Page 18 of Wicked Nightmare

"Where's the nunnery? That, that... that group home for girls? Why isn't it listed?" Something close to panic started crawling up my spine. They were the worst ones. I hadn't even told Cam everything about what they'd done to me. I couldn't even remember everything they did. Most of my life was a gigantic question mark. The only parts I really remembered were bits and pieces and all these later years in this apartment with the love of my life.

After the black-out at SINNER’s… most of my past was missing. Same with Cam. Whatever they’d done to us that night had taken whatever little we remembered.

His face dropped and he looked at his plate, his fork moving the last piece of steak around, almost shamefully. "There's no known address... unless you remember where it was... I don't remember how to find it. Skeeter... Skeeter didn't get any hits. Do you remember any of their names?"

St. Agnes Home for Wayward Girls.

My brain did that thing it does when it gets too close to something it locked away. The lights went on but nobody was home. I could see pieces of it, fragments that didn't connect, images that played out of order. The cot with the wooden frame that dug into my back. Biting my lip so hard it bled because screaming made it worse. Father Christopher's shoes on the hallway floor, that slow, heavy walk that meant he was coming and you couldn't do anything but lie there and wait for whatever door he chose to open. Sister Anne's hands, dry and cold, always cold, grabbing my arm hard enough to leave fingerprints.

The other girls crying. Always crying. At night, in the dark, when the nuns were supposed to be asleep but weren't. Muffled sounds from behind closed doors that I taught myself not to hear because hearing them meant knowing what was happening and knowing what was happening meant I'd have to do something about it.

And Lydia. My roommate. The only one who didn't cry. She just stared at the ceiling and counted. I'd listen to her count in the dark, her voice flat and quiet, going as high as she could until she fell asleep. Sometimes she made it to the thousands. I never asked her what she was counting because I already knew. She was counting the seconds until it was over.

I don't know what happened to Lydia. One day she was there and the next day she wasn't. They didn't explain. They never explained. Girls just disappeared from St. Agnes, and you weren't supposed to ask where they went.

"I remember..." My voice was a whisper as I looked at the file again. "Sister Anne... she stripped me bare once... tied me down..." The words stopped. Not because I chose to stop them but because my brain pulled the plug the way it always did when I got too close. The memory cut off mid-frame and what was left was just the feeling. The cold. The helplessness. The specific, precise humiliation of being naked and unable to move while someone who was supposed to protect you did the opposite.

"Sister Anne and Father Christopher. That's all I remember," I finished. It was true. Those were the names I remembered, but the pain was inflicted by more than one. And Lydia.

I’d never forget her.

Cam nodded. "Okay... Did they have last names or...?"

"No, asshole, it's not like they introduced themselves as Anne Hemmings and Christopher Olson."

"Is that their last names?"

I rolled my eyes. "No. But. I do vaguely remember where the church was where they sent me on ‘special Sundays’. We might have to drive around to find it, but it should be there. It was super special to these fucking assholes. Stood for a hundred years or something. Probably some records of it at City Hall."

His eyes lit up. "You're brilliant! We can search old records to find it! Then we can kill them!"

I smiled, a numb chill settling over me. "That sounds wonderful. Thank you for this, baby." I looked at the list again. At the names of people who were still breathing while we sat here scarred and wired wrong and held together by each other and violence. "We should go kill one of these fucks tonight. What do you say?"

"Mmmm, does tomorrow work? I need to plan a little. Can't just go in blind."

"Since when do you plan anything?"

"Since I want to enjoy it and not rush through it." He reached across the table and took my hand. "This isn't a mark, Lakes. This is personal. We're gonna do it right."

He was right and I hated that he was right because I wanted to drive to Oakland tonight and gut Ed Jones on his front lawn. I wanted to feel his blood on my hands and know that it was earned, that this one meant something beyond keeping the monster fed. The marks were strangers. They deserved what they got, but they were strangers. These people on this list, these people had touched us. Had broken us into pieces and then walked away and kept living as if we didn't exist.

The thought of them eating dinner right now, watching TV, sleeping in clean sheets while Cam and I stitched ourselves together with sex and violence and an apartment with a dent in the hallway wall made me want to scream until my throat bled.

But Cam was right. This had to be planned. Savored. We'd spent nine years killing quickly. These ones deserved a slow burn.

I looked at him. At this man who'd spent weeks tracking down the people who'd destroyed us, who'd hired a disgusting hacker and terrorized him into finding addresses, who'd cooked me steak and lit candles and put a file full of revenge next to my plate wrapped up as a birthday present.

And I had an idea.

"You wanna marry me, Cam?"

He didn't flinch, didn't look away. "Yeah, Lakes. I do."

"We're not exactly church-wedding material."

"Baby, we'd burn the church down."

"We literally might." I grinned. "Especially if it's the one connected to St. Agnes."