Actually, people die from mold. But she wasn’t human, so maybe it didn’t apply to her. She had a long, crooked nose, thin lips, and deep-set eyes. Her fingers were curled, and her nails were sharp and black, resembling talons. Tucked along her back, a set of feathery wings confirmed that she was a harpy. It was known that harpies thrived in old, dark, barely ventilated places.
“I’m not a princess,” I whispered.
Nurse T laughed out loud. The sound was inhuman.
“And my room is not actually that great,” I added. “Just decent.”
“Don’t complain now. If you don’t like it, you can always make a generous donation to the Institute.”
“Aren’t I already paying?”
She shook her head. “Grim Reaper Academy is covering the costs of your treatment. When you were brought in, you weren’t very coherent, and since you don’t have any family, we couldn’t even admit you. But that professor of yours, I believe Adrian Wyvern is his name… the Unseelie warrior, made a phone call, and before we knew it, Headmaster Mason Colin himself was paying us a visit.”
“But I do have family…”
She shrugged. “No one showed up, so… do you?”
“Mila…”
“Who’s Mila?” She was distracted, though. We’d crossed the ground floor and stepped out into the mid-morning sun. She met with two other nurses and stopped to exchange a few words.
“My cousin,” I mumbled, but she didn’t hear me.
Nurse T accepted a cigarette from one of her friends, lit it, then motioned for me to start walking. Patients weren’t allowed to linger when they were in the courtyard. The whole point of taking them out for half an hour twice a day was to stretch their legs. Yes, half an hour. Yes, that amounted to one hour in the open air once a day, and it was very, very little. But the doctors at the Karmic Asylum had quite an interesting theory: sunlight didn’t benefit their patients. It agitated them, motivated them, encouraged them to ask questions. Because sunlight cleared their heads. And no one wanted the most dangerous supernaturals in the world to have clear heads, form coherent thoughts, and come up with plans to put an end to their suffering.
I didn’t fit in, yet here I was. I wrapped my arms around myself, lifting my shoulders slightly to protect myself from prying eyes. Maybe I was just paranoid, and no one was actually looking at me as I started walking along the tall stone fence. I kept my eyes on the ground and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. My muscles felt stiff, and my knees and ankles could barely hold my weight. I felt… brittle. Underneath my white flat shoes, yellowed leaves and thin, dry branches crunched.
Fall, I thought. Wasn’t it summer just yesterday? I inhaled deeply. The air smelled slightly damp, as if it had rained the night before. I looked up and noticed the trees were losing their leaves. My heartbeat picked up a notch. How much time have I lost? I can’t remember what I did yesterday. I can’t remember what I did a week ago… And Davien… When was Davien here? Has he visited me since? I started shaking, so I stopped. I was a few feet away from the wire fence separating us, the patients, from the main gate and alley leading to the front entrance. Not that we could have ever escaped through there, but it was the Institute’s way of ensuring that any potential visitors would be protected from the patients.
I’m losing time. Hours upon hours, weeks, maybe months… What day is it? What month? My chest started to hurt. I touched my temple with trembling fingers, anticipating a headache. My anxiety was through the roof. I looked around me, lost and confused. Nurse T was still with her buddies, smoking and laughing. She didn’t have a care in the world. She stayed away from the sun, intent on maintaining the paleness of her skin, which was almost gray. The other patients were walking around, most of them in circles. Wild eyes, dirty, uncombed hair, stains of food on their shirts… They all looked terrible, and I wondered then… Did I look the same? Since I didn’t have a mirror in my room, I had no idea what I looked like these days. I couldn’t remember when I’d last had a shower, though it must have been recent, because when I discreetly raised my arm to sniff myself, I noticed I smelled rather good. My hair felt soft today, which meant Nurse T must have helped me wash it. I hated that I depended on her! I hated that the potions they gave us made us depend on them, made us lose track of time, made us forget.
Well, now I could confirm that the doctors were right. The sun bathing me in its warmth and light did help clear my head. I was asking questions, although I wasn’t doing it out loud. I had to keep my mouth shut, otherwise they’d inject me with God knew what concoction. I wondered what kind of person had to be someone who worked for the Asylum. Were they aware of how much harm they were doing? Of course not. All they knew was their life’s work was to keep the crazy, evil supernaturals who’d gone rogue sedated and confused, so that they wouldn’t be able to use their powers. All the patients in the courtyard who had wings were in a deplorable state. Their wings were shriveled, dried out on their backs, limp and lifeless. They couldn’t fly anymore. The more I stood in the sun, the more I looked around me and took in the patients, the staff, the looming building that was the Karmic Asylum, with its dark, dirty walls and shattered windows up in the tower, the more anxious I became.
What am I doing here? I can’t be here. I have to be… Where did I have to be? At Grim Reaper Academy? Classes must have already started. Judging by the weather and the state of the trees and the landscape, it was probably September. Mid-September, even. Could it be later in the year? I rubbed at my face and eyes. I felt the strong need to just slap myself. Maybe the shock and the sting would force my brain to think faster. I resisted. The last thing I wanted to do was to draw the staff’s attention. I took a deep breath, curled my hands into fists, and forced them at my sides. As I looked up at the cloudy sky, I released it with a loud sigh. No, I didn’t want to be at Grim Reaper Academy. I couldn’t have cared less about the classes, about year two, about graduating eventually and becoming a Reaper. What I wanted to do was dream jump. I needed to see my aunt, I needed to talk to her and ask her what the hell I did wrong. I’d dream traveled to the dimension of the Great Old Ones countless times, but instead of finding the flower of eternal youth, I’d gotten lost each and every time. I needed to understand why. What was I missing?
And at the same time… I needed… something else. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to understand any of it. Maybe it was all bigger than me, and I just had to… I just had to…
What? I have to… what? I pressed my fists to my stomach. It rumbled loudly, but it wasn’t because I was hungry. I felt like there was something inside me, something that traveled between my organs, settling in each for a day or two, something that told me I’d had one job, and I’d messed up. And that job wasn’t to get Akkadia Aeterna for myself or for Adrian’s daughter. That job was… to disappear.
I blinked. Once, twice. I felt… confused. Why would I think that? Why would I ever want to disappear? I released my stomach, and it settled down. The feeling that there was something foreign inside me vanished.