“You’re trying to intimidate me? Uncle P, you have no idea what I’ve been dealing with these past few weeks.”
“Believe me,” he said, “I actually think I have an idea.”
I walked through my version of the room, and changed my focus. Letting go.
It was harder than it had been.
My first attempt failed.
“Why don’t you illuminate us?”
“No.”
My second attempt managed to produce a reflection of the pile of papers on the coffee table.
I picked them up, and began to leaf through them, looking at the highlighted points.
“You claimed the place was broken into just yesterday? Did you file a police report?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That’s none of your business. I’m not volunteering any more information, if you’re just here to fish and make one of the obvious and most easily dismissed legal stabs at me.”
She was right. There was more to it than that.
I flipped straight to the end, and found notes.
I snapped my fingers.
Peter turned his head. Then scrambled to get out of the way as Evan flew over.
I bent down low.
“Tell her,” I murmured, “They are going to declare her mentally unsound. Duncan is helping. Sandra is helping. People are on their way now. They are going to get her put in a mental hospital. It will not last for any longer than they need it to, but it will free someone else to come after the rest of them, without risking hurting her. She needs to stop it from happening. Go.”
Evan flew back to Rose.
Looking visibly distressed, Aunt Steph asked, “Can you cage that thing?”
“Thing?” Evan asked.
Nobody reacted. His voice was only for us to hear.
“I’ll get him a bit of food,” Rose said.
She stepped into the kitchen. I followed her.
“Mental aslyum,” Evan said. “Just to keep you out of the way.”
Rose nodded, but couldn’t reply without being heard talking to herself. Which wouldn’t help matters.
“Right now, they’re coming. We need to deal with it somehow,” I said.
Rose shook her head. “Against Sandra? And Duncan? They’re too strong.”
“What, then?” I asked.
“We’re going to give them me,” she said. She sounded a little too much like Conquest, and not quite enough like Rose. “And we’ll let them face the consequences.”
11.06
Rose gave Evan a piece of cheese puff from a bag, then took her time rolling up the bag and binding it closed with an elastic.
“No objection?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet,” I told her. “You haven’t elaborated on anything.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, her voice pitched low. “They’re testing the water, seeing if our resolve holds up when the pressure is on. It’s… it sucks, but we have to call them on it.”
“I need more details than that,” I said.
“They’re going to take me away,” Rose said. She leaned forward, arms folded on the kitchen counter, “It’s even possible they’ll lock me up or drug me. The dead man’s switch… they’re counting on the idea that I’ll crack before they do.”
“They’ve got-”
“Rose?” I heard the voice from the living room. Dad’s.
“-A guy who can read the future,” I said. “And Laird knew how to counter demons. He can share that knowledge. You can’t play chick-”
“Rose?” Roxanne piped up, her voice perfectly pitched to pierce anyone’s thoughts and seize their attention.
“-en with someone who has no reason to be afraid,” I finished.
Aunt Steph appeared in the doorway, and Evan took off, flying around Rose. She took the warning for what it was and turned around.
“Problem?” Aunt Steph asked. She smiled, but it looked forced. All of her smiles did. Uncle Paul’s first wife, they’d had Kathryn, Ellie, Paige and Peter. She’d gone the stay at home mom route, let herself go in the worst way while Uncle Paul kept himself more or less presentable, and when they split up, never really pieced herself together again. At present, she was wearing clothes that were surprisingly nice, almost certainly dry cleaned or brand new, and her hair was professionally cut. Whatever her attention to the broad strokes, she missed the mark in the details. She was groomed in a perfunctory sort of way, basic makeup and a comb through her hair, and she’d missed areas. A mole sat on the side of her neck with coarse hairs sticking out of it.
I didn’t like to judge people by appearance. If I did, I wouldn’t have liked Alexis like I did. Alexis’ hair was sometimes like Aunt Steph’s, an afterthought more than something she focused on, and even Aunt Steph would have paid more attention to fixing her teeth. The big difference was that Aunt S’s grooming issues were a symptom of something else that was going on with her personality and worldview. Rather than work, she’d lived off the teat of child support and disability allowance that was almost certainly trumped up. Ellie and Peter, the two children that had gone to her in the divorce, had followed a similar road to very different destinations. She’d given them only the bare minimum they needed to get by, and as far as I could tell, had taught them that if they wanted more, they needed to manipulate others to do it.