I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "You're stringing me along here, Edward. What's the deal?"
"If something happens to me during the fighting, Harley needs at least one other person that he'll mind."
"Mind?"
"He's absolutely reliable, Anita. He'll stay at my back, never flinch, and kill anyone I tell him to, but he's not good without specific orders. And he doesn't take orders from just everybody."
"So you designated me?"
Edward shook his head. "I told him to pick someone in the room."
"Why me?"
"Ask him."
"Fine." I walked back towards the others, and Edward followed me. Harley watched us like he was seeing other things. It was too damned unnerving.
"Why are you staring at me?" I asked.
His voice was quiet, as if he never yelled. "You're the scariest motherfucker in the room."
"Now I know you can't see."
"I see what's there," he said.
"What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
I tried to think of a better question and finally asked, "What do you see when you look at everybody in the room?"
"The same thing you see: monsters."
"Why do I think the monsters I see in the room aren't the same ones you see?"
He smiled, a bare upturning of lips. "They may look different, but they're still monsters. They're all monsters."
He was a card-carrying, rubber-room-renting psychotic. By the time most people got to the point where they weren't seeing reality, they were so far gone that there was no going back. Sometimes drug therapy helped, but without it, the world was a frightening, overwhelming place. Harley didn't look frightened or overwhelmed. He looked calm.
"When you look at Edward, he always looks the same to you. I mean you recognize him?"
Harley nodded.
"You'd recognize me," I said.
"If I make an effort to memorize you, yes."
"That's why you were staring."
"Yes," he said.
"What happens if Edward and I both go down?"
Harley smiled, but his eyes shifted to one side as if something low to the ground and rather small had run across the room. The movement was so natural that I looked. Nothing.
"Harley," I said.
He looked back at me, but his eyes were just a little higher up than my face should have been. "Yes," he said, his voice so quiet.