A slim, solitary figure stood just outside the black spikes of the clinic’s treacherous fence. His hands gripped the bars as if he wanted to tear them down with his bare hands. Head tilted up, he stared toward the upper floors.
With lamplight behind me, I knew that anyone watching from the outside could see me. Raising my hand high above my head, I laid my palm against the cold glass. The storm was passing. The intensity of the lightning dimmed, but I still saw it when the figure outside raised his own hand toward mine.
I’d know that shape anywhere. And even as the storm acceded the night back to darkness, I never took my eyes off the spot where I knew Bran Cameron waited for me.
There was no mirror to expand the tiny, tiled bathroom. As I pulled the chain on the overhead tank and washed my hands and face with frigid water and silky, lavender-scented soap, the walls began to close in on me. The large clock on the sitting room mantel bonged nine times. I added up the hours. Fifty-nine. Only fifty-nine hours left before the Dim returned to take us home.
Nope. I commanded my rapidly escalating pulse to slow. No. No, you are not going to freak out right now. You just need a plan. Think, Walton. How would Bran get himself out of this?
His name passed through my thoughts like a soothing balm. My heartbeat calmed. I could breathe again.
“Bran’s here,” I whispered. My hands relaxed their grip on the pillar sink. And by now, he’s contacted the others.
Bran and Collum may not like each other much, but they’d work together to get us out. And I knew my best friend. Phoebe and Mac would tear down heaven itself to save Doug and me.
I was still smiling when I plopped down in one of the wing chairs near the fireplace. When I looked up, the others were all watching me. I tried to hold on to the comfort I’d wrapped around myself, but like a sunbeam on a cold and cloudy day, it was fleeting. The warmth dissipated. I felt my chin start to wobble as the faces around me blurred to pale ovals. I nipped hard on a snag of cuticle and stared down at the jumping flames.
I will not cry. I won’t. I won’t—?
Annabelle Allen rose from her spot on the floor. Smiling, she laid the sleeping kitten in my lap. “Here,” she said. “Bootsie will make it all better. Feel how soft she is?” She picked up my limp hand and laid it on the warm, purring body.
An image flashed. Hecty the menace, strands of doll hair snagged in her whiskers. The scene of home made me think of Moira and Lucinda. Of Mom.
The tears fell.
“Thank you,” I choked out. “Thank you, Annabelle.”
I must’ve dozed off. When the hallway door suddenly opened, I jerked forward, wrenching my neck. Everyone went stiff and silent as Dr. Carson strolled in. Nurse Hannah and the matron were on his heels, both toting silver trays covered with white cloths.
“Evening medication, ladies.” Dr. Carson smiled, nodding at each person in turn. His gaze held on me. “I thought I would drop by personally. See how our new patient is settling in.”
When no one responded, his affected grin began to wilt. “I see,” he sniffed. “Well? What are you waiting for?” Snapping his fingers twice at the nurses, he said, “Get on with it.”
“Yes, Dr. Carson.” Nurse Hannah quickly began handing out pills, drafts in glass tubes, and small tin cups of water.
Mrs. Forbes, who had been noticeably silent since dinner, stared down at the pills in her hand. “Where is Louisa Caldecott?” The older woman jutted a chin at Hannah. “I asked that one earlier, but she wouldn’t say a word.”
“As is correct, Mrs. Forbes,” the doctor replied. “You know we do not discuss—”
“Will she return to us a drooling, cat-petting ninny like Miss Allen over there?” The volume of the older woman’s voice rose as she stood.
“I do not believe I care for your tone, Mrs. Forbes,” Dr. Carson said. “Sit down.”
All the other patients began to study the cups in their hands. To my surprise, however, Lila Jamesson stood and moved to take Mrs. Forbes’s elbow. “Don’t mind her, Dr. Carson. Dorothy is tired, that’s all. It has been an exhausting day, what with Louisa and the new girl.”
“I do not appreciate having my methods questioned, Mrs. Forbes.” The doctor’s nostrils flared as he studied the older woman. “Perhaps it is time for another ice bath to cool your humors?”
Mrs. Forbes’s eyes went wide. “N-no,” she stuttered. “No. I—?I apologize, Doctor. I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, yes.” Ignoring the woman’s protests, Dr. Carson gestured to the matron, who set down her tray and went to the door. “I believe cold hydrotherapy is just the thing to put you in order.”
Two attendants I’d never seen before entered the room. Mrs. Forbes’s haughty manner had disappeared completely as she begged and pleaded. It did no good. The burly attendants shoved the now-pale Lila Jamesson aside. Each gripping Mrs. Forbes by an arm, they began to drag her from the room.
I jumped to my feet. “What are you doing?” I demanded. “Let her go! She’s an old woman, for God’s sake.”
Before I could say another word, Carson’s thugs had the sobbing Mrs. Forbes out in the hall. The matron followed and slammed the door shut behind her.
Carson’s steely eyes locked on mine. And though every impulse told me to shut the hell up, I didn’t shrink. “Where are you taking her?”
“Mrs. Forbes will be taken to the hydrotherapy chamber and given twenty minutes in an ice bath, followed by ten more with the cold hose. I’ve found a generous cold water treatment wonderful at cooling the temper.” Apparently done with our little exchange, Carson then rounded on Lila. “Mrs. Jamesson, you have become very forward again. Perhaps it is time to schedule a few more rounds of manipulation?”
Lila paled and took a step back. “No. Not that, please.”
Seeing fear, horror, and disgust mingle on Lila’s lovely face, my skin crawled.
It can’t be what I think. I’m wrong. God, please let me be wrong.
Because I had a terrible suspicion I knew what Carson meant by “manipulation.” I’d read about it only recently, and it had made me want to throw up. A Victorian method, administered by male doctors to cure “hysteria” in women. It was intimate, intensely personal, and amounted to nothing more than sexual abuse. For a woman like Lila Jamesson . . .
“Then,” Carson was saying, “I suggest you keep your thoughts to yourself.”
Lila nodded. A tear dropped to the carpet at her feet.
Upon the doctor’s barked order, each patient obediently swallowed down pills or liquid or both as Hannah checked them off on her list.
The nurse came to me last, holding out a palm-size tray with two ivory pills and a glass vial filled with a dark, oily substance.
I picked up the tablets, palming them as I pretended to pop them in my mouth. The bitter liquid I held under my tongue as I fake-swallowed and gave the nurse a closed-mouth smile.