“This is weird,” she said, but Clayton was still walking forward following the trail of compressed grass.
“She’s inside, has to be.” Clayton paused at the back door.
Jude walked to the door and knocked.
Clayton stepped to the side of the house and stood on tip-toe looking in one of the windows. Jude almost told him to stop, thinking they’d look like a couple of perverts peeking in a stranger’s windows, but his face had gone pale and he ducked down, slinking back towards her.
“There’s a kid in there with a shotgun. I’m pretty sure it’s aimed at your mom.”
“What?” Jude spun back to the door, ready to burst in.
“Don’t,” Clayton hissed, grabbing her hand. “If you spook him, he’s liable to shoot her, or you.”
Clayton moved to the side of the door and pushed Jude out of the way. He leaned close to the door frame.
“My name is Clayton Parker and I know that you’re inside with a gun. The woman who broke into your house is not an intruder. She’s a patient at a hospital and she was confused and got lost. Please do not hurt her or call the police.”
Jude leaned closer to the house trying to hear.
“Whoever you are,” Jude called. “You have my mom in there, please don’t hurt her.”
Another moment of silence passed and then the door opened. The boy with the gun was no older than thirteen, his face had a lucid sheen and his eyes looked glassy.
Sophia stepped behind him, touching his shoulder.
“This is Jared. He’s home sick today, and I scared him,” Sophia said. “Sit down, honey. I’ll get you a glass of water.” Jared nodded, mumbled something incoherent, and wandered back to the table.
Sophia stood on the doorstep staring at Jude, her eyes wide.
“Judy,” her mom whispered, and Jude rushed forward burying her face in her mother’s neck. “Oh, my baby, my Judy-girl.”
“Mom,” Jude said, trying out the word - not in the past tense - but here and now. “You’re real, you’re alive…”
Damien
Damien closed the huge text and pressed his face into his hands. His body ached from sitting and his brain buzzed with too much coffee. He’d told Dr. Kaiser’s secretary a lie to gain access to his private library.
There he sifted through texts trying to understand Kaiser’s obsession with Sophia Gray, but more important some clue that might lead him to the woman. If he could find her, deliver the girls their mother then perhaps Hattie would forgive him. He’d made little progress except for a single letter embossed with an eye within a triangle. It spoke of a meeting with no location specified but referred to the Umbra Brotherhood.
“Damien?” the voice startled him, and he nearly knocked his cup of coffee across the desk. In the amber glow of the lamp he watched Dr. Kaiser emerge from the shadows. He did not wear his customary white coat but had replaced it with a stiff-looking blazer over a high black turtleneck.
“I did not see your request to use my library,” Kaiser murmured, his eyes boring into Damien.
Damien stood and stretched, acting casual as he draped his raincoat over the books. He didn’t want Kaiser to see he’d been looking into the texts on paranormal psychosis.
“I expected to see you in my office this morning with an update,” Kaiser continued, his eyes sliding passed Damien toward the books, mercifully blocked from view. If Kaiser wanted to examine them, he had only to brush the coat aside.
“I’m available now, and I need to stretch my legs. I’ll put the books away after,” Damien urged, already moving toward the door.
Kaiser lingered, and Damien looked for a diversion. He pulled a pack of mints from his pocket and flung them toward the doctor’s feet. Kaiser narrowed his eyes at the fallen mints and then leaned down, plucking them from the floor and taking two long strides to Damien. He handed them back without a word and Damien opened the box offering one to Kaiser who said nothing, but brushed passed Damien toward the door.
Outside the warm day was subdued by clouds.
“Damien, I sense division in you,” Kaiser said, his eyes trained forward. “As if your eagerness to assist me has waned. Have you decided you do not wish to be a doctor?”
Damien felt the words twist in the pit of his stomach.
“No, not at all Dr. Kaiser. There’s nothing I want more. My thesis has been consuming a lot of attention, but I promise you, I’m still committed-”
“Because you understand the urgency, do you not? This is not a minor chore I’ve requested of you. Those girls may hold the key to the whereabouts of a very sick woman. Each day that passes - she or someone else may come to harm.”
Damien nodded, overriding his own better sense.
“Yes, and it’s been a priority, but I told you the girls have no clue where their mother is. They only just discovered she was alive.” The instant the words left his mouth, Damien froze.
Kaiser turned and cast his pale blue eyes on Damien. His smile sent a shiver down Damien’s spine.
“They know that Sophia lives,” Kaiser said, licking his lips. “And you did not come to me immediately? I am disappointed in you, Damien. Very disappointed.”
“Hattie shares her mother’s…. neurosis,” Damien babbled, searching for some tidbit to appease Kaiser. “She believes she sees ghosts.”
Kaiser’s eyes widened, and he stood perfectly still. He steepled his hands and put them to his lips, his eyes gleaming as if Damien had just told him he’d won a small fortune. A smile somewhere between pleasure and pain shuddered across the doctor’s face and Damien wanted to take it all back. Why had he uttered those words? Hattie’s secrets offered to the doctor who wanted nothing more than to imprison her mother for the rest of her life.
“She might have been exaggerating,” Damien said trying to put on his professional voice, his doctor speculating voice, but it all came out like a little boy searching for a lie. “I mean she’s weird, so I think she plays up the weirdness. Probably heard about her mother’s condition and took it as her own. You know how abandoned children are, the trauma reveals itself in strange ways. I’ve met patients who dress like their dead parent’s.”
He was still talking, but Kaiser had stopped listening. His lips were pressed into his fingertips, and Damien glanced around feeling deliriously sure that if it were night, Kaiser’s face would sprout huge dripping fangs and his hands burst into taloned paws.
“Where is Hattie now?” Kaiser asked, so quietly that Damien barely heard him.
“What?” Damien croaked.
“Where does Hattie live? You mentioned she had left her grandmother’s residence,” Kaiser continued.
“Why?” Damien asked.
Kaiser narrowed his eyes, and Damien flinched.
“I don’t know where she lives,” Damien whispered, spreading his hands, sick with regret.
For the first time he saw Kaiser clearly - he was a sick man, a disturbed man, and Damien had just put the monster on the scent of Hattie, beautiful, sweet Hattie.
Jude
“It’s not a good idea to stay here,” Clayton announced when they stepped back into Jude’s childhood home.
Jude glared at him, ready to argue, but her mother nodded.
“No, you’re right.” Sophia looked around the kitchen and then her eyes fell again on Jude. She touched her cheek. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment for so long. Honey, what on earth happened to you?” Sophia put her fingers to the red welt around Jude’s throat.
Clayton shifted from one foot to another, and Jude clamped her teeth together to keep from snapping at him.