Twisted Circles (Secret Society 2)

When Dr. Maslow left, I walked back to the office, and waited for my first patient. The questions were simple, but they took their time answering them, as if they were scared there was another part to all of this. It gave me pause, but not enough to question them. Besides, that wasn’t the job I was here to do. I was cleaning the iPad and clicking back to the beginning of a new questionnaire when there was a knock on the already open door. I signaled for them to come inside without looking up; the damn iPad was frozen on the last person’s signature. Still not glancing up, I sighed.

“Give me a second please.” I jabbed on the screen, trying to get a response and set it down while picking up a pen to jot things down with my other hand. While the technology sorted itself out, I’d have to write everything down freehand, the way Freud would have. The way Maslow would have.

“Name?” I asked.

“Stella,” the voice said. My entire body went cold, then hot, as I glanced up and looked at the girl sitting across from me. “Stella Thompson.”

“Hey.” I was still frowning and felt it deepen when I took in her appearance.

“Um. Hey.” She frowned back slightly.

I had always been intuitive. It was something my brother and closest friends relied on me for. Nolan had been burned too many times by friends that I hadn’t approved of from the get-go, so he’d made it a thing to bring over new friends and get my okay on them first. I’d always been intuitive, but I’d be the first to tell you I didn’t believe in gut feelings or otherworldly things. I may be in a secret society that was headed by men devoted to the Catholic Church, but they were also devoted to science, and that was what I appreciated. I didn’t react based on emotions, but facts. When others reacted, I waited. It was why my intuition was rarely wrong. It was why I was good at poker. Looking at Stella, sitting across from me, I felt . . . confused, my intuition absent. I’d seen her, what, an hour ago? Maybe two? And she hadn’t been wearing a gray hoodie and her hair had been straight, not short and in tight curls, like this.

“What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?” She rolled her neck left to right, then right to left. “What are you doing here? What are any of us doing here?”

My pulse roared as I set my pen down. “Why did you say that?”

“Say what?”

“What you just said.”

“I . . . I don’t know. It’s just something I say.” She frowned again.

“Yeah, right.” I shook my head. She was trying to play head games with me. I didn’t know why or when or how she’d changed her appearance so suddenly, but she wasn’t going to get under my skin. “So, Stella Thompson, how are you feeling today?”

“Fine. Same as yesterday. They changed my pillows though, so my neck hurts a little less.”

“Your neck was hurting because of your pillow?”

“Seriously?” She shot me a look, then looked at the blank iPad in front of me. “Why is that thing off? Shouldn’t you have all the notes on me by now? I was in a car accident last week—or that’s what they told me—and my neck has been stiff since.”

“When did this car accident take place?” I lifted the iPad and shook it. “Technical difficulties. I’m writing this by hand.”

“Last Friday.” She yawned, stretching. As the sleeve of her hoodie pulled, I caught a glimpse of a tattoo. A small, thin cross.

I wasn’t sure what my expression looked like, but I hoped it remained passive as I took in all of this information. Stella didn’t have a tattoo. She showed up at The Manor last Sunday, but she was supposed to get there Friday night.

“Where were you going?” I asked after a moment.

“Huh?”

“When the accident happened. Where were you going?”

“I don’t know.” She looked around the room for a long moment, her knee bouncing as she took all of the blank spaces in.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Geez, are you going to get that thing up and running or what?” She nodded at the iPad. “I don’t remember. I have no memory of last Friday. I think I went to see my mom? A lady. I called her mom.” Her frown deepened. “But I don’t have a mom. I mean, I did, everyone has a mom, but mine left when I was two. Anyway, I woke up here after my accident.”

I tried to turn the iPad on again. This time, it worked. I waited until it was ready and scrolled through the names of the patients. I stopped short when I nearly scrolled past a very familiar face. I clicked on the image. My heart stopped. Eva Guerra. I looked up at the stranger in front of me that didn’t look like a stranger, but definitely acted like one. I looked at the restricted file in my hand and stared at Eva’s familiar face. She looked a few years younger in the photo, but was just as striking, her big brown eyes and long dark lashes prominent on her caramel skin. The only thing I could see was her birth date.