“So you won’t help me if I don’t do this for you?”
I hesitated, and some of my vigor faded. There was no way I could blackmail him. “No. I wouldn’t do that to you. I’ll still help keep her single, no matter what you decide.”
He weighed me with his dark eyes for several long moments. “I may regret this, but okay. We don’t always share the same philosophies, but when you say you’re going to help people, you mean it. When is this going down?”
“I guess after you get off work. Isn’t that where you’re going?” I disliked the delay but would take what I could get to have a solid test subject.
“Nah. Just picking up my paycheck.”
Luckier and luckier. “Can you go to Ms. Terwilliger’s after that? I’ll text you her address, and she’ll take care of curfew.”
“This is going down at Ms. T’s?”
“Yeah. You can meet her boyfriend. He has an eye patch.”
Trey mulled this over. “Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place? I’m so there.”
I sent him her address and then headed off to my own car. Once I was on the road, I called Adrian.
“How’d it go with the old man?” he asked.
“Not great,” I said. “I’m heading over to Ms. Terwilliger’s place and need you to meet me there.”
“Okay,” he said unhesitatingly. “Do I get a heads-up why?”
“I found a guinea pig.”
CHAPTER 13
ADRIAN
JACKIE’S FACE TOLD ME THAT THIS WAS NO JOKE.
“Come in,” she said, opening her front door and waving me forward. “I hope to God you understand what’s going on.”
“A little,” I said, not entirely sure if that was an exaggeration. Sydney had been clear enough on the phone that it was time to test out her ink, but it was hard for me to imagine her having jumped to this extreme. The last I’d known, she’d been content to wait for Marcus and let him find a guinea pig. If she was suddenly ready to do some home tattooing—and I could only assume it was on herself—something pretty serious must have happened.
Although Jackie had traded up to a modern house when her bungalow burned down, the inside of her new home looked pretty much identical to the old one. I stepped past a pile of books on crystal healing and bent down to pat a fluffy white cat rubbing against my ankle in greeting. A few moments later, Sydney emerged from a hallway, wringing her hands. When she saw me, she ran forward and threw herself into my arms. Jackie politely averted her eyes and pretended to be interested in straightening some candles. We’d never explicitly said anything about our relationship around her, but we did tend to relax in her presence, and I’d learned two important things about Jaclyn Terwilliger. One was that she wasn’t stupid. The other was that she didn’t judge.
“What happened?” I asked Sydney. “Your dad?” It was the only thing that could have brought about this change of heart.
She nodded. “Him. And Keith.”
“Keith? He was there?”
“No. Not exactly. Dad called him. Video call.” She pulled away and began pacing around. “It was awful. What they did to him. He wasn’t even human. He was a robot. No feelings. No free thought. They did it to him in re-education—and not with just whatever training or counseling they do. They had to have also used the ink Marcus was talking about that had stronger compulsion, the kind that encourages loyalty. Dad says it doesn’t always work that strongly on everyone . . . but God. It worked on him. On Keith.”
She was rambling, and Sydney wasn’t the kind of person who rambled, which made all of this that much more disturbing. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and I wanted to draw her to me again. Reluctantly, I held back. Jackie might have a neutral attitude about our relationship, but I wasn’t going to flaunt things.
“What then?” I demanded. “Did they threaten to do the same thing to you?” Something told me that if they had, she wouldn’t be free to be standing here right now.
She shook her head. “No, my dad was actually going on and on about how awesome I am—well, in his way. He didn’t exactly use the word ‘awesome.’ It’s not in his vocabulary. Zoe was the one who kept calling me out! Making a big deal out of how well I get along with everyone and how I spend so much time with you.” She nodded toward Jackie, who arched an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t aware you’d shared our goings-on with your, uh, associates.”
Sydney gave a harsh laugh. “What, the magic? No. Of course not. But it doesn’t even take that to set them off. I got scolded just for being a dedicated academic assistant because it might distract me from Alchemist priorities.”
Now I was incredulous. “They’d send you to re-education for that?”
“No. But it’s all bread crumbs, as Marcus would say. It draws attention to me, and if they ever find out what I’ve done . . . they could try to re-ink me too, and I can’t let them. I won’t let them. I won’t become like Keith.”
There were golden glints of anger in the depth of her brown eyes, but despite that fierceness and passion, I had a feeling she was terrified. How could she not be? The itch to look at her aura stirred within me, and I squashed it, both because of sheer willpower and . . . well, I wasn’t entirely sure I could look at her aura.
It had been almost two weeks since I went on Einstein’s prescription. The first week, I’d noticed almost no difference in anything—with one exception. My sleep. I was actually getting it. I no longer stared at my bedroom ceiling for hours, trying to settle down. I would get into bed, lie there for fifteen minutes or so, and eventually drift off. It wasn’t like being sedated either. Mostly, it was as though the hamster wheel in my head no longer spun out of control. My thoughts simply calmed for the night, letting me do what normal people must do all the time.
In the last week, I’d noticed more gradual changes in me. I was a little more patient. I thought things through a little more. That wasn’t to say I’d become some upstanding, perfectly controlled person whose feelings ran an even keel. Not by a long shot. I still had plenty of what Sydney would probably call “Adrian Ivashkov moments.” Listening to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon one night had left me moody and speculative over the meaning of life, eventually triggering the purchase of some black-light paints to help express my metaphysical musings. And when I’d finally turned in that goddamned self-portrait, I’d helpfully told my professor that if she wanted to keep it for her private boudoir, I’d understand. Her response had not been positive.
That had probably been my stupidest act in the last two weeks, and really, compared with past history, it wasn’t that bad. Most importantly, I hadn’t felt out of control. There’d been none of the debilitating darkness. And Aunt Tatiana had remained quiet.
I thought I’d hit the jackpot until, the day after the boudoir comment, I’d seen my professor on campus and had wanted to know if I was still in trouble for the remark. I’d summoned spirit to sneak a peek at her aura—and nothing had happened. It was kind of like trying to turn over a car engine on a cold day. Finally, on the third attempt, the magic took, and her aura had flared in my sight.
That had been four days ago, and I was too afraid to try to use spirit again. I didn’t know if I could handle what I’d find. Had that day been a fluke? Was spirit still functioning normally? Or was it fading away, maybe even gone? I didn’t know how to feel about that. Relieved? Devastated?
That panic threatened to overwhelm me, and I had to take a moment to push those thoughts out of my mind and stay calm. Spirit wasn’t the issue right now. Sydney was. I had to be there for her.