Vale stopped breathing.
For one suspended second, the surface of Vale's mind became a confusion of thoughts that I could scarcely distinguish from one another. His shock came first, followed by an objection so immediate that I caught its shape before he managed to speak. That isn't how she died. His eyes searched my face, moving between familiar features that had suddenly become difficult for him to reconcile with what he remembered.
"No," he said. "She was alive when I reached the apartment." His denial came almost reflexively, though he seemed to recognize the uncertainty in his own words.
Technically, he was correct. Vale had not been standing beside Evelyn when she died. He had not watched her swallow the stolen potion at the desk while footsteps climbed the stairs toward her room. By the time he arrived, I had already awakened within her body, looking through eyes that had belonged to someone else only moments before. Nevertheless, his absence from those final moments did little to excuse his involvement in everything that had preceded them.
"Did you forget?" My voice remained low. "When I lowered myself out of the apartment away from your grasp, you asked me who I was."
Vale's expression changed as the memory returned. I sensed his recognition before he said anything, though the memory that followed belonged to me. There had been rain that night, an open window, and a rope disappearing along the brickwork beneath it. I remembered looking back at him when the frightened clerk he knew should have been concerned with nothing beyond her escape. He had asked a question then, one that had seemed perfectly reasonable under the circumstances.
Who are you?
"I am not Evelyn." I let the half truth settle between us. "The sweet girl you had cultivated for so long, she is dead."
Vale stared at me, his lips parting without producing a sound. For the first time since the interrogation began, he seemed less concerned with finding an argument than with establishing the order in which events had occurred. His gaze lowered toward my hands before returning to my face, lingering there with an expression I could no longer easily associate with the man who had once held Evelyn down.
"You weren't confused," he whispered. "At the window. I thought the potion had changed you. Or damaged you." His brow furrowed as he revisited the memory, examining something he had evidently dismissed at the time. "I asked who you were because..."
He fell silent. The remainder of his explanation seemed to trouble him more than anything he might have said aloud. He had already noticed that something was wrong, even if he had possessed neither the knowledge nor the imagination to understand it. The woman at the window had looked like Evelyn Harrow, but she had not behaved like the girl he knew.
"She was already dead."
"Yes."
The answer came without ceremony. What I had told him was not entirely true, although explaining the distinction would have accomplished little. Evelyn remained within me, capable of remembering, disagreeing, and occasionally offering opinions that only I could hear. She was no longer alive in any manner Vale would have recognized, yet neither had she disappeared as completely as my words suggested. I had no intention of sharing that peculiar arrangement with him.
"But I didn't give her the potion." Vale lowered his gaze, studying a worn patch of flooring near his feet. There was no triumph in his observation. He sounded like a man attempting to determine precisely how much of an accusation he could reasonably dispute.
"No," I said. "You didn't."
I allowed him that small distinction. He had not administered the potion, nor had he been present when she drank it. Whatever else could be laid at his feet, there was no reason to manufacture another crime merely to make him feel worse.
"You only helped build the life she was trying to escape when she drank it."
His mouth tightened, and I watched his breathing change. The last memory Evelyn had left me was not particularly elaborate. There had been a stolen formula, trembling hands, and the increasingly dreadful sound of footsteps approaching her rented room. She had believed that becoming a Beyonder offered her the only remaining possibility of surviving whatever waited beyond the door. Vale had been among the people she feared would find her.
For several moments, he remained occupied with that thought. From his expression and the thoughts that surfaced, I could tell he was revisiting earlier events, following connections he had once dismissed. There was little reason for me to interrupt. He already possessed the information necessary to understand his participation in Evelyn's suffering, and anything I added would only give him another opportunity to argue.
"I remember her asking me to make it stop," he said eventually. His voice had grown thin, and he seemed reluctant to look at me.
His words pointed to the clinic rather than the apartment. Fleeting surface impressions of procedures and restraints accompanied them, and Evelyn's inherited memories supplied occasions when she had been frightened enough to plead with the people responsible for her treatment. Vale had been near enough to intervene, although he had apparently convinced himself that his responsibilities did not extend beyond carrying out the doctor's instructions.
"I told her I couldn't. That it wasn't my decision." He closed his eyes, his expression tightening with discomfort. "I suppose that was another lie I found convenient."
His shoulders gradually lowered. For several seconds, the room was quiet enough that I could hear the faint movement of air somewhere beyond the basement door. Vale shifted against his restraints, then became still again. When he finally spoke, his question was so quiet that I nearly mistook it for another passing thought.
"Was she afraid?"
"Incredibly so."
I had no desire to elaborate. The memory was unpleasant enough without placing every detail before him, and his imagination appeared perfectly capable of supplying what I withheld. Shame became apparent in Vale's expression and the emotions I could sense at the surface of his mind, intense enough that it might have satisfied someone seeking revenge. I found myself observing something rather different. Each time Vale returned to my words, he seemed increasingly inclined to accept my interpretation of events rather than construct one of his own.
It was a familiar tendency, though I had never witnessed it develop quite so rapidly. Vale had spent years allowing Vane to define the purpose and morality of his actions. With that authority discredited, he had begun searching for another means of understanding himself. Unfortunately, I was sitting directly in front of him, providing answers to questions he had apparently never permitted himself to ask. The ease with which he accepted them made me uncomfortable.
"I thought I was protecting her," Vale whispered. His fingers moved against the back of the chair, producing a faint scrape against the wood. "When she begged me, I still held her down." His jaw tightened. "If Vane lied about the others, if he lied about what would happen to you..."
He raised his eyes toward me. Whatever defense he had intended to offer seemed to have deserted him, leaving behind an uncertainty that had not been present when our conversation began.
"Then how much of what I did was ever necessary?"
"None of it," I answered before he could reconsider the question. "You were a pawn in his games. At the end of it all, you probably mattered even less than Evelyn did."
Vale flinched. The suggestion offended something in him that had survived the collapse of his other convictions, and for an instant I thought he might reject it outright. Instead, he remained silent, examining the possibility with a reluctance that revealed considerably more than an argument would have.
"Less than her," he repeated. His eyes drifted toward the empty space beside me. "At least she was something he wanted."
A faint, humorless laugh escaped him. He lowered his head, and the movement brought his face into the uneven shadow cast by the basement lamp. The light caught his cheek and the bridge of his nose, leaving the remainder of his expression difficult to distinguish.
"I was only the man who made sure his instruments stayed clean."
I watched him for a moment, uncertain whether he had intended the remark to be quite so revealing. He had devoted himself to a man who regarded people as materials, and even now his measure of personal worth depended upon how useful he had been to that same man. It was a miserable foundation upon which to build a life. Unfortunately for Vale, I had spent the better part of our conversation determining exactly where its weaknesses lay.
His reactions had followed patterns that became increasingly apparent the longer I observed them. Pride had given way whenever his importance to Vane was questioned. He had appealed to professional duty when confronted with suffering, then retreated into obedience when asked to explain why those duties had been necessary. Even his occasional demonstrations of compassion had depended upon whether he could reconcile them with the doctor's approval.
I had followed those connections, tested his explanations, and chosen my responses accordingly. Although I had begun the interrogation hoping to discover what he knew, I had gradually become engrossed in the manner in which his mind protected him from that knowledge.
The realization settled over me with a peculiar sense of familiarity.
Then something changed.
It was a sensation so slight that I might have overlooked it several months earlier. A faint warmth that had accompanied the potion for so long began to disperse, and the subtle resistance I had grown accustomed to sensing within my spirituality loosened. There was no violent disturbance, nor did anything extraordinary occur in the room around me. The change resembled the final grain of sugar dissolving into a cup of tea, leaving no visible trace of its presence.
I remained perfectly still, directing my attention inward. My spirituality had become noticeably easier to control, though the difference was difficult to describe. For months, a portion of my awareness had seemed occupied by something just beyond my reach. That sensation was now absent, and when I searched for it, I found nothing.
The Telepathist potion was completely digested.
For several seconds, I forgot about the man sitting opposite me. I had expected the occasion to announce itself more dramatically, perhaps with the familiar discomfort that had accompanied earlier changes in my Beyonder abilities. Instead, the months of acting, observation, and occasional misjudgment had culminated in a moment so ordinary that Vale scarcely seemed to notice.
He was still bound to his chair. The basement still smelled faintly of dust and lamp oil, and somewhere above us the manor continued with its usual quiet activity. Nothing in my surroundings had changed.
Nevertheless, the realization left me strangely content. I had finally finished digesting the potion, and the prospect of advancing no longer seemed quite so distant.
"There will be more Evelyns," I said.
Vale's head lifted sharply. He had been watching my face during the silence, and the change in my attention appeared to have unsettled him. For a moment he looked at me as though I had done something he could not identify. Then he considered what I had said, and his expression grew grave.
"Yes," he whispered. "If Vane is still working, there will be."
Fleeting thoughts of other patients, laboratories, and procedures brushed the surface of Vale's mind before he leaned forward, disturbing his injured knee. Pain crossed his face, but he seemed too concerned by the direction of our conversation to pay it much attention.
"But you cannot simply go looking for him." He shifted as far forward as his restraints permitted. "You still think of him as a doctor with assistants and laboratories. He's not alone anymore."
The warning drew my attention. Vale had previously spoken of Vane with the confidence of someone familiar with his employer's affairs, yet he was becoming increasingly cautious as our discussion moved beyond the clinic itself. I could sense fear beneath his words, though it appeared to concern people he had scarcely mentioned until now.
"There are people around him now. Powerful people. Some of them I was never permitted to meet, only to receive instructions from." His eyes remained fixed upon mine. "Finding Vane isn't a matter of tracking down one obsessed man. You start pulling at that thread, and you're kicking a hornet's nest."
"I never liked the expression fight fire with fire, though it may be appropriate now." I lowered my voice until the words belonged only to him and me. "I wish to do her justice. To perform such a miracle, I need information."
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
I deliberately softened my manner. Vale had been expecting another accusation, and I had no particular reason to provide one. His knowledge was useful, and the possibility of being useful to someone other than Vane offered him a means of recovering a small measure of dignity. I watched his posture as he considered my words, taking care not to press him while he was still weighing the implications.
"You want names," he said quietly. "Locations. The people who carried messages, where payments came through, which laboratories Vane used after you disappeared, before everything was broken apart." He studied my face for a moment. "I can give you some of that. Not all at once, because there are things I genuinely don't know."
Vale's fingers flexed behind the chair. From his hesitation and the apprehension I sensed, I suspected he had more reason to fear Vane than he had admitted. Whatever the doctor had promised his subordinates, Vale no longer believed himself protected by it.
"I don't expect freedom. I'm not stupid enough to ask for forgiveness either." He drew a careful breath. "But if I help you, I will not be returned to Vane. Not as bait, not as an exchange, not so you can follow whoever comes to collect me."
There was something almost pitiful about Vale's request. He had spent so long following instructions that establishing a condition of his own seemed to require considerable effort. Nevertheless, he held my gaze and waited, evidently determined not to surrender the one boundary he had managed to establish.
"Give me that," he said, "and I'll tell you where to begin."
"I do not intend on using you as bait."
I had already begun to suspect that Vane would have little interest in reclaiming him. Whatever value Vale had once possessed as a loyal subordinate had been greatly diminished by our conversation. Vale knew too much for Vane to trust him, and his faith in the doctor's authority had suffered damage I doubted could be easily repaired. Whether the man would eventually find a healthier means of understanding himself was another matter entirely.
"Nor do I plan on giving you back to Vane either."
Disapproval entered my expression before I bothered concealing it. The suggestion offended me, especially after everything Vale had revealed about the doctor's treatment of those placed in his care. There were considerably more productive uses for the information he possessed than returning him to the very person responsible for the entire affair.
Vale appeared to notice my reaction. Vale seemed to have been watching for hesitation, perhaps expecting some qualification that would render my assurance meaningless. When none came, the tension in his shoulders eased by a fraction.
"All right," he said softly. "Then I'll tell you what I know."
Vale adjusted himself against the chair and glanced toward the basement door before continuing. I suspected the movement was habitual, born from years of speaking carefully whenever Vane's more sensitive affairs were involved.
"Vane stopped keeping everything beneath one roof after you escaped. Supplies went through intermediaries. Patients were moved before procedures, sometimes more than once." He frowned as he searched his memory. "I knew two addresses, perhaps three if the third wasn't merely storage, and there was a man who handled payments under the name Calder."
I listened without interrupting. It was the first time he had provided information that extended beyond the immediate circumstances of Evelyn's imprisonment, and I had little interest in discouraging him. The mention of another intermediary was particularly useful, though I was careful not to allow my interest to become too obvious.
"But the people protecting Vane were above my position. I heard titles, saw correspondence, recognized patterns. I can tell you where the edges of the network are." His mouth tightened. "If you intend to go deeper than that, you'll need someone considerably more dangerous than me."
"Why did he adjust after I had left?" I allowed the conversation to loosen. "Surely he has had this happen before."
Vale considered the question without immediately becoming defensive. His posture had eased considerably, and he no longer seemed to expect every inquiry to conceal another personal accusation. The change was welcome, although I remained conscious of how much his cooperation depended upon his present circumstances.
"People had run before," he said. "Patients panicked. Assistants disappeared. There were even subjects Vane lost track of for a time." He frowned, then shook his head. "But none of them were you."
Vale looked at me with a familiarity I no longer found comfortable. I wondered how many details of Evelyn's time at the clinic he remembered, and whether any part of him still regarded the woman before him as one of the doctor's former subjects.
"Most knew almost nothing beyond the room they were kept in. They escaped from him. You escaped carrying knowledge of him, his methods, his people, and whatever happened to you on that table."
His gaze lingered on my face. I had the unpleasant impression that he was trying to determine how much of the original Evelyn remained, although the thoughts nearest the surface of his mind concerned Vane's reaction to my disappearance.
"And you survived something he believed should have left you dependent on him. I think that bothered him more than he ever admitted."
I had considered that possibility before. Vane's interest in Evelyn had never struck me as particularly benevolent, and the thought that her escape had offended his professional pride was hardly surprising. What interested me was the extent to which his behavior had changed afterward.
"He became suspicious afterward. Records were separated. Supplies stopped arriving directly. Patients were moved between locations, and people I had never heard of began appearing in correspondence." Vale exhaled. "At first I assumed he was simply correcting the flaws you exposed."
Vale paused and looked toward the floor. For a moment I thought he had reached the limits of what he knew, but his expression suggested that he was reconsidering an old assumption. I waited while he examined the memory, resisting the temptation to hurry him.
"Now I'm not certain all of those changes were his decision." His eyes narrowed. "There were conversations I was excluded from immediately after you vanished. He would emerge furious, then change procedures he had defended for years."
The detail caught my attention. Vane had always appeared to me as a man accustomed to exercising authority without much concern for the opinions of others. The possibility that someone could compel him to abandon procedures he considered important suggested a relationship rather different from the one Vale had previously described.
"Someone above him noticed what happened when you escaped."
"Above him?" I kept the question loose.
Vale nodded once. His fingers had begun moving against the chair again, though he seemed unaware of the habit. Whatever he was recalling had evidently troubled him at the time, even if he had not understood its significance.
"Above him," he repeated. "Vane never called them superiors. He was too proud for that. But there were people he deferred to, which amounts to the same thing."
Vale hesitated before continuing. From the care he took in phrasing his account, I gathered that he was trying to separate what he had personally witnessed from the conclusions he had drawn afterward. It was a reassuring sign. A frightened man eager to please might have invented any number of useful details, but Vale seemed unwilling to offer information he could not reasonably defend.
"I saw correspondence sealed with symbols I didn't recognize. Instructions arrived through Calder without signatures." He searched his memory for a moment. "Once, after you escaped, a man visited Vane personally. Well dressed. Educated. Perhaps nobility, though he gave no name. Vane dismissed everyone from the room. Even me."
His eyes narrowed at the recollection, and I could sense an old resentment accompanying it. Apparently, being excluded from the doctor's confidence had wounded him more deeply than he cared to admit. His pride had survived remarkably well for a man whose entire understanding of his employer had just been overturned.
"When the man left, Vane was furious. Not frightened exactly." Vale considered the distinction. "Humiliated."
I found that considerably more interesting. Vane might tolerate inconvenience, professional disagreement, or even outright hostility if he believed himself sufficiently important. Humiliation was another matter, particularly when it came from someone whose authority he could not easily dismiss.
"He spent the rest of the evening destroying records, then ordered the laboratories separated the following morning." Vale looked toward me. "I never saw the visitor again, but Calder knew him. He wouldn't look directly at him."
Vale shifted carefully in his chair. The movement produced a faint creak from the wood, and he waited until it settled before speaking again. His attention had become more focused, as though recalling the visitor had finally given him a direction in which to organize the information he possessed.
"If you want the first thread that actually leads upward, I would start with Calder, not Vane."
I considered his suggestion, turning the unfamiliar name over in my mind. Calder might have been little more than another intermediary, but his connection to the visitor offered a possibility worth investigating. At the very least, Lucien and Mara would have a better understanding of how to pursue someone involved in such an organization.
Then a familiar sensation pressed against my thoughts.
For an instant, the basement seemed strangely distant. I remembered the first night, when I had scarcely understood the world into which I had awakened. There had been so many questions then, each answer revealing another dozen matters I lacked the knowledge to comprehend. That feeling had never entirely disappeared. Despite everything I had learned since, I was once again confronted by the uncomfortable realization that the people around me operated within structures I could perceive only in fragments.
My brow tightened. I had become distracted, and the sudden weight of everything I did not know left me reluctant to continue.
"Edwin."
Vale blinked. He seemed to have been watching me during the silence, and my use of his given name caught him by surprise. There was no immediate fear in his expression, only curiosity, though he seemed careful not to ask what had occupied my attention.
"Yes?"
There was no formality in the answer. Vale did not address me as Miss Harrow, nor did he attempt to recover the clinical authority he had once exercised over Evelyn. He simply waited for me to continue, his posture suggesting that he expected another question.
"I'm here," he added. "Ask me what you need to know."
I looked at him for a moment. My body felt considerably heavier than it had when I entered the basement, and I had only just begun to recognize the fatigue gathering behind my eyes. I had expected a task requiring such constant mental attention to leave me physically unaffected. Instead, maintaining my awareness of another person's thoughts and emotions for so long had proved exhausting. Even with the potion fully digested, there were evidently limits to how much I could comfortably endure.
"Please, any information you know... tell Lucien and Mara." Vale's attention sharpened at the names, though he did not interrupt. "They have been helping me so far with unraveling even things that Vane kept from you."
I paused. There were still questions I wished to ask, particularly concerning the mysterious visitor and the organization that appeared to be protecting Vane. Yet I doubted that I would accomplish much more in my present condition. Lucien and Mara possessed considerably greater experience in such matters, and Vale had already agreed to cooperate.
"Do it for Evelyn, won't you?"
Vale's expression changed. The mention of Lucien and Mara had concerned him, but Evelyn's name brought his attention back to something he could no longer approach with the same comfortable detachment. His eyes lowered, and I sensed the familiar weight of regret settling over him once more.
For Evelyn.
The words seemed to occupy Vale for several seconds. I wondered whether he was remembering the girl who had once worked at the clinic, or whether he was attempting to imagine the person she might have become had Vane never taken an interest in her. I could not determine which possibility caused him greater discomfort.
"Yes," he said at last. "For her. I'll tell them everything I can remember. The addresses, Calder, the visitor, the correspondence." He swallowed. "Even things I'm uncertain of, I'll make clear which is which."
I accepted the answer with a small nod. It was more than I had expected to obtain when the interrogation began, though I had no illusions concerning the sincerity of his sudden willingness to help. Vale was frightened, ashamed, and desperate to avoid being returned to Vane. Those circumstances made cooperation attractive to him. Whether remorse alone would have accomplished the same result was a question I did not particularly wish to examine.
"You've done enough for tonight."
I looked at him in surprise. Vale's attention had drifted toward my posture, and I recognized something of the old secretary in the way he observed me. I imagined that Vale had spent years monitoring the doctor's appointments, anticipating his needs, and attending to small irregularities before they became inconveniences. Apparently, some of those habits remained intact despite everything that had happened.
He seemed to notice the irony of his remark almost immediately. Bitterness crossed his face, and he looked away from me toward the empty portion of the basement.
"Go rest. I'll still be here when Lucien and Mara want their answers."
What an odd thing to say.
I regarded him with renewed suspicion. Had I truly convinced him that he was on our side now? That he had somehow become one of our associates, entrusted with a task on Evelyn's behalf? It would have been an extraordinary conclusion to draw from a conversation conducted while tied to a chair in someone else's basement.
I knew better than to mistake his cooperation for any meaningful change in his circumstances. Once Lucien and Mara had acquired everything useful from him, I suspected Vale would disappear, much as others had disappeared following incidents I had witnessed within the manor. The household possessed its own methods of addressing troublesome matters, and I had gradually learned that certain absences were best left unexplored.
Nevertheless, Edwin Vale remained seated before me, offering advice concerning my physical well-being after having spent years participating in Evelyn's suffering. There was something so peculiar about the reversal that I found myself staring at him longer than was strictly necessary.
Perhaps people were simply more complicated than I preferred to believe.
I eventually rose from my seat. Vale watched me without speaking, his expression composed enough that I could no longer determine whether he was relieved by my departure or apprehensive about what would follow. The distinction seemed unimportant. He had agreed to provide what he knew, and there was little else I could reasonably accomplish by remaining.
I crossed the basement and opened the door, stepping into the passage beyond. The latch settled behind me with a soft clack, leaving Vale and the wavering lamplight on the other side. My footsteps were quiet as I approached the stairs, and I welcomed the cooler air in the passage after so long in the confined room.
The wood beneath my hand changed as I ascended. Near the basement, the banister was rough and gnarled, its surface worn by years of use without much concern for appearances. Farther up, the timber became smoother, eventually giving way to the polished finish of the corridors guests were permitted to see. I ran my fingers along the transition, feeling the distinction beneath my palm while my thoughts returned to everything Vale had revealed.
There was too much to consider. Vane had connections beyond the clinic, someone appeared capable of compelling him to change his methods, and the name Calder had emerged as a possible means of reaching those responsible. I had also completed the digestion of my Telepathist potion, an accomplishment that deserved considerably more attention than I had been able to give it.
Yet it was the questions I could not answer that troubled me most.
I knew I could approach Lucien whenever he happened to be at the manor. I could ask him how the stars moved through the sky, and he would probably give me a perfectly straightforward explanation. Matters concerning Vane, the hidden organizations operating within this world, and the intentions of powerful Beyonders were considerably less simple. My confidence in his available time and patience had waned, particularly after learning more about the responsibilities that accompanied his position.
What Sisyphus had told me about demigods offered little comfort. Lucien had always been strange, though knowing there was a name for the scale of that strangeness had done nothing to make speaking with him easier. I was growing accustomed to the realization that people I regarded as acquaintances might possess capabilities and obligations far beyond anything I could reasonably imagine.
I reached the upper corridor and paused. The manor was quiet, its polished floors and familiar furnishings presenting the same comfortable appearance they always had. Somewhere beneath that carefully maintained tranquility sat a man who had participated in terrible things and now seemed determined to make himself useful to the people holding him captive.
I wondered what Lucien would make of that.
Uncertainty continued to flow through my thoughts, carrying questions I lacked the energy to pursue. I could feel the temptation to examine each one, to follow the connections Vale had provided until another pattern emerged. Under ordinary circumstances, I might have indulged it.
Instead, I cupped that uncertainty carefully within my mind and held it there.
For now, that would have to be enough.