I press my lips to her fingers, inhaling her scent. “It meant everything.”
“Then you can’t do this, Grayson. Disempathetic personalities don’t torture the people they care for. If you truly believe you love me, you’d protect me from your illness—not subject me to it.”
A bitter laugh escapes. “But that’s a myth, right?”
Her brows crease softly. “And I’m a liar, right?”
I reach through the bars and grasp the back of her head, dragging her close and sealing my lips over hers. I hold her there, relishing the shudder that pulses through her body, feeling her breath against my mouth, before I finally let her go.
“Because I do love you, I’m going to give you something I’ve never offered anyone before.”
Her eyes widen as I back away from the cage. She clings to her hope the way she clings to those bars, anticipating the wordfreedom.
But I can’t grant her that—only she has the power to set herself free.
“Here’s your one hint, London,” I say as I pick up the candle. “What Dr. Mary Jenkins was too proud and vain to admit, you can divulge here in secret, where only the bars will hear your whispers.”
A broken, hysterical laugh falls from her mouth. “And a camcorder, right?” She sinks down beside the plate, staring blankly at the food. “I’m not like Dr. Jenkins. I didn’t lobotomize my patients.”
“No, you didn’t. That would’ve been too obvious. You’re smarter than that, better at impulse control. And yet, here you are, caught in a twisted web of your own design.” I move toward the door. “I’ve been giving you the chance to admit your sins, London. Now we’re here. It’s time to confess how you tortured your patients, how you shredded their minds. You played god, attempting to find a cure for yourself. Once you can admit that, then the cell door will open.”
She looks up at me. “This is what you want me to confess?”
“Yes.”
She lifts her hands in surrender. “Fine. I confess it. Now open the fucking door.”
I pause in the doorway. “You know it’s not that simple, love.”
It’s fleeting, but panic flashes in her eyes. For an instant, real fear grips her, as she realizes she’s about to be abandoned, left alone in the dark like the girls her father held captive. Her fingers claw at her clothing, desperately seeking a loose thread. Frantic and beautiful.
“I want to see Thom Mercer’s file,” she says.
I rub the back of my neck. “That’s a hard demand to meet out here?—”
“I want to see it,” she snaps.
I exhale heavily, feigning resignation. “I’ll make it happen.”
As I turn to leave, she whispers, “No, my father didn’t allow light in his cellar.” Paused outside the door, I meet her haunted stare. “He held them in the dark.”
I promised to set her free—and I fucking will. To set her free of the pain, of her crippling false humanity, she first has to face the dark. Even she knows this.
From the beginning of time, people have divided good from evil, angels from demons, gods from monsters. I don’t believe in divine beings or cosmic morality. Life is simpler than that. We are our own gods, and our own devils. Capable of pure evil and great virtue.
Each of us invents our own heavens, creates our own hells.
We choose them every day.
I douse the flame and close the door, killing the light—leaving London to battle her demons inside her personal hell.
25
ASYLUM
LONDON
Ionce counseled a woman who was afraid to be alone. Her husband had left her for a younger woman, her daughter had fled home for college, and she found herself uneasy all the time. Unable to sleep, unable to cope. She suffered daily panic attacks.
