Mind Games: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Lillim Callina Chronicles Book 6) (13 page)

“I’m not,” I replied, barely resisting the urge to shout at him about how none of this mattered anyway when a thought struck me. If I resisted, I could kill myself. The thought was sobering. “I promise, I’ll be good now. I understand what’s at stake. It will be easier for all of us if I just behave myself.”

Dr. Emile looked at me very carefully and nodded his head very slowly. “I believe you, Lillim.” With those words, he stood and made his way toward the door. “Take your medication when the nurse brings it, and I’ll go speak with your parents.”

“You said parents plural,” I said like a complete dumbass.

“Yes.” He raised his eyebrow inquisitively. “Is this where you tell me your mother is dead?”

“No, she’s supposed to be at work. Only my dad came with me today.” A bad feeling settled over me as he stared at me with concern etched into his features. Then, very slowly, it dissolved into a happy little mask.

“She must have left work early because she’s been in the waiting room for the last couple of hours with your father.” As he said the words, I suddenly felt like the world’s worst daughter, which I’ll admit, was absolutely insane because he was fictional and they were fictional but there it was.

Dr. Emile watched me for another few moments before opening the door and letting himself out, leaving me strapped to the bed all by my lonesome. I stared up at the ceiling and sighed. I just needed to bide my time until blood poured from the earth, then I could make my move. Only I had no idea what my move would be. Hopefully, I’d figure it out before said apocalyptic events occurred. Assuming I hadn’t just imagined the whole thing. If I had, I was probably going to need something a lot stronger than what Dr. Emile was prescribing.

I barely had time to contemplate it further when the door swung open to reveal a nurse I’d never seen before. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and had skin the color of milk chocolate. The hair beneath her sky blue nurse’s cap was done in tight cornrows. It struck me a little odd though I didn’t know why.

She had a brown plastic tray in her hands that reminded me of the ones I’d seen in cafeterias only unlike the ones in the cafeteria, this one had two small paper cups with faint Easter eggs drawn on them. She set it down on a little metal rolling table against the wall and turned to look at me.

“Hello, dearie.” She smiled, revealing huge white teeth. “I’m here to make sure you take your medicine.” She made a point of smiling again, and her entire face seemed to light up. It was sort of scary because either the prospect of giving me medication made her super happy, or she was able to lie with every aspect of her face. I wasn’t sure which was worse to be honest. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. It’s up to you.”

“I’d prefer the easy way,” I said, trying to smile and mostly failing.

“I thought you might, dearie,” she said, moving over to the wall next to me and unlocking a small Plexiglas box with the key secured to her hip by a little black cord. The box stuck out about two inches from the wall beside my bed. It had rounded corners so I couldn’t easily bludgeon myself or cut myself on it, and if it was anything like the ones in the other rooms, was firmly secured as well.

Once she had it opened, she pressed a green button inside. My bed began to twist and writhe beneath me, ratcheting me into a sitting position as I remained strapped to it. Once my bed had assumed the proper position, she released the button and stared at me in stark appraisal. Her brown eyes had little flecks of gold in them, and I wondered for a second what she’d look like if the sunlight hit her just right. Would her eyes glitter?

“I’m going to unlock your right hand so you can use it to take your pills. Don’t try anything funny or this will get very unpleasant for you in a hurry. Do you understand?” she smiled at me again, and I realized I was starting to hate her.

“Yes,” I replied, and after what felt like forever, she nodded. She slowly unstrapped my arm, and I left it there immobile even after she’d finished unbinding me. What was I going to do with it anyway? Grab her by the throat and choke the life from her?

She offered me the first of the cups containing several pills of various shapes and colors. “Enjoy your cocktail,” she added, watching me like a hawk as I tossed the pills in my mouth. She handed me the other cup. Unsurprisingly, it was filled with water. I swallowed the medication even though I had half a mind to try and not swallow it. Where would I have hidden it anyway?

“Open your mouth,” she said the moment I finished the water. I did so, and she stared into my mouth for a long time before adding, “Stick out your tongue.” Satisfied, she smiled at me. “See? Was that so hard?”

“Not really,” I said even though I hated when people asked me that. Yes, it was hard actually. I didn’t like taking medication given to me, especially medication given to me by delusions. Then again, I guess this could be real, in which case, I wasn’t sure I was willing to let go of everything in the other world just yet. Hopefully, the earth would break open soon. If not, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

Chapter 16

My brain was wrapped in cotton, and quite honestly, I wasn’t sure how I wasn’t drooling on myself. I sat in the back of my parents’ car as they drove along. I also wasn’t sure how long I’d been letting the staff at Mercer & Mercer pump me full of medication. Weeks? Months? However long it had been felt like forever and then some.

This homecoming was much less exciting than my previous one had been. Even though both of my parents were in the car, I couldn’t quite focus on them or the surroundings. Hell, I could barely keep myself from falling asleep. I shuffled in the backseat, resting my head on the cool glass and tried to ignore how dry my mouth felt. When was the last time I’d had something to drink? Had I ever had something to drink? I must have, but I had a hard time pinpointing the where and when of it all.

“Is there anything we can get you?” my mother asked, glancing back over her seat to stare at me. Evidently, she’d won the coin toss because my father was driving even though we were in her car. It didn’t matter to me other than the driver’s seat was pushed back much farther than it normally was. As I stared at the now too small space behind my father, I sort of felt bad for it.

“Some water would be nice,” I said or think I said. I wasn’t quite sure anymore. I put my finger in my mouth, moving it around to try to dislodge the cotton stuck in there as she watched. It did no good. I swallowed and failed, my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth. My mother didn’t so much as move as she stared at me, her normally hard brown eyes were soft and sad. Yes, mom. This was what your daughter had become. Only I didn’t say that out loud. Or maybe I did. I had no way of knowing.

My mother spun around in her seat and scrounged around for something on the floor. An eternity passed before she turned back around, offering me a plastic water bottle, already uncapped. The wrapper was torn down one side so the ragged edges of the paper flapped in the soft breeze of the air conditioner, and for a second, I wondered if I could flap like that too, only I felt like I already was.

“Here you are,” she said, offering me the bottle. I reached out and took it from her, somehow holding onto the thin plastic even though my fingers felt like they were made of lead.

I stared into the water, watching it slosh inside the bottle. I didn’t think they’d slipped anything inside the bottle, but you could never be too sure. Still, they didn’t really have the need to do that, anyway. I’d dutifully swallowed everything I’d been given by Mercer & Mercer for the last several eons, so there was no telling how many gallons of poison I’d already consumed. It was either that or get a shot in the rump and a one way ticket back to my room. My room had been lame, so I’d only done that a couple dozen times or so. Still, I couldn’t be sure about the water so I sniffed it. I smelled nothing, but that meant little.

“Go ahead,” my mother said in her talking to a toddler voice.

Hesitantly, I lifted the bottle to my lips and took a sip. The water was strangely warm and languid, probably from rolling around on the floor of her car for who knows how long, but I swallowed it anyway, hoping she hadn’t slipped anything into it. The liquid didn’t make my mouth any less dry, but it felt like I was doing something positive so I took another sip and waited to see if I’d fall unconscious so they could suck the secrets out of my brain. I know it sounds crazy, but I’d come to a conclusion. Jormungand needed me to do certain things sometimes so he could control Apep. Him using the hallucination of my parents to secure that knowledge didn’t seem implausible. Okay, fine, it seemed perfectly logical.

My mother nodded once and turned around in her seat. She exhaled softly and reached out, putting one hand on my father’s knee. He grunted. They’d been fighting. I could tell because my father wasn’t talking, and that generally meant he was angry. It was either that or he had a particular hatred of all the cars outside ours. Still, it was probably my fault, you know, for freaking out during a normal outpatient visit and getting locked away. It had to be embarrassing. I’d have probably been ashamed and embarrassed too, if I could feel anything other than numb, but well, I didn’t.

Unless of course, numbness was a feeling, but I wasn’t so sure it counted if it did. I knew I should feel something, but when I tried, it evaporated into mist. It was weird to say the least, but the few times I’d managed to avoid taking my medication had resulted in my emotions seeming clearer.

I let out a small breath and smiled even though I didn’t know why. Maybe things would be better now that I was on the outside. The thought made me try to smile a little more. On the outside. Like I was an escapee. I hadn’t done that though, even when the nurses had propped the door open to bring someone sitting in a wheelchair outside. It would have been so easy to just walk out and scale the chain link fence. I hadn’t done it, but I’d thought about. See, I was a good girl. That’s what the staff had said when they’d found me staring out into the freedom beyond the door.

But it was better this way. If I submitted and took my drugs like a good little girl, I wouldn’t die. It also had the added benefit of keeping my parental units happy and me out of Mercer & Mercer. I licked my dry, cracked lips and stared out the window, watching the cars whizz by in bursts of color. Still, I had no idea what I was supposed to do now. Wait? I chewed on my lip. I wasn’t exactly good at waiting.

Tires screeched. Glass broke. Metal shrieked.

I was flying, falling, tumbling. I hit the ground with a thud that rattled my brain. Warmth flowed down my face as I lay there, unable to move, to breathe, to think. The surrounding images faded, leaving me on my back, staring at the multi-hued sky. Darkness filled my vision. My eyes drifted shut.

Rain hit my face, splattering across my skin as I blinked open my eyes. Everything hurt. Everything was raw. I tried to move, tried to get up. Rain pelted me, sluicing through the sky and drenching me.

The acrid smell of smoke filled my nose as I got my bloody hands under me and looked around, bewildered. Our car was in the middle of the road, pancaked flat against a cement embankment. Smoke poured from beneath the hood as I stared. I took a step toward it. My footsteps squelched in the mud.

“Escape. You’ve got to escape.” The voice beside me was strangely familiar and insistent. I craned my head toward it.

A young girl, perhaps ten, perhaps six, perhaps in between, stood there, staring at me expectantly. She smiled up at me with her cotton candy pink lips and brushed her curly, ketchup-red hair out of her eyes as the rain splattered on her upturned cherub cheeks.

“Hurry,” she said. “Time is short if we’re to get away, Lillim.”

“Hurry?” I asked, my brows knitting in confusion as I stopped, half-caught between approaching our car and listening to this strange pixie-girl.

“Hurry and escape before they poison you more, before they fill your mind with more lies.” She nodded emphatically and reached out, gripping my hand in her tiny porcelain fingers. “I will show you where to go.”

I turned her words over in my drug addled mind, but couldn’t quite make sense of them. Not that she gave me much time to think about what she had told me. Before I even realized what was happening, she was pulling me along, leading me out of the street and toward the trees surrounding the road. We disappeared into the foliage, leaving my parents and their broken car behind in the rain. The mud stuck to my shoes as we moved, caking up around the sides and making leaves and twigs stick to them.

“My parents,” I whispered, looking back as the last bits of color from the road disappeared behind the too tall trees. “They need help.”

“They’re not real,” the girl whispered, still smiling and pulling me forward. “I’ll show you the way out, Lillim.”

“What if they are?” I asked, stopping and pulling my hand free of hers. I stood there, not moving as rain dripped through the trees and ran down my back, plastering my thin pink t-shirt to my body so it stuck to my skin. “Real, I mean.”

“They’re not, Lillim.” She stared at me and shook her head, sending her red curls flying around her face. “We have to hurry. Before Thes gets back. You remember Thes, right? You have to save him, have to bring him back from the past.”

“What?” I shook my head, trying to drive through the fog around my brain. “Thes Mercer isn’t real.” I swallowed, and as I said the words, they tasted like a lie, tasted like spearmint chewing gum.

“Thes is real.” She huffed once in annoyance and reached out toward me. “You’ll feel better once the drugs are out of your system.” She nodded emphatically. “That’s what we need.” She moved forward, dragging me through the brush. The branches scratched at my bare arms and tugged at my jeans, leaving wet, jagged streaks across the fabric.

“What we need?” I asked, wishing I could understand what was going on. “But my parents.”

“Look, they aren’t real, but I’ll get help, okay?” the little girl said with a harrumph of frustration as she pulled a bright pink phone with a shiny unicorn sticker on the back of the case from the pocket of her jeans. She made a big show of punching some buttons into it before putting it to her ear. “Will that work?”