to? Proceed with extreme caution and take what I could from the situation, because if I refused, then maybe next time he tried to trap me, I’d stumble in without realizing it.

I called Gabriel on the walk to Ricky’s bike. That was part of exercising extreme caution. Yes, he’d made it clear he didn’t want to hear from me, but this wasn’t Hey, I’d like to talk. For this, he would answer. I was sure of it.

I called and got his voice mail.

“I need your help,” I said. “Just hear me out, please. Tristan wants me to meet him at the psych hospital. I’m sure it’s a trap, but you know that won’t stop me from going. Ricky and I are on our way. I could really use your advice, though. You’re probably too busy to talk”—meaning that you don’t want to, but I’ll give you an escape route here—“so I’ll e-mail the details. If you can talk, for a minute, I’d appreciate that, but even an e-mail reply will do. Hell, I’ll take a text, Gabriel. Am I making a really dumbass move here? Is there anything I should know? Any advice you can give? Thanks.”

I hung up.

“He’ll answer that,” Ricky said, handing me my helmet. “Guaranteed.”

For once, Ricky was not right.

When I started to worry, Ricky pulled over at a gas station with a graffiti-covered pay phone. I called Gabriel from it. He answered, which took away every possible explanation except the one that hurt the most: I needed him, and he didn’t give a damn. I hung up without a word.

—

The psych hospital. It had a name, I was sure, but I’d never looked it up. I would have preferred never to think of it again.

There was an unconnected local cemetery beside the hospital grounds. The first time we visited, we’d walked through it and I’d reflected that, as creepy as graveyards are supposed to be, it didn’t bother me at all. But the abandoned hospital? It was the most frightening place I’d ever seen—in real life, in movies, even in nightmares.

The hospital buildings sat on at least ten acres of overgrown decay. I should have been fascinated, as I was by Villa Tuscana. I was not fascinated, except perhaps in the most basic definition of the word, where you can’t look away in spite of yourself. The visions I’d had there were enough to make me not want to go back. Yet it was more than that. It was the pervasive sense of the place, a dread and terror that crept under my skin and nestled in the marrow of my bones. Whatever one’s faith, death means the end of life on this earth. The prospect is unpleasant, but I figure once it happens, it happens, over and done. The hospital represented a very different kind of death.

There is no escape from the prison of the mind. I’d seen those words there. Phantom words left imprinted on my brain. Madness was inescapable. The hospital wasn’t an old-fashioned lunatic asylum, with chains welded to the floors, but you’d be imprisoned there nonetheless. In my visions, I’d seen people trapped there. Women. The little girl said that I was tapping into hereditary memories. Were those women like me? Tainted by fae blood? Driven mad by it?

Could I be driven mad by it?

Like before, the chained gates had appeared locked until we got close enough to see that the lock itself was undone. The gate gave an ominous whine as Ricky swung it open.

“A word of warning,” I said as we walked in. “The last time I was here, I saw visions.”

“When you were with me?”

“Yes.”

His gaze settled on me, not angry that I’d kept that from him. Only concerned. “Well, if it happens this time, tell me. Please. That might make it easier.”

“It will. Thanks.”

We headed up the overgrown road, picking our way past chunks of pavement, the grass and weeds breaking through, leaving a cobblestone of old asphalt. Trees stretched over us, the branches reaching out to one another but not quite meeting. I could imagine this road fifty years ago, in the bright summer sun, a cool and dark passage with a wind whispering through the leaves. A pretty sight, I’m sure, but I’m equally sure that no one was thinking of beauty when they planted these trees. They were a landscape transition, hiding the buildings beyond from the outside world. You’d turn in from the country road, pass through this leafy tunnel, and come out in the stark, cold reality of the hospital grounds.

After a quarter mile, squat industrial buildings replaced the trees lining the road. In their day, they’d have held little architectural interest, and even as ruins they weren’t any more enticing. Ugly cinder blocks with boarded-up and broken-out windows.

“Eden . . .”

The voice came as a whisper on the breeze. I turned.

“Hear something?” Ricky asked.

“You didn’t?”

He made a noise that sounded like a no, as if reluctant to admit to it, reaching over at the same time to touch my hand, his closed switchblade refreshingly cool against my fingers.

“We’ll go that way, then,” he said, nodding in the direction I’d turned. “Whatever happens, stay close. No splitting up this time, okay?”

I nodded, and we headed along a narrow passage between two buildings. There was no path there, not even a worn strip of dirt, but we walked through and found ourselves at a gate so ivy-choked that, from the road, it had looked like a bush.

“Where’s the path?” I said. “If there’s a gate, there should be something leading to it. More than a gap between buildings.”

“Yeah.”

I took a closer look at the ivy. “I’m no gardener, but I helped ours enough to know this isn’t native to Illinois. It was planted here.” I eased back and looked at the thin wrought iron, completely engulfed in flora. “It’s almost like they tried to hide the gate. Or is my imagination just running away with me?”

“Then we’ve got the same imagination.” He cleared enough ivy to peer through the gate. “Okay, that’s weird. We have a fenced yard of nothing.”

He took hold of the gate and yanked. The ivy fell away easily. Too easily.

“Someone’s opened this for us,” he said.

“Yep.” I took the gun from my pocket. “I think we’ve found our trap.”

“Then it’s a very strange one.” He threw open the gate. “Because if someone’s hiding, I don’t know where.”

It really was a “yard of nothing”—unless you counted weeds. The wrought-iron fence encircled a patch about two hundred feet square. And there was nothing inside except grass and weeds.

Before he let the gate swing shut behind us, Ricky examined the fence. He knocked his boot into a space between the slats and heaved himself up.

“Yep,” I said. “Even if the gate mysteriously locks behind us, it’s a six-foot, climbable fence. At worst, you could boost me up and over.”

“Weird.”

“Uh-huh. So maybe not a trap?”

He grunted, meaning he wasn’t going to be so quick to dismiss the possibility. “We’ll have a look around, in case there’s something we’re supposed to see here, but don’t take a step without clearing it first.”

“In case we walk into a literal trap.”

He nodded. We each moved forward, testing the way as we went. I got about three paces before my sneaker nudged something unyielding. I started to bend.

“Hold up.” Ricky came over and prodded it with his boot. “Go stand by the gate.”

“Um, so if it blows up, you’ll be the one who loses fingers? Very chivalrous, but I found it. You go stand by the gate.”

He rubbed his mouth. “Sorry. This place . . . I didn’t like it the last time and it’s worse now. There’s something that makes me want to sling you over my shoulder and carry you out, and it’s bad enough that I’d almost be tempted if I didn’t know you’d kick the hell out of me.”

I moved closer and rubbed between his shoulders. The tension there was rock-hard. His face was just as tight, pupils constricted despite the darkness.

“What do you want to do?” I asked.

“Honestly? Leave.”

“If you feel strongly about that—”

“Nah. I’m not the one with psychic powers. I’m just . . .” Another look around. “Uneasy.”

“Check whatever I found, then. I’ll stand by the gate.”

A light kiss, and some of that tension fell from his face. “Thank you. Next time, the dangerous part is yours. I promise.”

“You’re so sweet.”

I backed up to the gate. Ricky knelt and prodded whatever was buried. His brows pinched. He grabbed a handful of undergrowth and ripped it off. Then he kept going, clearing it and sweeping away the dirt.

“Not a bomb, I’m guessing,” I said as I came close.

“Death-related but not death-causing.”

It was a grave, its marker set so deeply into the ground that it was almost as if whoever planted it there hoped it would soon be covered.

I looked around. “That’s what this is. A cemetery.”

“For those who didn’t have family willing to claim them. A necessary part of the hospital, but obviously not one they cared to advertise to the other patients.”

That’s why it was hidden away back here. No path to the gate, tucked behind buildings, without standing stones to advertise its purpose.

Interesting, but did it mean anything? I’d heard someone call my name. Was that to get me here?

Gabriel always told me to follow my instincts. Well, he did before he decided that my instincts were all in my head.

I eased back on my haunches and looked around.

“Want me to start clearing the stones so you can read them?” Ricky asked.

“And you say you’re not psychic.” I forced a smile, but my heart wasn’t in it. The same sense of foreboding that niggled at him pressed down on me, the darkness closing in despite the bright moon.

I searched for an omen. Even a raven or an owl gliding overhead would have been a sign that everything was all right, that I was under someone’s protection.

“Do you have your tusk?” Ricky asked. “As much as I can’t believe I just said that.”

He got a real smile for that. “Yes, I have my handy-dandy evil-repelling tusk, which has never actually been proven to work, but since I didn’t have it when we were attacked by elves, I’ll presume it does. You have yours?”

“Yep.”

“Then let’s start clearing.”