The room is filled with spirits, but I can’t see them like I usually can. They’re worked into such a frenzy, so upset for some reason that they swirl the room in a blur. I think there might be dozens of them. Hundreds of them? I remember the chill I felt when I first arrived here, the presence of spirits so close and yet unable to touch me. Now, from the doorway, I can hear their voices drifting in and out of my head.
I sink to the floor. I’ve never heard such agony. They’re begging for my help, begging to be set free. Pleading with me to help them move on, beseeching Aidan to stop what he’s doing to them. Flashes of their lives and deaths spring up behind my eyes, as vivid as images on a movie screen: a man throwing a ball for his beloved dog, a woman rocking her baby to sleep, a toddler taking his first, uncertain steps. Then, a hospital heart monitor flatlining, a car skidding across the meridian, a pair of eyelids dropping heavily and permanently shut.
I press my hands to the sides of my head, like I think I can squeeze them out.
I’m shaking so hard that my teeth are chattering, making it almost impossible to get the words out. My heart is pounding so fast I can’t even feel each individual beat; instead, it feels like my heart is humming, just like the woman hummed in my nightmare before she tried to kill me.
I manage to curl into a ball, trying to keep myself warm, rocking back and forth like a crazy person in a padded room. Mom wanted me to come here so what happened in that parking lot would never happen again.
What would she say if she could see me now?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Behind Closed Doors
Aidan must hear me because he turns to see me crouching in the doorway. He’s at my side almost before I take my next labored breath. He lifts me up and carries me into the hallway with one arm, slamming the door to that room shut with the other.
I had no idea my mentor/father was so strong. I feel like a baby in his arms. And not the helpless kind of baby I feel like in my dreams. This feels like something else entirely. This feels warm, familiar, comforting. This must be why little kids are always begging their fathers to pick them up, carry them, give them a piggy-back ride. In Aidan’s arms I feel safe.
Gently he lays me on the ground in the hallway and presses his hand to my forehead, like a mom checking whether her child has a temperature. Soon my teeth aren’t chattering and my fingertips aren’t blue with cold. My heart slows until it feels normal again, one beat after another, steady and strong. Ba-bum. Ba-bum. Ba-bum.
But it doesn’t feel like it did that day at the hospital. Aidan helped all those spirits move on then. This time I can feel the spirits are still trapped on the other side of that door, here on Earth.
As soon as I open my eyes he takes his hand away from my head, like he doesn’t want me to see him touching me. “What are you doing here?”
“What am I doing here?” I shake my head, still slightly out of breath. “What are you doing here? In there?” I point weakly toward his lab.
“That’s my work,” he says simply, as though that’s enough to explain anything.
“Your work is not helping spirits move on? Isn’t that completely at odds with the whole maintaining-the-balance thing you said was so important?”
He shakes his head and backs away from me slightly, still crouching on the floor like a frog. “Of course not.” His voice sounds completely normal, as though he wasn’t just tormenting a roomful of spirits desperate to move on. As though his daughter/mentee hadn’t just nearly passed out in front of him.
“How can you say that?” I press my hands onto the cool floor and push myself up into a seated position. I cross my legs beneath me and straighten my spine. It’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re still in your pajamas. Especially when your pajamas include a T-shirt with a picture of a Care Bear. “What am I doing here?” I ask finally, even though Aidan asked me the very same thing just seconds ago.
“You tell me. You’re the one who came to my lab.”
“Your lab? Is that what you call that torture chamber?” Aidan doesn’t answer, so I keep talking. “I don’t mean here, in this building right now. I mean here on this campus, in this country, a zillion miles away from my mom and my protector and everything and everyone I’ve ever known.”
“You’re honing your skills.”
“Why do I need to get better at helping spirits move on if your work is all about not helping them move on?” Frustration is making me nearly as hot as I was cold before. In my head I can still hear the faintest cries from behind the closed door, and I can hear Aidan’s voice answering them loudly: No. Not yet. I shudder. Anna said the same thing to me earlier tonight.
“What do you mean not yet?” I ask, as though he said the words out loud.
“I mean I’m not going to help them move on right now.”
“But why?” I ask. “If you wait too long, they’ll go dark, one right after the other. Just like the demon who killed Anna. Just like the demon I saw tonight.”