Detaching from his mind when Estelle withdrew her energy, Adriel saw his eyes were now more focused. He turned them on Pam with a warm smile that she returned.
“Uncle Craig, it’s me, Pam.”
“Well, of course I know that. See you with my own eyes, don’t I?” There was no rebuke to his tone. He glanced around the room as though unsure, for a moment, where he was. Clicked in for the time being, Adriel saw him recognize his surroundings, noticed the quickly-covered dismay on his face. “Gone again, wasn’t I?”
“Yes. You were.” Pam laid a hand on his arm. “But you’re back now.”
Craig’s U-shaped room was about the size of the cabin the illness forced him to leave behind. The bathroom took up most of the central portion of the U, and provided some privacy to the two sleeping areas flanked on either side. At the lower end of the U, Craig and his currently-absent roommate shared a communal sitting area containing two vinyl-covered sofas with a small table between them. Every piece of furniture was bolted to the floor. Once Pam got the three of them seated on the sofas, she launched again into the pertinent news from home until he interrupted her with a comment that made Adriel’s blood run cold. “You find your brother yet? He was here a little while ago.”
She needn’t have worried, Pam brushed off the honest truth because it was too fantastic for her to consider. “No, Ben hasn’t come home.” She busied herself again by checking through more of his things to make sure he had what he needed until her next visit. Adriel wanted to ask how often Ben stopped by, and had the pair of them been in contact all along, or was it a recent development. One look at Pam’s stiff spine and the way her hands jerked with every motion was enough to deter the conversation.
Instead, the next few seconds were spent having a private inner war with herself over begging Estelle to help her rove a little deeper through Craig’s mind. If her powers had remained intact, Adriel would have interfered enough to place a few markers he could follow back to the present. Her intuition insisted there was enough vital information stored in the chaos of his mind to make it worth meddling, even if doing so was frowned upon by those in charge of these types of things.
Temptation won out. While Pam indulged in delighted conversation with Craig, Adriel silently argued her case with Estelle. A few harmless signposts for him to follow wouldn’t be enough to keep him fully anchored, but should decrease the amount of time lost to the vagaries of his memory. When gentle persuasion looked like it wasn’t working, Adriel put her foot down.
“I’m in charge of your training, right? Then consider this a lesson in how to heal. It’s a skill you might be called upon to use. Besides, a saner Craig might be able to help Ben, while giving Pam a little more peace of mind.”
Mentally thumbing her nose at the powers that be, Adriel borrowed on Estelle’s power to start placing signposts throughout Craig’s mind.
Each new marker led her farther into the maze, until a turn separated her from Estelle and in her haste to get back, she went one section too far. Then another and another, until she realized she was getting close to the center of the maze where something lurked. A presence trying hard to present itself as null, but had the flavor and scent of malevolence. Angel power flared through her like a sleek, black panther uncurling to stalk prey. Adriel nearly cried at the familiarity of feeling totally connected to her truth again.
The sense of rightness faded when a furious Estelle rounded the corner. “What are you doing? You said a couple markers around the edges and the next thing I know, you’re gone.”
Whatever rested in Craig’s mind would have to wait—Estelle was done with rule breaking.
Estelle, dragging Adriel along behind her, pulled back to the edge of Craig’s mind as quickly as she could without hurting him. To her surprise, Craig’s spirit was there to meet them.
“You’re going to help the boy.” He made it a statement instead of a question.
“That is the plan,” Adriel answered. “Can you tell me anything helpful?” Craig turned his back on them; Adriel and Estelle exchanged a glance. He did know something.
“Just help him. He’s the key to it all. The lies, and the secrets, and the shame.” Craig was getting worked up. Adriel needed to do something to calm him before Pam noticed anything funny going on.
“Trust me.” An unexpected flare of her old authority—born of speaking only truth—bolstered the words into an intonation that made him flinch as it echoed through his head. She felt bad about basically yelling at the poor man. Then he nodded his head and relaxed with a small smile. Back in her own mind, Adriel saw Pam preparing to leave.
“I’m so sorry,” she said once we were back in the Jeep. “I’ve never seen him get worked up like that before. He’s usually pretty docile.”
Was there anything Adriel could tell Pam to ease her mind? The debate raged through her while Pam took her lack of response for something other than an innocent pause. When Adriel realized her hesitation was adding to Pam’s general sense of unease, she said “He seemed to be more lucid when we left.”
“When he said he’d seen Ben, it sent a chill up my spine. For all I know, it could
