"I will, don't worry."
She climbed into the van and drove off. He shoved his hands into his pockets and headed across to the third
building to find Kirby.
***
Office furniture lined the walls where once there had been two long rows of beds. Kirby stopped in the middle of the dorm, her gaze going to the fourth window from the back wall. That was where her bed had been. Helen, when she'd finally arrived at the center, had slept next to her.
She frowned. Finally arrived? Up until now, she'd thought they'd always been together, but obviously that wasn't so. Damn it, why couldn't she remember this place, when everything else was so clear?
She sniffed, and the smell hit her—age and mustiness, mixed with the pungent scent of ammonia. Memories stirred, as did fear. She retreated a step, then stopped. Running wasn't going to help anyone. If something had happened in this room, she needed to remember it. The answer to why Helen was murdered could lie anywhere, even in something as innocuous as memories long locked away. The whistling was coming from the back of the dorm, from what had once been the nurse's quarters. She took a few more steps forward then stopped. "Hello?" The whistling cut off abruptly, and a soft whirring filled the gloom. Two seconds later, a man in an electric wheelchair appeared in the doorway, his berry-brown face fixed into a scowl. "And what would you be doing here, girlie?" His voice was as flat and lifeless as his brown eyes, and sent a chill up her back. She knew that voice. In the past she had feared it. She again resisted the impulse to run. "I'm..." She hesitated, uncertain whether she should really be talking to this man. Surely if she'd once feared him, it had been for good reason. "I stayed at this center for a while. I'm just trying to find a friend I met here."
Why she lied, she wasn't entirely sure. She certainly wasn't going to get much in the way of answers about her past by inquiring about someone else, and yet instinct suggested it was better than mentioning who she was. Though she had no idea why this would be dangerous, she trusted her instincts. They'd saved her too often in the past to ignore them now.
The old man's gaze narrowed, and he rolled a little further into the room. He was rakish, with thick, steel gray hair that looked silver in the morning light. He had a clipboard on his lap, and his hands were long and thin. The hands of a piano player, she thought.
The hands of a molester.
Images hit her, thick and fast. Oh God, she thought, swallowing back the bile that rose in her throat as pictures and sounds swelled around her. Suddenly she was an eleven-year-old again, lying in bed, wide-eyed and fearful, listening to the sounds night after night. Cries of pain, odd grunting, the rough squeak of bedsprings. Not her. He'd never touched her. Didn't like her green eyes—they were fey, he'd once told her. Dangerous. But he'd touched Helen, and he'd touched others, here in the long nights of darkness.
His frown deepened, and he rolled forward some more. She retreated. She couldn't help it. Her memories had too strong a grip, and it felt like her fear was going to stifle her.
"You were one of the kids who lived here?" His free hand clenched briefly. Get out, instinct said. Run.
She nodded. If he got any closer she'd throw up all over him, all over his overalls and shiny brown shoes.
Shoes he'd always kept on when he'd lain on top of Helen. Fighting horror, she retreated another step.
I'm here behind you, in the shadows, Doyle said, his mind-voice filled with such anger it burned through her like a flame. I won't let him hurt you. Question him if you want to.
I don't want to remember this. The man is a monster.
Yes, he is. But he may also hold some answers. I think you need those answers, and not just to solve Helen's death.
She bit her lip and crossed her arms. The chill in her body was so bad she was beginning to shiver. But he was right. The past, and this man, had to be faced if she wanted to find answers.
"You've got green eyes," the man in the wheelchair said suddenly. "Fey eyes, like a cat's. I've seen them before. Seen you." He hesitated. "You're one of them, aren't you?"
Fear mingled with the anger in his dead brown eyes. She frowned, wondering why. "One of who? What are you talking about?"
"One of them bitches that did this to me." He slapped a hand against the wheelchair, and rolled a little closer.
His scent surrounded her—cigar smoke and whisky. The same smell that had haunted her nights, all those years ago. Her stomach rolled. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
He snorted. "You and those other four. You did this to me. You broke my back, made me dead from the waist down."
Dead from the waist down was nearly punishment enough, she thought, and rubbed her arms. "Me and what four? I have no idea—-"
"Them witches with the gray eyes. You formed a circle and smashed me like I was nothing more than one of your stupid dolls. All of you bitches deserve what's coming to you."
He hawked and spat at her. The globule barely missed her toes. She stepped back again, watching him closely, another chill racing through her spine. "Did you kill them? Are you responsible?"
Maliciousness mixed with the fear in his brown eyes. He wasn't responsible, she realized, but he knew who was. "How could five eleven-year-olds possibly throw a man your size around?"
"Magic," he whispered. "It surrounded me, a shield of energy I couldn't see. But I could feel it. Oh God, could I feel it..." His voice drifted off, and for a moment the terror of that night showed in his eyes.
She felt no sympathy for him. One night hardly made up for the many nights of hell this fiend had given Helen and the others. "So you killed them? And tore their bodies apart afterwards?"