The trash heap I’d seen the other day was the mysterious Sweeper!
It had been right there with me, inside our protective storm, looking for me two days ago, and I’d had no clue it was the thing that had its minions watching me.
In my defense, they didn’t look anything alike. And who would think something ancient and all-powerful that fixed other things would itself be compiled of refuse?
Although, I brooded, it sort of made sense. Maybe it was always fixing itself, too, and just grabbed whatever was handy. I remembered the metallic things embellishing the Unseelie princess’s spine, the metal I’d seen flashing on my carrion stalker’s faces, and it made even more sense. Sort of. As much as anything in our Fae-infested world made sense anymore.
The thing crashed to a rattling halt somewhere to the right of me. I lay rigid with fear, listening, trying not to let panic completely unravel me.
There were noises then, smaller ones than the Sweeper’s heavy tread. Metal against metaclass="underline" clinks and clacks of things being turned on and off and moved around.
Beyond my closed lids the environment grew brighter. Two more clicks and it was abruptly brilliant. Focused, intense lights had been turned on and were shining directly down on me.
I didn’t like this one bit. I was strapped to a table, with bright lights above, about to be fixed by something that couldn’t even walk straight and was made of trash and guts. Despite the panic immobilizing my limbs and clouding my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder what the hell it thought was wrong with me. How was I broken? I wanted to know, to argue with it. I wisely kept both mouth and eyes shut. Not that I could have opened either anyway. Its mere presence was a paralytic.
After what felt like an endless amount of time, it rattled and clanked away.
The chittering of the ghouls faded as they went with it, and I collapsed in my skin with relief as voluntary motion returned.
A reprieve. No clue why. Didn’t care.
I slitted my eyes open and closed them quickly again, blinded by the bright, cold lights shining down. I turned my head as far to the right as I could. That was where I’d heard the ominous sounds, and I wanted to know what I was facing. I opened my eyes again.
After ascertaining no wraiths lurking in the shadows, waiting to sound the alarm the second they saw me stir, I strained my muscles to peer as far right as possible.
A long metal table.
A dazzling array of sharp, glittering instruments.
It was straight out of a horror movie. I had the sudden unsolicited, disturbing memory of sitting in BB&B five nights ago, trying to dig bullets out of myself, thinking about what sick things could be done to me if I was tied up, given my regenerating abilities.
Breathe, I told myself. Above the table was a large rectangular screen featuring a picture of something gray and black and white and shadowy.
I narrowed my eyes, focusing on the screen. It took me a few seconds to process what I was seeing, and I only did because my nose itched and I couldn’t get to it so I scrunched it up and sort of tossed my head the small amount I could, and the image on the screen moved.
It was me. On the inside. Specifically my skull.
Every detaiclass="underline" sinus cavities, teeth, bones, muscles. There were symbols marked in various spots on the skull. I angled my head hard and noticed that to the right of the large screen were four smaller ones.
Those took me longer to figure out but I finally realized each was showing different parts of my brain. There were symbols marked on those images, too, concentrated in—if I remembered my biology courses correctly, and unfortunately at the moment I seemed to be recalling them with horrifying clarity—the limbic region of my brain.
I knew what the limbic region was. We’d studied it in my abnormal psych course. It was a set of brain structures located on both sides of the thalamus, and it supported emotion, behavior, and long-term memory, among other things. The limbic system included the hypothalamus, the amygdala, and the hippocampus. It was highly tied to the brain’s pleasure center and tightly linked to the prefrontal cortex.
The reason I recalled all this so clearly was because our university had been participating in a study while I was taking my AP course, and the professor had solicited volunteers for it.
The purpose of the study had been to explore whether a “turned off” limbic system or brain damage in that area was a valid marker of psychopathy. He’d told us there was significant evidence acquired from incarcerated criminals that there was indeed a correlation.
I remembered looking at my classmates, who’d eagerly thrust their hands in the air, thinking: Who would be stupid enough to volunteer for this? What if they got their brain scanned and learned they were psychopaths? Was that really something you wanted to know? More importantly—was it really something you wanted everyone around you to know?
I’d shoved my hands deep in my pockets that day and kept them there.
Now, as I studied the screen of my brain, I pondered the implications. I lacked the training to decide if my limbic region was “turned off” or damaged, but from the look of the instruments on the table and the symbols on the various parts of my brain—it was about to be.
The Sweeper thought my brain needed to be fixed. I scowled. There was nothing wrong with my brain. Had I been able, I would have clamped both my hands protectively to my head. Would my skull keep remodeling as it tried to cut me open? Sealing around its instruments? I had no doubt that whatever barbaric surgery it had planned wouldn’t go easy. I wondered if it was the presence of the Book inside me that made the Sweeper consider me both powerful enough and fractured enough to require fixing. The damned Sinsar Dubh just never stopped messing up my life.
A voice broke the silence from my left—first, scaring the shit out of me, then filling me with far more horror than I’d realized I could even hold.
“It’s my heart,” Jada whispered. “What’s it planning to fix of yours?”
36
“And I will wait, I will wait for you…”
I closed my eyes and sagged limply against the table.
No, no, no, I screamed inside my head. Not this. Anything but this.
Then I surged violently from head to toe, trying to explode from my bonds. I flailed, shuddered, and flopped. Minutely.
I got nowhere.
“No,” I finally managed to whisper. And again more strongly, “No.” Not Dani. Never Dani. No one was “fixing” anything about her, and certainly not her bodacious heart.
“So,” she prodded in a whisper. “What’s it fixing on you?”
“You’re strapped to a table, about to be fixed, and you’re curious?”
“If I hadn’t told you first, wouldn’t you be curious about what it thought my problem was?” she whispered back.
“How do you know its purpose is to fix things?”
“Pretty obvious from the images, Mac,” she said dryly.
“How did you know I was here?” I hadn’t known she was. I hadn’t bothered looking to my left. There hadn’t been any sounds over there. Perhaps our would-be surgeon had already set up her instruments before I’d regained consciousness.
“Superhearing. You’ve been sighing. Occasionally, a snort. Can you reach your cellphone?”
“No,” I said.
“Me either.”
How had she gotten here? Had the wraiths broken out a window in BB&B, swooped in and plucked her unconscious body from the bed? Had they always possessed the power to defeat Barrons’s wards and just been pretending? And why? As far as I knew, my ghouls hadn’t been stalking her. Had the Sweeper simply tucked her into its cart like a grocery store customer indulging in a buy-one-get-one-free deal because she’d been handy and according to its nebulous and highly suspect criteria was “broken,” too?