She skimmed her fingers over the scar on its muzzle. “You’re not so bad.”
A rough tongue licked her hand, and then bones began to pop and crack once again.
Standing before them, Tanner cricked his neck. “So, kitten, why don’t you tell me about Pamela?”
*
A short while later, Tanner stood in front of Richie’s living room fireplace staring down at Devon. “You told me we’d talk up here, away from the mess in the basement. Well, we’re here.” Not liking how pale she was, he softened his voice as he said, “Kitten, talk to me.”
But she didn’t speak. Didn’t even look at him.
Tanner felt his nostrils flare. “The only way we’re going to untangle this fucking mess is if we’re all straight with each other. So … ?” Again, no one spoke. He crouched in front of his hellcat and rested his hands on her knees. “Where’s Pamela, and why would someone believe she needed to ‘pay’ for something?”
Standing beside the sofa, Jolene put a hand on Devon’s shoulder. “Pamela’s in the containment ward beneath my lair’s penal complex. She’s been balancing on the knife-edge of a psi breakdown for a long time now.”
Okay, well he hadn’t seen that coming. A psi breakdown occurred when a person’s psyche fractured under the strain of maintaining dominance over the entity within them. He’d met people hovering on that edge before; they tended to live very sad lives, considering they were only a few mental steps away from being rogue.
“Part of the reason Pamela doesn’t have enough control over her inner demon to lead a normal life is that she finds it difficult to block her main ability,” Jolene went on. “It has affected her emotional and psi state.”
“What is her main ability?” asked Tanner.
Jolene sank onto the sofa. “Pamela can see right into a person. One touch, and she sees their worst sins, their worst memories, their darkest fantasies. She says it’s hard to know that there aren’t truly any ‘good’ people in the world. Hard to so often see the very worst in people. She did learn to shield herself, but the more intimately she knew a person, the more difficult it was for her to block them. And so, she’s had no real peace. If it wasn’t for Devon, Pamela would have either killed herself or given in to her demon’s demands for dominance long ago. She loves Devon, she’s just unable to take care of her.
“There were times when we were able to bring Pamela so far back from the edge of a psi breakdown that she could function well enough to be released. But after a while, she’d start to digress again, because she doesn’t have the strength or psychic stability to maintain dominance over her demon for long periods of time without help. We’re not hiding her existence. We just don’t speak of her much.”
“Okay,” said Tanner. “How long have you kept her in the containment ward?”
“She was in and out of it throughout Devon’s childhood, which is why Devon thinks of Gertie and Russell as her parents. They loved and raised her right alongside their son, Drew.”
Tanner looked back at Devon, who still had her eyes on the floor. Was it fair of him to be pissed that he hadn’t known any of this before now? Probably not. But he wanted her to trust him. Didn’t like that she felt that she couldn’t.
He stood upright and asked Jolene, “When did you last commit Pamela to the ward?”
“When Devon was six. There was an … incident.”
“Incident?”
“Yes. About eight months prior to that, Pamela dumped her outside a grocery store and called me; said the voices in her head were telling her to kill Devon and she was terrified she’d hurt her. One thing I can say for Pamela was that she never fought us on committing her if we thought it was necessary. But later that same year, Pamela escaped the ward, convinced Devon was in some sort of danger—such delusions were commonplace for her. Things … went badly.”
Tanner narrowed his eyes. “What does that mean?”
Devon slid her fingers into her hair. “I was at a party,” she said, her tone flat. “A kid’s party. One of the moms was giving me a ride home. She went back into the party venue so that her son—my friend—could use the restroom. That was when Pamela hijacked the car. She said she was all better now, that we could be a family again. She just … kept driving.
“I asked her over and over where we were going. She just kept saying that we were almost there, but I don’t think she had a destination in mind. I don’t think she’d thought that far ahead.”
This was going to be bad, he could feel it. “What happened, kitten?”
She swallowed hard, and the movement looked painful. “I fell asleep. When I woke up, I realized the car wasn’t moving anymore. Pamela had parked it outside a crummy-looking casino. She did love casinos. It was baking hot, and I was so thirsty. Felt so sick. And the baby just wouldn’t stop crying.”
Tanner’s brows snapped together. “Baby?”
“Pamela had just ignored the fact that I wasn’t the only child in the car when she hijacked it.” Devon sniffed. “See, my friend’s baby brother had been sleeping in his child seat. I told her a few times that we had to take him home, but she never responded. Anyway, I kept watching the door of the casino, waiting for her to come out. But she didn’t.
“The car seemed to get hotter and hotter. Every breath I took in seemed hot and thick in my lungs. I tried to get out, tried to get the baby out. But the woman who owned the car was an incantor, and she’d put protective wards all over it. I couldn’t open the doors or windows. Couldn’t even smash my way out.” She swallowed. “The baby had been dead for hours before Jolene found us. Heatstroke. Pamela was inside the fucking casino, playing blackjack. She’d lost track of time, she said.”
Tanner’s eyes fell closed. Fuck, so many things about her made sense now. The nervousness she showed when someone else was driving. The way she sometimes gazed at Asher with sadness in her eyes. Her reluctance to speak of her biological mother. And maybe even the reason she didn’t feel that she should have been loved by Finn—part of her felt undeserving, just like many who experienced survivor’s guilt.
“Beck hauled Pamela outside,” Jolene added, picking up where Devon left off. “She looked at the baby like she’d never seen him before. She asked us to commit her to the ward permanently, and she’s never asked to be free; never tried to escape. I suppose she’s punishing herself, really. She’s deteriorated since then. I think knowing that she was responsible for the baby’s death and that she’d caused Devon such trauma … it just broke something in her.”
“I go to see her sometimes,” said Devon. “She’s not insane, but she’s not totally rational either. She has days when she’s lucid. Other days … they’re not so good. Sometimes she remembers why she’s in the ward, other times she’s confused and just can’t piece everything together. But she always knows who I am, no matter how muddled her mind is at the time.”
Probably because Devon was the woman’s one constant; the very thing she clung to in order to center herself as best she could. “Has anyone told her of the recent kidnappings?” asked Tanner.