Chương 37: Chapter 36 - A Power We Don't Understand

Conrad was kind enough to let me brood in silence. We might have reached our rooms without saying a word to each other, but as we got closer, one of my more modest concerns grew until it eclipsed all others.

"You're scared?" Conrad said.

"Do you think Darius is going to yell at me?" I asked. The wolfman scoffed.

"No." I stopped. Conrad noticed a step later and turned.

"No 'maybe?'" I said.

"Or 'not for long, or 'don't worry, I'll protect you?' Just…no?" Conrad strolled back to me and stood close enough he could lower his voice.

"First of all, if you ever need any real protection from Darius Vasil, you did something very wrong, and I'm not going to make any promises about protecting you. Second of all, why would Darius yell at you?" I squeezed my first two fingers with my other hand.

"He yelled at Wuller."

"He was mad at Wuller. He isn't mad at us."

"Are you sure?" Conrad brushed the tip of his black nose with a finger.

"But why?" I said.

"You were there, Mera. He explained it to Wuller. Rather loudly." Conrad tilted his head.

"How bad is your hearing?"

"I thought he was acting! Like, to control the conversation."

"He was. He was acting a lot calmer than he felt. Have you ever smelled an angry vampire? That'll make your fur stand on end." The wolfman continued down the hall. I jogged to catch up.

"Then all that stuff about treating us like teenagers…?"

"Darius is big into respect," Conrad explained.

"You give it where it's owed, and you show it to his people."

"Oh." We walked a few more feet in silence. It gave me some time to process the thought. It needed processing. It seemed to hit two parts of my brain at the same time. On one hand, I was tickled by the idea that I had a vampire willing to go to bat for me. If I tried to demand respect, I'd probably sound like a petulant two-year-old. Darius only had to ask for it while raising an eyebrow, and most people would unconsciously rub their throats and decide that it wouldn't hurt to slap on a few manners.

On the other hand—"Does Darius respect his people?" I asked. Conrad stopped. His hand was on a door handle. Oh! His hand was on our door handle. We'd arrived. The wolfman was smiling, faintly, and shaking his head, even more faintly.

"What?" I demanded.

"You'll get used to it. Sooner or later." He opened the door, and I stepped inside. Darius was bent over the desk, looking over some papers. He didn't look up when we came in.

"Yes, Miss Cole," he said.

"I respect my people—for as long as they deserve it. And that includes you." I turned to glance at the solid wood door that Conrad was shutting, then turned back to Darius.

"You heard that," I said. He straightened up.

"The veil only prevents you from hearing me. I could hear you fine."

"I wasn't thinking about the veil!" I sputtered a bit, trying to make words out of random syllables. Darius put down the papers.

"Let's get started, shall we?" As he passed me, he clapped his hand on my shoulder. A more rugged and reassuring gesture has never existed; it was the seal of camaraderie. Vasil took the armchair. Conrad and I sat on the couch. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

"Shall we start from when I left," Darius asked, "or jump immediately to the part where you demolished the basement floor?" Conrad and I looked at each other. Conrad gave his report first. It was shorter. He'd been all over the school and found nothing. Then it was my turn. I started by telling Darius about Reisig's class and everything I'd learned about Miller. That he was our skeptical note-taker and the original instructor for the psychics, and about his connection with the Torr.

Then I told Darius about the rainy soccer game. As I told my story, the count's frown of concentration deepened, and his eyes darkened. He put his elbows on his knees, leaned over them, laced his fingers together, and watched me over the tiny mountain range of his knuckles. When I finished, he said, "Tell me again. Start from when you first noticed the powers." I told him again, adding in details as I remembered them, stammering over my descriptions of how it felt. Ivers and Wes confronting each other.

The hanging rain. The floating balls. How the whole world paused before breaking over me, like the moment of tension before the crest of a wave breaks, and the sudden reversion to normal physics when Ivers stepped away. There was a long silence.

"These powers are getting out of hand," Darius said.

"Out…out of hand?" I echoed. My eyes moved between Darius and Conrad. They both looked troubled.

"How so?" I asked.

"Focus and force," Conrad muttered.

"Huh?" The wolfman raised his voice, "I was asking Wuller about it yesterday at breakfast. How does the telekinetic power work? Focus and force. You usually need both to move something, but sometimes, if the force is powerful enough, you don't have to focus."

"But in those circumstances, there's no telling what will happen," Darius added. I remembered Evans' face screwed up with humiliation and anger, and the greenhouse glass blasting toward us.

"How much force would it take to hold off a field of rain?" Conrad asked.

"There's a power here that we don't understand," Darius said.

"We need to find out what it is before it gets any stronger." After a shorter, more dismal silence, Darius said, "Now tell me why you were in the basement." I started by telling him about my dream of walking down the hallway naked. As I spoke, Darius stood up, went over to the desk, and pulled a notepad from his messenger bag. He returned with it, sat down, and started writing. When I paused to let him work, he said, without looking up, "Go on." I told him about finding the hall from my dream the next day.

Then came the dream about being dragged through the tiled room and pushed into the tub of cold water, and how Conrad and I went to the basement to find out if it was the same room.

"Was it?" Darius asked.

"She recognized the tile pattern under the false floor," Conrad said.

"So we know Emerra was dreaming about that room even though she hadn't seen it like that before."

"We wondered if it was something that happened in the past." The count thought for a moment, then nodded.

"That seems like a logical conclusion."

"But if those two dreams are real," I said, "does that mean the rest are too?" Darius passed me his notepad.

"Are those all of your dreams?" I looked over the list. Trapped in a room, looking out a barred window. Needle tracks on the arm, watching the door. Walking naked through the hall as punishment. Being dragged into a room and forced into a tub of cold water.

"You missed me cleaning up the blood."

"The what?" I knew I'd forgotten something. I scribbled in the note as I told him about scrubbing down the white table. In the back of my head, I heard an echo of weak humming. I rubbed my lips once. No tape. When I was done, I held out the notepad and pen. There was an awkward second or two where I sat there, holding them out, while Darius did nothing but watch me. Then he leaned forward and took the pad.

"It was an autopsy table." And he made it sound so casual. My stomach blanched.

"An autopsy table?" Conrad repeated.

"Before they were made of stainless steel, autopsy tables were made of porcelain," Darius said.

"What you described was an autopsy table."

"That would explain the blood," Conrad said. My voice was high and probably a smidge hysterical: "Why am I dreaming about an autopsy table? What does that have to do with the building? What kind of a freaking mad house would need an autopsy table!" Conrad put his hand on my head. There was something comforting about its weight.

"Deep breath." I decided to take his advice. While I breathed, Conrad said to the count, "When was the last time they used porcelain tables?" Darius shrugged.

"The last one I remember was back in the nineteen-forties."

"So we're not talking about the recent past?"

"No."

"Can she…can she even dream back that far?" Conrad moved his hand from my head. My eyes fixed on Darius. No one in that room was more interested in the answer than I was. Unfortunately, his answer wasn't as confident or informative as I might have hoped.

"It would appear so," he said.

"Either that, or for some reason, the table was in use much longer than normal. But we already have reason to believe you're dreaming about the past."

"And what does any of this have to do with the psychics?" I asked.

"We don't know that it does."

"But…then—what's the point?"

"Emerra, there's a lot we don't know about your powers. It's possible your dreams are relevant, but we haven't figured out how. It's also possible that you're channeling something from the building that has nothing to do with the psychics."

"How do we find out which it is?"

"We investigate the history of the building," Conrad said. Darius frowned and rubbed his forehead.

"I wish I'd known about this yesterday. I don't know how much we'll be able to look up online."

"Wouldn't Wuller know it?"

"He might, and I'll be sure to ask him, but we can't neglect our other leads. We need to talk to Miller, and I want to know what Emerra's notes were doing down by the staff hall…" Their voices faded into a distant murmur. The muted sounds blended in with the whispers of my own thoughts as they tumbled around my head. I felt my lips move, but my words sounded almost as distant as theirs.

"I think I might know." The sudden silence drew me back to reality. Conrad and Darius were both watching me. I elaborated, "I think I might know someone who knows about this place."

"Who?" Darius asked.

"Christopher Norris."