"You could have picked something nicer to tell her. I don't want her to worry. "
"Oh, relax. Want to snoop in her office with me, or do you want to hide in the hall like a good little girl?"
I glared at him, pushing past. He opened her door and walked in like he owned the place, sitting down at her desk and propping his feet on it as he opened one of the drawers.
"Who are we looking for?"
"Vivian? She'd be . . . I don't know. Somewhere safe, where faeries couldn't get to her? And with medical stuff. And she's a Level Seven paranormal, if that helps. " No doubt the IPCA researchers would be thrilled with the information I could give them about myself now. They'd never been able to figure me out before. Lucky them; ignorance was bliss. Or at least less painful.
He hummed cheerily as he flipped through the folders. I fidgeted, sure that at any moment Raquel would come back and I'd be busted. I couldn't face her right now. She'd try to rationalize this, comfort me. There was no way to make this better. There never would be.
"Here we go. The iron wing. "
"The iron wing?"
"There's a whole section of Containment where the walls are plated with iron. Makes it impossible to open a faerie door there. "
Interesting. That might have been nice to know while I was here. Yet another example of information IPCA hadn't trusted me with. I'd never been one of them, never really been a member. Of anything.
We took a roundabout route to Containment, then went through a supply door I'd never bothered to open. It led to a long, narrow hallway. I thanked whatever luck I had left (at this point it didn't seem like much) that we didn't run into anyone. Jack stopped in front of a plain door, a small, temporary plaque next to it labeled "Seven, Medical. " Couldn't they have used her name, at least?
I pushed the door open and there, in a bed in the middle of the perfectly white room, lay the person who was the closest I would ever have to family. I walked slowly up, taking in the myriad of IVs, machines, and monitors she was hooked up to. And instead of the comfort I'd been looking for, I was overwhelmed with guilt.
"What happened to her?" Jack asked, leaning against the wall by the door.
"I did," I whispered. Why hadn't I tried harder to get through to her? I could have stopped her, could have convinced her to stop killing the paranormals. Instead I'd ripped the souls away from her, leaving her with barely enough to hang on.
But if I hadn't taken the souls, Lish still would have been trapped, never set free. I hated this. Why couldn't I ever love someone and not have to worry about all the other ways they made me feel?
I took Vivian's icy hand in my own, careful not to disturb the IV. "Hey, Viv. " I tucked a stray strand of blond hair behind her ear, but her eyes stayed closed, the only evidence of life the rhythmic beeping of one of the monitors. Her breathing barely even disturbed the blankets.
"So. " I choked back tears, trying to keep my voice even. "Turns out you were right all along. We really don't belong anywhere, do we? I tried to. I tried so hard, but-" The sobs came then, and I leaned my head over onto her shoulder. "I'm sorry," I cried, my words muffled by her still body. "I'm so sorry. "
After a few minutes I felt a hand on my back. I stood up, wiping at my face. Great, now I'd gone and gotten her shirt wet, after everything else.
"It's not your fault," Jack said, his voice softer than I'd ever heard it.
"Tell that to her. "
"Evie. You didn't do any of this. The faeries did. It's their fault. All of it. "
I closed my eyes. He was just trying to make me feel better. I'd done this to her.
But then again, he had a point. If the faeries hadn't raised her the way they did, tried to pit her against me, we wouldn't have had that confrontation. They were the ones who broke her, twisted her until she thought nothing of stealing the life energy of every paranormal she could find.
Bleep, they were the ones who made us in the first place.
It was their fault I was this thing, this cold, empty husk that didn't belong anywhere. It was their fault that Vivian was lying there, that she'd never wake up again. It was even their fault that Arianna was doomed to an eternal life she never wanted. All the people who had been killed or turned by vampires across the centuries. All the kids like Jack who'd gone missing, forced to live among the faeries as pets-or worse. My mother, missing or dead, but gone, never to be mine.
All their fault.
"I hate them," I whispered.
"Of course you do. " Jack put his arm around my shoulder. "Come on, we should go before Raquel figures out you're with me. "
I nodded and squeezed Vivian's hand one last time.
We walked back out through the hall, passing the open cells I'd ignored before, most of which were empty. I jumped, startled, at a voice.