“Is that all?”
She paused. After a long moment, she lied and nodded.
She was a terrible liar. He sighed. “We will work on that another time. Do you remember anything else about this figure from your memory?”
She bounced her leg again. It was a terrible habit. It annoyed the shit out of everyone who had the bad luck of sitting next to her. It also made her absolutely terrible at poker. She turned her attention down into her lap once more, picking at that stray string like it was the only thing in her life that mattered. “No. That’s all.”
“Marguerite?”
It was clear he didn’t believe her. But she didn’t care. She shook her head. “That’s all. The claws, the silver bands, the weird…black fabric. And that one phrase. ‘You will never die alone.’”
The man let it slide and moved on. “It seems to imply that he believed you would die more than once.”
“I guess.”
“Do you have any other memories of dying?” When she didn’t respond, he pressed. “Marguerite, we’ve been working together for some time, like you said. It’s time to be honest with me. You can trust me. This is a safe place.”
“I know, but I don’t—I don’t want to be like this.”
“No one does. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. This isn’t your fault. You aren’t to blame for any of this.”
“How do you know?” She wrinkled her nose. “What if I’m just defective? What if I’m just wired wrong?”
“Then that still isn’t your fault, princess.” His low, rumbling voice went soft. His nickname for her and the way he said it sent an unwelcome shiver up her spine. “You can trust me. Now…can you recall dying any other times?”
Swallowing, she nodded. “It’s all I can remember.”
“And is the figure always there?”
“Yeah.”
“And you never see anything else about him?”
“No.”
She hated lying. But she didn’t know what else to say. The problem was that she could remember more. She could recall a flash of pure white hair, tendrils of it that escaped the black hood the figure wore. She could never see his face. But that one detail was always clear.
And it was extremely problematic.
The man across the coffee table from her had gone back to writing in his notepad. She looked up at him and winced.
Dr. Gideon Raithe, psychiatrist. Her psychiatrist.
More importantly, he was also her caseworker. He was the reason she kept getting regular checks from the state saying that she was too disabled to work. They weren’t much, but they covered her expenses. She could pay her meager rent at the “halfway home” she had been set up in, and she could feed and clothe herself. She even had enough money for a cellphone.
And it was all because he kept checking the boxes saying she was trying to get better. More than once, she wanted to run for the hills. She didn’t know why, but she was always so tempted to buy a one-way bus ticket to Mexico and disappear in the jungles of the Yucatan or some shit. I’d end up murdered in a week or getting kidnapped and sold to some drug cartel. Nah. Probably just murdered.
He sat in the chair across from her, his all-black suit standing out against the white linen of the upholstered fabric. He was always dressed like he was going to some formal affair. The most dressed-down she had ever seen him was when he had spilled tea on his suitcoat and had to conduct her therapy session in just a white tie and a black vest.
Sharp jaw, sharp cheekbones, and bright silver eyes. He had the kind of voice that she swore must resonate the glassware in the room with how rumbly it was. His receptionist wanted him in the worst way. It was clear by the way the woman stared at his ass as he walked by. And Maggie couldn’t blame her. Dr. Raithe was gorgeous.
She kept bouncing her leg.
But that probably wasn’t the first thing people noticed about him. It might have been the second, but she figured it wasn’t how people defined him in their heads.
That award probably went to the fact that his chin-length hair was pure white. Not “I went gray early,” but as white as snow. It was exacerbated by skin tone that answered the question of what would happen if someone from the Middle East didn’t see sunlight for a few decades.
But the white hair.