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I just rolled my eyes at him and ran a hand over his cheek, "Get some rest, we are back at it in the morning."
He gave me a little nod and his eyes closed.
I glanced at Jayce and he was focused on his computer and Lucien was lightly snoring next to me. I guess I was the only one that needed to unwind with mindless entertainment.
Raven
Reed Asylum welcomed us back with open arms. The moment we stepped inside there was the echoing sound of children's laughter and running feet.
“That’s not ominous at all,” Eli laughed, shaking his head.
Jayce had spent half of the night doing more research, but the only thing he could really find was a serial killer. Everyone else had been a ‘normal’ patient.
At least we knew who we were looking for, that was a start.
“Lucien, do you think you can try to find whatever it is that’s tethering her here?” I asked.
He gave me a grim look before he closed his eyes. We all stood around him for a minute, but when he didn’t open his eyes again or take off walking, I started to lose hope.
“Sorry,” he said, letting out a frustrated sigh as he finally blinked his eyes open again.
“Then we do this the old-fashioned way,” I said. “Should we head for that abandoned ward?”
“Definitely,” Jayce said. “I looked it up, and it looks like she was in room eighty-nine in the high-security section of the ward. I did find some old blueprints and compared them with the ones that we got from Kassie. It looks like we just need to head to that same ward we did last time, go past solitary where the ghost tried to trap us, and it’s further down that hall.”
Great, right past the creepiest part of the building.
“Simple, right?” I said with more than a little sarcasm. I put on a fake smile as I took the lead. That lasted all of two seconds before Eli and Lucien were pulling me back.
“Nice try, Raven,” Eli muttered. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I let you get eaten by the ghost first?”
I let out a startled laugh but followed them anyway. Jayce slipped his fingers around mine as we walked. When I glanced at him, I realized how tense he was. His shoulders were tight and his teeth were clenched.
He’d always been the one of our group who was a skeptic until he got a crash course in the supernatural.
Now there was no avoiding it.
“You alright?” I asked. He turned to me and tried to nod but then shook his head.
“No, something feels really off here. It’s different now than it was before. It’s starting to make me feel crazy. There’s this volatile anger, grief, childlike glee—it’s a mix of every emotion you can think of, all compounded into one and then switching rapid-fire. I don’t like it.”
“Do you want to leave? We can handle this alone,” I questioned, but he shook his head again.
“No, it’s getting stronger as we head this way. We’re on the right path.”
“I don’t know what we think we’re going to find here anyway,” Lucien said. “They didn’t clean out most of the ward when they converted the building.”
“Maybe for the rest of the building,” I pointed out, “but as we saw last time, there was tons of equipment and abandoned furniture everywhere. They literally just closed this ward off and pretended it didn’t exist.”
“Which means if she died here,” Eli added, “then she was likely causing havoc before this even turned into an orphanage.”
“How screwed up is it that they had activity, abandoned this place, and then turned it into a place for children?”
We all shuddered at Eli’s words.
“This also means that the ghosts of children that we ran into probably aren’t children at all,” Jayce added in a shaky voice.
Eli shook his head, refusing to believe it. “Okay, now you’ve officially lost your mind. Of course, they’re children. We’ve seen them. Hell, Lucien followed one throughout the whole building. We even saw a teenager here.”
