It was Tamhas, looking at her with one eyebrow cocked. “You all right there, Rose?” He even asked it in a normal tone of voice.
“I—” She hesitated. It had been so long since anyone had spoken to her like she wasn’t some broken thing that would break further if they raised their voice to a normal volume. Her usual inclination, had someone asked her this, before things had gone so badly skewiff, would have been, “I’m fine, thank you.”
But things were not fine, they were not fine at all. She’d been shot in the bloody heart by Graham this very morning, Graham and that harlot Miriam Shell, and it, when coupled with everything that had happened these last years, was more than she could contain. “No,” she said, it all coming out in a hot rush, “no, I’m not all right at all.”
Tamhas just stared at her, eyebrow fixed, thinly streaked with a few stray greys mixed with the black hairs. “No,” he said at last, as if pronouncing a judgment, “I reckon you’re not.”
“They all hate me,” she said, letting it gush out. “Every last one of them.” She didn’t even care that he had been so noncommittal in his response. He’d bloody well talked to her, asked her if she was all right, and that was a sight better than what anyone else had done of late. “Everybody. And Miriam Shell and Graham are together now, and—”
“Haud yer weesht, lass,” Tamhas said, holding up a hand to stay her babble. “What’s that about Miriam and Graham?”
“They’re shagging,” Rose said, and it came out boiling with hatred and self-pity and every other sort of bubbling emotion she could produce. Hot tears of rage were already soaking her cheeks, and as hard as she’d tried to hold back from weeping in sight of others, the steady stream of insults, of hatred, and finally this—this damned abomination—this last insult to cap all insults, Miriam Shell shagging her man—this was it—
Tamhas reached up and scratched his thinning hair, skin tingeing slightly red from the neck up. “Aye, I suppose that was inevitable now that…things have happened the way they have.” He drew a long breath, not meeting her eyes, and said, speaking to the damned ground, “You have to understand, Rose…people are scared. And when people get scared…they catch a case of the stupids.”
“They’re scared of me,” she said, feeling like it was all judgment, pronounced from high above and raining down on her, handcuffed, in a dock.
“Not just you,” Tamhas said, keeping his distance. “You and other things. It’s a tense time, you know. A bad time to be one of our people in Europe.”
Rose blinked tears out of her eyes. “What’s that?”
Tamhas stirred, having settled in thought after his last pronouncement. “Hm? Oh. Our cloisters, our communities…they’re going quiet all over Europe. Most of us who’ve been around awhile, we have family, friends, all that…all over the place, really. When you’re keeping a secret as big as the fact that we have superhero powers…it helps to have an interconnected support web, you know? But those other cloisters, in other countries…” He reached up and scratched his eyebrow. “Well, we’re getting no answer when we call. No return letters when we send—or emails, or whatever it is you kids nowadays are using.” Tamhas sunk into a momentary silence. “So I wouldn’t go taking all the blame if I were you. People are scared of you, surely. Always have been, of your type, since the…olden days.” Tamhas’s eyes glimmered a little here, not with warmth, but with some knowledge he seemed to be holding back. “They’ll get over it, though. They know you, Rose.” Now he favored her with a hint of a smile. “And you haven’t changed, really. You are who you always have been. They’ll come around to that, in time.”
She sniffled, feeling the sobs die a strange death inside. It still stung, no doubt, that deep-drilled pain that rolled all the way to the core of her. But something in Tamhas’s words rang true, and she managed to get out, “Thank you.”
He nodded, and started back up the slope, hands cupped behind him. He was a man at peace, though clearly things were on his mind, and he walked back up the hill toward the village while Rose just watched him go, not feeling good, by any means…but feeling more reassured, and perhaps even slightly at peace…in a way she hadn’t felt in months.
And there, high above her, watched the six strangers.
*
Zack could almost taste Rose’s isolation from back here, and it was a bitter flavor. The sheer hope that had swelled in her when Tamhas had spoken to her had been like a drink of water on a hot day, and he’d felt it almost as acutely as she probably had in the moment.
“I always wanted to see Scotland,” Bastian said, blowing air out between his lips, amusement almost glinting in one eye, “but I gotta say…this isn’t the tour I was hoping to take. One little town, one little tweener girl’s feelings, and not a drop of Scotch to soften the bludgeoning.”
“I think she’s technically a teenager,” Eve said, her own arms folded, and no sign of amusement. “And a dramatic one at that.”
“All teenagers are dramatic,” Zack said, feeling like he was forced into the position of defending her. He stood there, in the waist-high grasses, feeling the chill of the air prickling at him, annoyed that he was feeling anything at all.
He was dead, for crying out loud. Why did this illusion or memory or whatever feel so damned real?
“This one is experiencing events of a slightly more dramatic nature than most,” Harmon said, hands in his pockets, examining the ground, maybe because he was sick of the same scenery and the same faces around him by now. Zack understood that. Harmon looked up. “She’s been shunned by everyone she knows and has ever cared about. This town is like a prison for her, and the only things keeping her here are the fear and uncertainty of how things could be any better out in the cold world beyond its borders.”
“What is the point of this?” Gavrikov asked, still as pale as ever. He wasn’t shaking, though, which was a good sign. Occasionally he did, but his lack of flame to cover himself seemed to bother the Russian more than witnessing these events unfold. “She has a sad story, yes? Why are we seeing it?”
“Yes, I don’t recall having to experience the last girl’s sad-sack backstory when I was murdered into her head,” Bjorn said. His eyes were dark, a pained malignance lurking behind them. “This is some form of payback. Torture because she doesn’t need us.”
“You know a succubus could torture us way worse than anything we’ve seen so far here,” Zack said. Bjorn inclined his head slightly, as if conceding the point. “Something’s going on here. Maybe she’s showing it to us to keep us distracted.”
Eve laughed, a loud bark. “We are prisoners in her head. Why would she need to distract us?”
“Prisoners can cause problems from within prison,” Harmon said carefully, giving them a sly look. “We certainly did within Sienna.”
“You said your telepathic powers weren’t working in here,” Eve said.
“They aren’t,” Harmon said. “But I’m hardly the only one of us here.”
“Are you suggesting we try and use our powers?” Gavrikov asked. “Trigger them from within? Because we’re blind right now. She is keeping us out of her current thoughts, which is maybe why we’re here.” He extended his arms to indicate the idyllic village around them. “When in Sienna’s mind, she let us see what was going on at all times—”
“Almost,” Eve said, a little pouty. “She tended to put us away when she was entertaining male company.” She snorted.
“With that exception,” Gavrikov said, “and I didn’t mind that—she let us have the run of her mind the rest of the time. We could access her memories, see what she saw, offer counsel.” He looked around the broad, grey Scottish skies. “Here…we are truly prisoners, but in a prison of different construction—a prison of her past.”
“If I have to keep living this,” Bjorn said, “I’m going to go insane. Or start a prison riot.”
“Good luck with that,” Harmon said.