“I don’t want it.”
“Trevor?” I pushed open a door to a supply closet and gave the space a quick scan. No dice. Where the hell was he? Why wasn’t he in one of the beds?
“Please.” His whimpers grew stronger, louder, more desperate. “Stop. Stop!”
“Trevor!” I ran up and down the halls of the infirmary, panic and worry fueling my speed. He was just a kid. An annoying kid who asked too many questions, but still, just a kid.
“Help!”
I spun around. That came from the opposite direction. How was that possible? I broke into a run and rounded a corner.
And collided with my mom, who seemed just as surprised to see me as I was to run into her. She had grime on her hands and face and sticks and leaves tangled in her messy hair. Was she gardening at four in the morning? “Mom?”
She quickly wiped her hands on her dirty jeans. “Katy? What are you doing here at this hour?”
I’d have to ask about her appearance later. Right now, I needed to find Trevor. “Have you seen a little blond kid running around? About yay high.” I held my hand up at my shoulder. “Big glasses.” I made circles with my fingers in front of my eyes.
She glanced behind her. I did the same, not seeing what she looked for, and refocused on her when she turned back to me. “You must be talking about Trevor. He’s back there in his room.”
“No, I checked. Twice.”
“I just left his room. He was having a bad dream. I calmed him down.”
“Show me.” I didn’t know why I didn’t believe her, only that I didn’t. Trevor wasn’t in any of the rooms. His voice was coming from every direction. Something wasn’t right.
“Are you okay, sweetie?”
“Show me!”
She jumped at my outburst. “Okay, okay. Calm down. I can smell your call.”
Because I was close to setting something on fire. With a deep breath, I pulled it in and hurried after her. She took me deep into the belly of the infirmary and paused outside a door, pressing her finger to her lips before quietly pushing it open.
Trevor laid there, dwarfed by the large bed, his eyes closed as he seemed to be fast asleep. He had a heart monitor on his finger sending signals to a machine that beeped steadily. He looked so peaceful, nothing like how he’d sounded only moments before.
I walked into the semi-dark room and stood next to him, debating taking his small hand in mine. Would that be weird? I didn’t care and rested my hand over his. He was cold, so I grabbed the blanket folded at the foot of the bed and covered him, tucking it in around him.
The movement stirred him awake. When he spotted me, he lit up, his smile so wide, I could pretty much see his tonsils. He grabbed his owlish glasses and slipped them on. “Hi, Katy!”
This was not the same kid who’d whimpered and cried for help. Was I hearing things? Had I imagined the entire scenario? Maybe I was so desperate to play savior that I made up victims when I didn’t have anything better to do. God, I was a hot mess.
“How are you feeling, buddy?”
“Syd said I get to go home today. I could have gone home yesterday, but my mom asked him to keep me one more day.”
Although I understood the want for peace and quiet—and with Trevor around, it was anything but—I’d want to take my kid home and do all the mom things after what he’d been through. Chicken soup. Hot cocoa. Endless hugs.
“That’s good,” I finally said. “Are you excited?”
“For what?” His expression stilled.
For what? He’d just told me he got to go home today. Odd. “To see your mom.”
His grin returned. “Yes! I get to go home today.”
Something…wasn’t right. He was a little nutty in the head, as Clay had said when we’d watched Trevor go through his tribunal, but he wasn’t this bad. “Are you okay?”
“I am now that you’re here to protect me from the bad.”
“The bad? What’s the bad?”
“I’m going to sleep more now.” He removed his glasses and set them on the nightstand before turning from me and curling into a ball. “You’ll protect me, won’t you?”
I swallowed thickly. He was an even bigger mess than me. “Of course, buddy. Get some rest.”
“Okay.”
My heart in my throat making it impossible to breathe, I left the room, silently closing the door behind me. My mom stood there waiting. I swallowed again to push my heart back into my chest. “What happened to him?”
“From the sounds of it, Alec did a real number on him. Poor kid.” She and I walked the halls back toward the entrance to the infirmary.
“How’d you know about that?”
“Trevor and I have had time to get to know each other since we’re the only two currently taking up residence here. The way he explains it, he kept being forced into darkness and back, over and over. It messed with his mind.”
Clearly. “The void?”
She nodded. “I don’t know how many times Alec pushed him to his breaking point, but it had to be several for Trevor to be this incoherent.”
“He does seem to be a little more garbled than normal. Will he recover?”
“I don’t know.”
“What about Bryan?”
“He wasn’t in the void long enough for it to affect his mind.”
Judging by the way his memory faded in and out, I wasn’t so sure about that. “What was that spell you cast on him at the infirmary?”
“A harmless spell to calm him down.” She gave a casual shrug, as if messing with someone’s mind was no big deal.
“Calm him how?”
“By locking away the dark memories.”
“Locking them away? You didn’t remove them?”
She moved farther away from Trevor’s door. “Memories can’t be removed, not entirely. Pieces can be erased, but not the entire memory. A memory spell erases enough of the bad that it’s hard to remember the
