A knock at my door roused me out of my dreamless sleep.
“Come in,” I groaned, hoping it was someone I wanted to see, which nowadays meant Ada.
It was. She poked her blonde head in my room and squinted at the darkness.
“Sorry to wake you,” she said as she came in and gently closed the door behind her. She flicked on the lights.
“Arrrrrgh,” I moaned, throwing my arm over my eyes. “Thanks a lot. What time is it?”
“It’s almost ten, lazybones,” she said. I felt her come over and sit on the side of my bed.
“In the morning?”
“No, at night.”
“Then why are you waking me up? Can’t a girl sleep?” I mumbled. “I survived an exorcism, you know.”
“That’s what I came here to talk to you about,” she said lowering her voice.
I took my arm off my face and blinked at her. She looked as serious as anything.
“OK, what is it?” I whispered. An exorcism was the last thing we wanted to get caught talking about. I was so paranoid now, and apparently so was she.
“I…I don’t know what happened to you when you were…gone,” she said. She looked very small and scared. “But it hurt. It was…so terrifying. I didn’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Oh, Ada,” I told her, sitting up. “I’m fine. I came back.”
“Did you?” she asked. “You seem different.”
I bit my lip. “Well, I feel different. Not in a bad way, but I do. I don’t know what Roman did to me.”
“You went somewhere…”
I examined her face carefully. Had I talked to her about Pippa, about what I saw in the Thin Veil? I didn’t think so. At least, I didn’t remember.
“Somewhere?” I asked.
“I know about our grandmother,” she said deliberately. “Pippa. I know what happened to her.”
My eyes widened, the breath leaving me. “How…did I tell you?”
She smiled, lips tight and closed. “Sort of. I don’t know what’s going on Perry but…OK, this is going to sound really freaking weird but from time to time, I’m, like…hearing your thoughts.”
That threw me for a loop. I almost laughed then I remembered her bizarre question in the car. But…that was impossible.
I looked at her even closer, wondering if she was fucking with me. Not that she would, but there was no explanation that I could grasp. What, I suddenly became telepathic? How come I couldn’t hear anyone else’s thoughts?
She watched me for a few beats and I asked, “All righty, if that’s true, did you hear what I was thinking just now.”
She shook her head.
How about now? I asked internally, projecting my thoughts onto her with all the concentration my poor brain could muster.
“Yeah, I heard that one,” she exclaimed quietly, her smile broadening with wonder.
I matched her smile in wattage. This…I couldn’t even begin to fathom this discovery. It was like waking up and finding out you had super powers.
“Oh my god, OK, how about now…OK wait,” I said excitedly.
Is Maximus still in the house? I thought with power behind it.
Her expression was open, watching me.
“Well?” I asked.
“I didn’t hear anything,” she said.
I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes, my insides straining, like I was pushing through a massive headache.
Is the ginger still here? Or has he left? I asked.
I heard nothing so I opened my eyes to see Ada with her eyes closed.
“Still nothing?” I prodded her.
She opened her eyes. “No, I was trying to project my thoughts onto you. The assfart left right after you took your nap. He said he was going back home and he’d call you later.”
“Oh freaking joy,” I snarled. “Well, I can’t hear you. Try again.”
We tried back and forth for a while. Sometimes Ada heard me but only when it felt like I was busting a nut. Otherwise, it didn’t work and I never heard her.
“Maybe it’s a one-way street,” I mulled it over. One-way street was better than no way, providing I had the choice of whether she heard it or not. I didn’t want my sister to hear everything I thought, no matter how close we had become.
“Maybe,” she said. “Do you think Pippa passed something on to you?”
I shook my head. “Wouldn’t she have said something?”
“I don’t know. Perry, I’m scared.”
“About what?”
It was a stupid question.
She sighed and started picking at the blanket. “About everything she told you. How could mom do something like that to her? What if she does the same thing to you? To me?”
I grabbed Ada’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re going to be OK. You’re the favorite here. You’ve never given mom any sign that you’re about to go loco. Keep it like that.”
“You never did either until you were my age.” Her voice trembled.
“Ada,” I said determinedly. “You have the advantage. You now know about everything. You know the stakes. Just keep being yourself and if you ever see anything that doesn’t make sense to you, ignore it. Ignore it and talk to me. We’ll keep it just between us. No one ever has to know or suspect anything.”
“And what about you? You know mom is going to be watching you like a hawk. You don’t see the way she looks at you when you’re not looking. She has that same fucking look on her face as the doctor.”
“She’s still our mom,” I told her. Though I thought the same thing, I felt strangely defensive. “We can’t jump to conclusions and we can’t start hating her. I mean, fuck, she is our mother. We have to believe she would never do that to us. She’s not a monster. And if she wants to spend the rest of her life worrying about me…well…then she can do it from a far.”
“What?”