Deceptions (Cainsville 3)

"I--I don't know what happened, Liv," he said. "All I wanted was to get you back. He said he'd help and then . . . it went wrong, and I don't understand how. I know I hurt you, frightened you, and I don't understand that, either. It seemed so simple. You were in danger, and I had to save you, and nothing else mattered."

"It's okay," I said.

Another smile, this one wry and sad. "No, it's not. I can see that. It's clear now. Everything's clear." He looked at me. "I never meant to hurt you."

"I'm fine. I'm--" I inhaled deeply. I'm lost in a house of visions, and I'm talking to one of you, which is not fine at all.

He looked over his shoulder. "I need to go. I just . . . I saw you and I wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

"It's all right."

"It isn't." That wry smile again. "But do you forgive me anyway?"

"Of course. And I'm sorry that I--"

He put his hands behind my head and I felt them, just the barest whisper brushing aside my hair, and then his lips against mine. My eyes closed, and when they opened, I was alone in the room.

"James?"

I felt stupid calling for him, but he'd given me what I wanted--an explanation--and I couldn't help wishing that we really could say our apologies and part with a kiss, hanging on to those memories of something that had been good, once upon a time.

But I knew James was in Chicago, at work. So what did seeing him here mean? That these weren't visions at all, but figments of my imagination? Overactive daydreams--things I imagined and things I wished for?

I needed to get out of here.

I stepped through the next doorway into an absolutely empty room. I breathed a sigh of relief and strode forward--

The wallpaper rippled. I pushed myself to continue, but I couldn't look away from that bubbling wallpaper. Then a line of blue fire ripped through it, curling and smoldering and blackening it in its wake. The fire flashed out, leaving burned words.

There is no freedom from the prison of the mind.

I'd seen the same message at the abandoned psych hospital, when Tristan set me up to "rescue" Macy Shaw. And I understood it no better now than I had then.

I turned away quickly, only to see another message burned on the opposite wall.

We are imprisoned by the truth we dare not see.

We are imprisoned by the questions we dare not ask.

"I'm asking!" I shouted. "I'm asking and asking and asking, and all I get are riddles and useless visions. What else do you want me to do?"

The answer came in a flash of blue fire that spelled out one word in foot-high block letters clear across one wall: Understand. Then, in a blink, it all vanished, and I was left staring at moldy and tattered wallpaper.

I ran through the next doorway, then stumbled over something. I looked down to see an arm on the floor.

Not real, not real, not real. None of it is real.

I tore across the room . . . to find myself facing three blank walls. There was no other way out. I turned, keeping my eyes away from the body on the floor.

Not real, not real.

But I'd caught a flash of the arm. An arm wearing a watch.

I know that watch.

No, I don't. It cannot possibly be the watch I think it is, because that watch is on the wrist of--

I looked down.