red embers floated around its body once more, and she figured it hadn’t been the best idea to remind it of Roth. The hound snapped its teeth, making blood and foam spatter on the floor … and on her shoes.
That was it, Devon had had enough. “Fuck you, Fido, I haven’t done shit! Now quit snarling and spitting at me, I’m not in the fucking mood.”
The growling faded. The embers winked out. There was pure silence. And then it was butting her hand with its big fat head, wanting … attention?
“Oh, you cannot be believed.” But she sheathed her claws and cautiously stroked it, ready to snatch her hand back if it tried to bite her. Instead, it leaned against her, rumbling a contented growl. In seconds it had gone from a killing machine to a big, shaggy dog.
She skimmed her fingers over the scar on its muzzle. “You’re not so bad.”
A rough tongue licked her hand, and then bones began to pop and crack once again.
Standing before them, Tanner cricked his neck. “So, kitten, why don’t you tell me about Pamela?”
*
A short while later, Tanner stood in front of Richie’s living room fireplace staring down at Devon. “You told me we’d talk up here, away from the mess in the basement. Well, we’re here.” Not liking how pale she was, he softened his voice as he said, “Kitten, talk to me.”
But she didn’t speak. Didn’t even look at him.
Tanner felt his nostrils flare. “The only way we’re going to untangle this fucking mess is if we’re all straight with each other. So … ?” Again, no one spoke. He crouched in front of his hellcat and rested his hands on her knees. “Where’s Pamela, and why would someone believe she needed to ‘pay’ for something?”
Standing beside the sofa, Jolene put a hand on Devon’s shoulder. “Pamela’s in the containment ward beneath my lair’s penal complex. She’s been balancing on the knife-edge of a psi breakdown for a long time now.”
Okay, well he hadn’t seen that coming. A psi breakdown occurred when a person’s psyche fractured under the strain of maintaining dominance over the entity within them. He’d met people hovering on that edge before; they tended to live very sad lives, considering they were only a few mental steps away from being rogue.
“Part of the reason Pamela doesn’t have enough control over her inner demon to lead a normal life is that she finds it difficult to block her main ability,” Jolene went on. “It has affected her emotional and psi state.”
“What is her main ability?” asked Tanner.
Jolene sank onto the sofa. “Pamela can see right into a person. One touch, and she sees their worst sins, their worst memories, their darkest fantasies. She says it’s hard to know that there aren’t truly any ‘good’ people in the world. Hard to so often see the very worst in people. She did learn to shield herself, but the more intimately she knew a person, the more difficult it was for her to block them. And so, she’s had no real peace. If it wasn’t for Devon, Pamela would have either killed herself or given in to her demon’s demands for dominance long ago. She loves Devon, she’s just unable to take care of her.
“There were times when we were able to bring Pamela so far back from the edge of a psi breakdown that she could function well enough to be released. But after a while, she’d start to digress again, because she doesn’t have the strength or psychic stability to maintain dominance over her demon for long periods of time without help. We’re not hiding her existence. We just don’t speak of her much.”
“Okay,” said Tanner. “How long have you kept her in the containment ward?”
“She was in and out of it throughout Devon’s childhood, which is why Devon thinks of Gertie and Russell as her parents. They loved and raised her right alongside their son, Drew.”
Tanner looked back at Devon, who still had her eyes on the floor. Was it fair of him to be pissed that he hadn’t known any of this before now? Probably not. But he wanted her to trust him. Didn’t like that she felt that she couldn’t.
He stood upright and asked Jolene, “When did you last commit Pamela to the ward?”
“When Devon was six. There was an … incident.”
“Incident?”
“Yes. About eight months prior to that, Pamela dumped her outside a grocery store and called me; said the voices in her head were telling