“Big changes are coming for me and my friends.”
I tensed, then immediately fought to relax my body, hoping the slight shift was unnoticeable. With the constant stream of hypnosis coming through my headphones, I had no way to tell if I was alone or if someone observed me.
“My friend Hunt Fletcher is very happy that his girlfriend Zoe Wills is pregnant. I am very excited for him. It’s fun to have a baby! Babies are cute!
“I will encourage Hunt not to ask Zoe to marry him. He will be happier raising his baby without her. If Zoe were to die in childbirth, I will offer to help him raise his baby.
“Babies are so wonderful, I want to have a baby too.”
I tried to prevent the hitch in my breath, I really did, but it happened nonetheless. Even so, it was slight, and unless someone was watching me very closely, they wouldn’t notice.
Get your shit together, Joss. Do not react to anything you hear.
“Griffin Conway is my boyfriend and he wants to have a baby with me. Griffin and I love each other. We are the perfect match for each other. There is no reason to wait to start a family with him. The sooner we begin having babies, the sooner we can all be happy together.
“My friends will be a fabulous aunt and uncles. I tell Griffin I want to have sex with him. I also tell him I am not fertile and cannot get pregnant even when I can. I enjoy sex with him and want to engage in sexual intercourse with him often.”
I had to bite my tongue to keep from reacting.
Celia just kept piling violation upon violation. It was a freaking whopper of a ten-tiered violation layer cake. What despicable bastards!
“I encourage my friend Layla Rafferty to get pregnant too. I tell her she will make a great mother and that it will be incrediblyfun to all have babies together. I encourage her to have sex with Hunt Fletcher and to have a baby with him. Layla and Hunt can raise his baby and their baby together.
“Brady Rafferty will want to have a baby too. He will fall in love with Gwyneth Stradbrook and they will have sex together without using protection. Gwyneth will soon conceive.”
Gwyn was a senior at Ridgemore High and the captain of the cheerleading squad. She was also, apparently, a breeder—not an exclusive club.
Fuck Celia and her brainwashing.
I could no longer control the disgust roiling through my body, but I held perfectly still.
Celia was still waxing on about how our lives and our bodies weren’t our own when cold suddenly rushed through the vein of my left arm—an IV drip inserted into the crook of my elbow, the motherfuckers.
Whatever fluid they’d just injected traveled swiftly throughout my system, chilling me from the inside out. Before I had a chance to do more than experience an initial frisson of terror at descending into unconsciousness once more—entirely at the mercy of those so clearly out to hurt us—my awareness of Celia’s voice faded. I struggled to hold on to the words as they kept coming, but I couldn’t.
Next, the throbbing in my head and the tenderness in my throat dissipated. After that, I felt myself sinking deep within myself. Lower and lower, deeper and deeper, I went, until I no longer heard Celia at all.
My last conscious thought was of my friends, the family Ididtrust, beyond my reach.
We were all on our own.
I was alone.
16
A Ceremony and an Occasion
and a Freaking Celebration
It was reboot day number … who knew.
Again.
With Bobo at my side, I’d been lying awake in my bed, pretending to be asleep while I waited for my usual sharpness to return. Whatever they dosed us with to knock us out was powerful. I had no doubt that if I didn’t possess some sort of advanced preternatural healing I’d scarcely be able to function today. Magnum and his team were doing their damnedest to cause severe damage to our bodies—when they weren’t outright killing us, of course.
How very delightful it was to be the puppets of raging psychopaths.
By the time my not-dad, not-Reece, arrived to wake me, I was fully alert. I put on a drowsy act, however, even though I wanted to scream, to cuss him out at the top of my lungs. In truth, I wanted to do more than that—much more.
