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With a curse, he turned away, walking out the door. I ran after him, out into the hall, trying to make him see me, hear me. He shut the door after him, locking it again. His head tilted, and he listened for a moment, the house still utterly silent, then he kept walking. I ran in front of him—and he walked right through me.

“Ren! Look at me.” He stood by the security panel, pulling a vial from his pocket. “Please, Ren.”

He smeared blood in an X on his hand and lifted it, hovering over the keypad, then muttered a spell. The light above it began flashing again.

“No…no, don’t leave. Don’t leave me here.”

He looked back, looking through me again, then yanked the door open.

“Ren! Don’t leave me!”

He walked out and shut the door behind him.

I banged on it with all my strength, but he didn’t hear me, he didn’t come back. I ran to the window and watched as he tugged up the hood of his sweatshirt and strode away.

My legs gave out. I sat there in a heap on the floor, not sure for how long, staring into the darkness, fighting the monsters in my own mind, the ones telling me that there was no way out, that I should just give up. Fighting the still gaping wound inside me that Xavier had made, too weak to repair it.

No.

Ren would come back. He would. He’d find me. I had to believe that.

I just had to stay alive.

The nudge of a soul reached me. It didn’t mean me any harm, but it was persistent.

Pushing myself to my feet, I took off my necklace and cuffs and placed them on a small table. A woman appeared in front of me. She was tall, her dark hair streaked with gray and pulled back in an elegant bun. She was wringing her hands, fear in her eyes.

I knew who she was instantly. “You’re Xavier’s mother.”

She nodded and moved back, waving her hand for me to follow. Not all ghosts could verbally communicate, some could only show me things. I followed her up the stairs to the second floor, to the room at the end of the hall. It was locked. She pointed above it, and I reached up and found the key above the doorframe.

She walked through the door, and I quickly unlocked it and followed.

The room was feminine, adorned with lots of mauve and pink. This was one of the rooms Xavier avoided in his mind, a room he never went to in the real world or here in the one he’d created. I walked deeper into the bedroom and tripped on something. I looked down and bit back my cry. A skull, an old one by the looks. Feeling sick to my stomach, I got down on my knees and looked under the bed. Several bodies, clothing hanging off their bones, were stuffed under it. Xavier’s mother nudged me, and I got up and followed her to what had once been her dressing room. It was large, dust- and cobweb-covered clothes hanging off the racks.

And on the floor were more bodies.

So many.

I stepped over the remains of humans and animals. Dead bodies that had been left where they fell to rot, their bones and clothing all that remained of them.

Images flashed through my mind: Xavier’s mother showing me what happened here, what Xavier was, what he did. All of it. Everything channeled through me like a horror movie.

I grabbed for the wall, sick to my stomach.

These were Xavier’s kills. Before his mother forced him to lock away his sadistic cravings, this was where he brought his victims. It would have been so easy. One moment they would have been in his home, the next, hidden by his power, confused, alone.

Until a little boy with black curly hair and wide lavender eyes found them. A little boy who looked sweet and innocent but was anything but. He’d lead them to this room. His mother’s room, a replica of it at least, that he’d created and used as a dumping ground in his own special playground.

More images flashed through my mind; his mother was trying to help me. Showing me where I needed to go.

“Thank you,” I said.

He avoided this room, but I wasn’t safe in here. There was only one place he wouldn’t be able to find me. I had caught a glimpse of it during one of our sessions.

Xavier had a complete blind spot—his conscience—and it’d been walled off so thoroughly in his mind that he had none to speak of, which was why he’d spent most of his life mimicking others and their emotional responses. He hadn’t liked the way his mother made him feel when he did bad things, so he’d made sure he didn’t feel it anymore. He’d locked it in the attic of his psyche, before he’d even created this secret realm he’d trapped me in. After he’d locked that part of himself away, the true monster he was came to being. Over the years, he seemed to have forgotten about the attic. I doubted he even thought about it at all when he’d created this alternate realm. The biggest risk was that it might not exist here at all, but I had to try.

To get to it, though, I’d have to pass the monsters he had guarding the top floor and the other rooms he kept walled off.