“She knew I had done some things to Dex.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “What things?”
“Don’t judge me, but…I switched his medication. I mean, I found out what he was taking and then I replaced half his pil s with placebos.”
“Jesus,” Maximus swore, his eyes going wide as saucers. He let out a low whistle. “Perry, I’m not sure what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” I said quickly, feeling cold sweat nip at the center of my palms. “I know what I did was wrong. I just had to know. I had to know what was wrong with him.”
“Did you find out?”
“I think he’s as sane as I am. I don’t think there’s anything that medication can fix.”
“I don’t know about that,” he began.
“I do,” I said firmly. “And I don’t mean to talk about him. I don’t want to talk about him. There was something else.
Pippa, circus freak, said that she’s being watched. By the soul ess ones who keep her there…the…demons.”
“Demons?” Maximus repeated. He sounded rather disbelieving and I didn’t want to have to convince him by bringing up some of the freaky shit I dealt with in the past.
Freaky shit like Jacob.
“Yes, that’s what she said,” I reiterated. “Then she said, I’m in real danger, especial y if he thinks I’m fine. When I’m safe, the damage wil be done. That she’d come after me…”
“She? Who? Pippa?”
I looked down, my head twitching no. I placed my hand on the crook of his elbow, needing something solid to hold onto.
“No. Not Pippa. Pippa was warning Dex. About Abby.”
Because my hand was on him, I could feel al the muscles in his arm tense up at the mention of her name. I looked up at him slyly, and grinned. I felt a wave of hate dripping off of myself, as if it clung wetly to my teeth.
“You remember me, don’t you Redboy?”
A look of utter terror fil ed his face. “W-what?”
“I said, you remember Abby, don’t you?” I gripped his arm for a second and then let go. The strange rush of anger I felt seconds earlier was released. “You told me about her yourself, in New Mexico.”
“That’s not what you just said,” he stammered and pul ed away like he was suddenly scared of me. “You just cal ed me Redboy.”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “Maybe crazy is contagious.”
He seemed to think about that.
“Maybe,” he final y said, his voice low and wispy. A line of fear never left his face. “Maybe.”
“Wel , we saw Abby al over the damn place.”
“We?”
“Dex and I. We both saw her. In the asylum, on the street, in the apartment.” I couldn’t help but shudder at the vision of her walking across his apartment, dripping blood onto the floor, the thick splats. The wasps. The smel of gin.
“I think she might be fucking with me,” I said slowly. It was like dawn was bursting through the windows and il uminating a very simple problem. “Abby. I think she’s haunting me.”
Maximus nodded but I could tel he wasn’t too impressed with my deduction skil s. Of freaking course Abby was haunting me. That’s what Pippa warned would happen.
That’s why I saw Abby in my dreams, in the hospital. That’s who was knocking on the doors and leaving baby slippers everywhere.
Talking about her was making me feel extremely edgy, like she was perched somewhere on my shoulder, waiting to slip inside through my ears.
“Can ghosts…,” I started, then looked around me. The crowd was loud and the sound of clinking glasses reverberated around the room, but I was stil incredibly conscious of what we were talking about. “Can ghosts fuck with you like that? Like, get inside your head? Can they…
take over?”
“You mean like possession?” he asked, and at the word, my blood ran cold. I brought my cardigan around me.
I urged him to continue by gesturing with my fingers.
“It depends on the culture,” he explained. “In some societies, shamans can possess someone. In others, like in Wicca, they can be possessed by the Goddess, wil ingly.
In Catholic society, some believe you can be possessed by the Devil.”
“Do you?”
He looked a bit uncomfortable and fidgeted in his seat, trying to get comfortable. “I don’t know if I do. It’s usual y something else. Mental il ness.”
Oh, of course. Everyone goes for the mental y il angle.
“OK, and what about ghosts. Plain ol’ dead people.
Spirits. Specters. Et cetera. Do you think they can take over?”
He pursed his lips and wiggled them back and forth as he thought. “No. And if they can, if they do, I believe it has to be voluntary. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t get inside your head. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a nasty, revenge-fueled poltergeist on your hands, straight from Seattle, Washington.”
I let out a burst of hot, booze-soaked breath I must have been holding onto for the last hour. So there was a distinct chance that some of the crazy, terrifying things that were happening to me were because Abby had decided to haunt me and make my life a living hel . I felt partial y relieved at having come to some sort of conclusion, but it left me with the overal debilitating sense of what the fuck do I do now?
I mean, seriously?