Among the Shrouded (14 page)

“Stop here,” said the man
as she reached an empty cell toward the end of the line.  He opened the door and without the need for any physical aggression, she entered the cage willingly.

Anya was being placed in th
e cell directly across from her.  She continued to scream and flail, kicking her feet and throwing her head in all directions.  Lera succumbed willingly to her keepers, entering the cell beside her without incident.

Once inside,
she turned her back to the gunman who was still standing before her, getting ready to close the door.  She held up her hands and turned her head so she could see his face.  He met her gaze and without speaking a word, she willed the man to remove her bindings.

“You wanna take off their restraints
?” he asked the other men.

“
Let those two go,” said the man in the red sweatshirt, pointing to her and Lera.  “But leave the tall one tied up.  Gonna have to break her down.”

The gunman removed the ropes
from around her wrists and closed the door to the cell.  He did the same to Lera, who continued to sob quietly.  When Anya was finally contained inside her cell, the men headed toward the staircase without another word.

“There’s food,” Lera whispered as Kate watched the last man disappear up the steps.  “There.  Look on
the floor.”

She
turned around to see a sandwich and a water bottle on the floor behind her.  It was far from the feast the girls had imagined, but at that moment, it was the answer to her prayers.  Bland and stale but full of much needed calories, she devoured the sandwich as she watched her friends doing the same.  However, as the food hit her stomach, a sickening feeling settled over her that had nothing to do with what she was eating.

All at once,
she realized what was happening to her was not a mistake.  She acknowledged with a wave of nausea it had been planned from the moment the flyer was hung in the student union.  There was no apartment.  No job.  No money to be sent home.  She knew without a doubt there was a reason she was locked inside the cell, but she could not begin to imagine what that reason was.  As she finished off the last bite of her sandwich, a final revelation washed over her.  With much regret and despair she realized that somewhere in Kiev, five thousand miles away, she had already doomed her sisters to the same fate.  A fate she doubted even her miraculous power could undo.

C
HAPTER

22

M
IA

It had been a relatively uneventful afternoon as Mia and Jack returned from their patrol.  They had issued two citations for public drunkenness and picked up a teenage boy for drug possession, but as they pulled the squad car into the fenced lot behind the station, she was feeling unsettled.  As much as she had tried to put her worries behind her, she couldn’t stop thinking about a way to mend her relationship with Thomas.  So when she saw him leaning casually against the wall of the building directly behind the station, her mood improved immediately.

“He’s here,” she said to Jack as they pulled into their parking spot.

“Who’s here?”

“Thomas.”

“That was fast,” he said.

She
hesitated to open the door, unsure of what she would say or do once she was forced to acknowledge him standing across the alley.

“Just go talk to him,” Jack said, sensing her apprehension.  “I’ll file the paperwork from this afternoon and you go get things straightened out with Mr. Lineup.”

“What if he’s still upset?”

“If he was still
upset, he wouldn’t be here,” he declared.  “Now go, before I make a scene.”

She
pulled the handle and the heavy door of the police cruiser creaked open, alerting Thomas to her presence.  She chanced a glance in his direction and saw him smiling at her.  She waved, returning his smile and he began walking in her direction.

“Hi,” he said as the
y met in the middle of the alley.

“Hey,”
she replied.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt you at wor
k.”

“It’s okay, my shift’
s almost over.”

“Oh.  Okay.  Well, still, I’m sorry to just show up here like this.  I was going to wait until you came
out at the end of the day.  I didn’t know you were out on patrol.  I just didn’t want to miss you, even though now I look like a stalker.”

“You have my number silly.  You could have called.”

“Yeah.  I know.  But what I have to say I kind of needed to say face to face.”

She
felt a stone sink in her stomach.  She considered that maybe what he wanted to say was goodbye.

“I can wait here until you’
re finished work, and then, if you were interested, I was gonna blow off my piano gig for a couple of hours tonight to see if you wanted to go grab something to eat together,” Thomas said, his voice hopeful.

“Can you give me ten minutes to change my clothes?”
she asked, excited by the possibility of setting things right with him.

“Of course.  I’ll wait
out here.”

She
rushed through the station, nearly running over several fellow officers along the way.  She stopped briefly by her office to grab the street clothes she kept stashed beneath her desk.

“Well?” asked Jack as she breezed through the door.

“He wants to go get something to eat.”

“That’s good?
”

“Yeah.  That’s good.  I hope. 
Then again, he might just be taking me out to explain why he never wants to see me again.”

“I doubt that.  He looked happy to see you.”

“I guess we’ll see.  See you tomorrow, Jack,” she said as she headed back into the hallway toward the locker room.

After changing
, she hurried back outside to meet Thomas and they climbed into her civilian car.

“Did you have somewhere
in mind?” she asked as she placed the key in the ignition.

“There’s this diner just up the road that’s really good,”
he offered.

“Yeah.  I know the one you mean. 
On the corner of Holliday and Saratoga?”

“Yup.”

“That sounds great,” she said earnestly.

She made a three-
point turn in the crowded parking lot and headed toward the interstate out of the city.  She drove in silence, afraid of saying anything to upset him and disturb their unspoken truce.  Finally, as they pulled into the parking lot of the diner, he spoke.

“Mia, about last night.  I’m sorry.  I acted like a jerk.”

“No.  You didn’t,” she replied.  “You acted the way any normal person would react when someone tells you they can do something that’s preposterous.  It’s my fault.  It was too soon to say anything.  I just felt like…”

“Like I would be more understanding?”
he ventured.

“Something like that,”
she said, turning off the ignition and sliding around in her seat to face him. “Should we continue this conversation inside?”

“Sure.  I’m starving,” he replied, attempting to suppress a grin.

They walked into the restaurant together.  The hostess seated them at a booth at the far end of the building and they sat across from one another at the table.  After receiving menus and giving their drink orders, she continued their conversation where they left off.

“Thomas, I don’t know why you came to the station today.  Well, I hope I know.  But I want to tell you I’m sorry too.  You asked about how I knew the man was going to attack Mrs. Huggins and for some reason that went against everything I’ve ever
done in the past, I had to tell you the truth.  I’m sorry I shared it without preparing you for it in a better way.”

“Mia, first, you have no reason to apologize.  Don’t ever apologize to anyone for who you are, even if you are slightly…”

“Weird?”

“Unusual. A little unusual,” he laughed.  “I’d like to explain myself too, not to excuse my behavior, but in the interest of full disclosure, since it appears that’s what we have going on here.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”  He took a deep breath.  “My third foster family, between the ages of eleven and thirteen, was the worst.  It was physically better than the previous two, but it was psychologically disturbing for me.”

She
cringed at the thought of him being abused in any way. 

“The man and woman I lived with had three childre
n of their own, but they weren’t real parents in any sense of the word to any of us.  For the most part, I took care of myself and just tried to stay out of the way.  The woman though…” He paused.  “I’ve never hated anyone.  Not the men who beat me or the women who let them do it.  But this woman, I can honestly say, I hated her.”

“What
did she do to you?” she whispered, reaching across the table to take his hands.  They were warm.  Strong.  Solid.

“I called her Madame Freakshow
behind her back because she pretended to be a medium.  She would have customers in the house at all hours of the day and night for tarot card readings and séances.  The four of us kids were at her beck and call whenever she needed us during her performances.  We were in charge of creating the ‘effects.’  We hid under the floor and knocked when she asked for signs from the spirit world.  We turned fans on so the curtains would move.  We made the lights go on and off.  It was ridiculous.  She was a liar and a fraud.  I hated her because she made me feel like a liar and a fraud too.  I can never forgive her for that.”  He paused, and she could see the pain in his eyes.  “The worst part was that these poor people would come to her for help and guidance believing she was really able to see things actually couldn’t.  I learned as much from them as I did from her.” 

“
Because the people who believed in her were idiots,” she surmised.

“Sometimes.  Mostly they were just naïve.”

“And you learned you should never trust what you can’t see,” she said, suddenly understanding why he’d left so abruptly the night before.

“
Yeah.  Something like that.”  He hesitated and looked her directly in the eyes, his hands still in hers.  She could feel the intensity of his gaze and was powerless to look away.  “But you aren’t Madame Freakshow,” he said.

“I’m not,”
she replied.

“I know.  But last night…”

“I get it,” she said lightly, releasing her grip on his hands.  “Last night, I was just another woman selling you a load of crap.”

“You are definitely not ‘just another woman.’”

“The load of crap part then,” she laughed.

The waitress appeared
then to take their orders and they both quickly decided what they wanted to eat.

“So,”
he began, as soon as the waitress was gone, “tell me more about it.”

“About the auras?”

“Yeah, about the auras.  How does it work?”

She
thought for a moment and tried to figure out a way to explain what she saw without sounding like a liar or a fraud.

“I have no idea what the rest of the world sees when they look at other people.  All I know is what I see.  When I was four
, I realized that what I see is different from what others see.  Apparently the rest of you don’t see the auras.”

“I definitely don’t see the aura
s,” he said.  “Maybe if I did I would’ve had better luck with foster families.”

“Perha
ps,” she said, happy with how calmly he was discussing her ability. 

“So Madame Freakshow
, for example.  If you looked at her, what do you think you would see?” he asked.

“
It sounds as though she would have been surrounded by a darkness.  It’s almost like a smoky fog.  But instead of moving through it, it’s almost as if the person is shrouded by the darkness.”

“And the mugger
who attacked the Huggins, how did you know he was about to do something?”

“The fog
around him was dark.  Thick.  Almost opaque.”

“And how was that different
than it would have been if he’d had no intentions of harming anyone at that moment?”

“The darkness would have been more
see-through.  Less cloudy.”

She
watched him staring at her.  The sadness that had been a part of him on the very first day still remained, and yet, he seemed at peace.  He smiled at her.

“What?”
she asked.

“What do you see when you lo
ok at me?” he asked.

She
hesitated.  The smile began to fade from her lips, but she quickly regained her composure.  She wavered momentarily between telling him the truth and telling him what she knew he needed to hear.

“I see pure light surrounding you,” she replied at last.

“Really?” he asked, visibly shaken by her admission.

“Yes,” she confirmed.

“Then they didn’t break me after all,” mused Thomas, a crooked smile forming on his lips.

“No.  They didn’t.”

Their meals arrived.  She had ordered a burger and fries and Thomas the chicken parmesan.  They ate in silence for several minutes.

“You like Italian,” she
observed aloud.

“It’s my favorite,”
he said, his mouth full of linguini.  “I guess that means you’re kind of perfect for me.”

“I guess so,”
she replied, smiling at his admission.  

He
took a bite of bread dipped in sauce.  “Can I ask you more?”

“Sure.”

“Do people change?  You know, if you’re dark, can you become light?  Or if you are born light, can you turn dark?”

“I don’t know for sure.  All the babies I’ve ever seen have been light.  I don’t know if babies are ever born dark, but maybe they are.  I’ve never seen one though.  So by that line of reasoning, if we
assume all babies are born in light, then at some point, they would have to change to dark.  I’ve never actually seen anyone change from one to the other.  But I have seen people with lights that are very dim.  I’ve always suspected that, if the light gets dim enough, it could eventually go out altogether.  That’s when the darkness takes over I guess.”