Once the lights are out, I meditate and focus on my mental walls. Whenever a stray thought about Aaron, Taylor, or their relationship with Molly wanders into view, I push it into the folder near the back wall so that I can quickly shove them away from Dacia’s prying eyes. I visualize that inner wall as an impenetrable fortress, surrounded by a force field, encased in a Cone of Silence, and covered by a Cloak of Invisibility.
The Aaron and Taylor memories are recent. I don’t think they’ll be that hard to hide. But the Molly memories are still unpacking, and I don’t know how to manage that process or speed it up. I usually spend weeks working with Kelsey after one of my tenants moves on, sorting through their memories and trying to get my head in order. It’s not something I control. The Molly memories keep piling up when I’m distracted. They’re disorganized, and way too many of them involve the Quinns.
Half an hour later, I’ve done my best to sort through my incoming memory mail. But I’m still too wound up to sleep. So I browse through the audiobooks on the intranet, hoping I’ll find the one I’m looking for.
It’s there. Order of the Phoenix. I skip to Chapter Twenty-One and forward to a section near the end. Hermione is accusing Ron of having the “emotional range of a teaspoon.”
I wonder if Aaron is in the car now, listening to the same thing.
And then I shove that thought into the folder with the others.
I dream of garden shears and X-Acto knives. Cold, pitch-dark basements. A girl with ice-blue eyes. Light that feels like it’s burning straight through my retinas. And then the light turns into a snake, and I turn into a snake, although I’m pretty sure those last two are due more to my choice of bedtime reading than to Molly’s memories.
Twice, I wake up huddled in a ball, whimpering. But the pills give me just enough control that I don’t cry out. Just enough control that I can—eventually—fall back asleep. That part was so much easier when Aar—
No.
Back into the fortress with you.
Raise shields.
Lower the Cone of Silence.
Sleep.
“. . . get her to wake the hell up.”
When I open my eyes, the television is on, even though I’m positive I didn’t turn it on. A guy of maybe twenty-five is staring at something on a computer screen. A newscaster, maybe? He seems a bit too average looking, though, and his khaki-colored shirt is more like a uniform. There’s a name tag, but I can only read the first four letters—Timm.
“Finally,” he says, when he glances toward the camera. “I was about to send someone to knock on your door. Was beginning to wonder if you understand English.”
It takes me a second to realize that he’s talking to me. I sit straight up, yanking the covers around me.
“You do understand English, don’t you?” Timm-Whatever’s tone is snide, almost combative.
“Y-yes.”
“Good. That’s what my chart says, but I’ve been calling your name for the past ten minutes.”
“The volume was low,” I tell him. “And I had a rough night.”
“Yeah, well, that’s why they let you sleep two extra hours. Anyway, you’ve got twenty minutes to get showered and grab breakfast.”
The screen goes dark again.
After I shovel down some cereal, I force myself to shower. I lock the bathroom door and try to forget that the ceiling might have eyes. I’ll think of it as the school locker room. People might be watching, but so what?
The water is blessedly hot and steam hangs in the air, fogging up the glass shower door and mirror. I feel a little more alive by the time I’m finished. I wrap the towel around me and then open the cabinet above the sink to search for a toothbrush.
When I close the cabinet, a word has appeared near the center of the mirror, drawn in the condensation as if by someone’s finger:
PEEKABO
I step back quickly, nearly slipping on the damp tile. The door behind me is still locked, although I’m sure they have keys.
Is the word misspelled? Or did I just catch the steam graffiti artist before he or she could finish?
As I watch, a second letter o forms—PEEKABO becomes PEEKABOO. Then on the next line, the letters pop up one at a time as I watch: WELCOME TO THE WARREN!
The word triggers an Emily memory of a book about rabbits. Watership Down. The rabbits lived in tunnels called warrens.
A heart appears at the end of the welcome, then the entire thing vanishes, as though an invisible hand has wiped the slate clean. All that remains is a damp smear in the middle of the mirror.
I dress under the blankets again. Maybe hallucinations are an aftereffect of whatever drug Dacia made me inhale last night?
My heartbeat has almost returned to normal when the door opens—they don’t even bother with the pretense of knocking this time. It’s a different woman. Her name tag reads Bellamy, and she’s wearing a khaki shirt like the guy I saw on the TV. An odd-looking gun is holstered on the hip of her dark-brown pants. She doesn’t look friendly. She doesn’t even make eye contact.
“Come with me.”
I grab my phone and start to stick it in the back pocket of my jeans.