Demon Marked

to the middle of her back during a walk through the garden one August afternoon. That one, who’d pulled a prank with glowing eyes, and terrified one of the nurses so badly that she’d quit her position the next day. That one, whom the nurses had found crouching atop the roof of Nightingale House one morning, and who’d given no believable explanation of how she’d climbed the turrets. That one, who’d dropped from the roof to the ground as easily as another person stepped out of her bed, despite their pleas for her to stop.
    They’d shrieked when she’d jumped—but Ash hadn’t detected any relief from them when she’d landed on her feet, uninjured. There’d only been fear, followed by hot anger.
    Another nurse had quit after that, screaming to her supervisor that she’d expected Nightingale House to treat only drugaddicted celebrities and depressed aristos, and that she’d left the government-run hospitals for a posh situation to avoid the psychos. Ash had decided to leave, too, albeit for a different reason. The answer to the one question that interested her— Who am I? —hadn’t been at Nightingale House. No answers were there—except for one, and she’d asked Dr. Cawthorne for that information during her final therapy session.
    “A posh hospital must be expensive,” she’d said. “So who is paying for my treatment?”
    He’d paled. In the months since she’d begun speaking, the wrinkles around Cawthorne’s eyes and mouth had become more pronounced. His skin had loosened as if he’d dropped weight. But although she’d frightened him at times, he’d never lost color in his face or broken out with a sheen of sweat, as he had then.
    His gaze had skidded away from hers. “The money comes from a numbered account. The donor wishes to remain anonymous.”
    “But you know who it is.”
    His hands trembled. “Yes.”
    “And she knows who I am.”
    “Probably,” he’d answered, before looking at Ash with surprise. “How did you know it was a she ?”
    Because a woman had brought her to Nightingale House. Ash avoided the memory of her almost as fiercely as the memory of the dark figure, but she could recall the woman’s face, surrounded by dark hair—and the eyes containing a madness that went deeper than anyone else’s at that hospital. Yet despite her obvious insanity, the woman hadn’t remained here; she’d left Ash behind instead.
    Dr. Cawthorne leaned forward, his urgency and panic rushing his words. “I cannot tell you, do you understand? It was part of the deal. If you woke up, I wasn’t to tell you anything. I wasn’t to tell anyone . But no one thought you would wake up. She said the weak halflings rarely did.”
    “Halflings? What is that?” And was Ash one of them?
    He only shook his head. “I made a bargain. So I can’t tell you, do you understand ?”
    Ash had understood, though she couldn’t remember how or why she did. She knew that bargains should be avoided, but if they had to be made, they should never be broken. At the very thought of it, ice seemed to form the length of her spine, similar to the cold fear she sensed from Cawthorne.
    Similar to his, but so much stronger. A survival instinct.
    With effort, she’d suppressed the tremors threatening to shake her body, her voice. “You can’t tell me who I am or anything about her,” Ash had said. “But what do you get out of this?”
    “She knows that I once made an . . . error during the treatment of a patient. I keep you here in exchange for her silence.” He’d brought a handkerchief to his brow and mopped away the sweat. “And eventually, I’ll publish a series of papers about you. You’re a fascinating study, Ash.”
    So he was saving his own ass, and using her for his professional advancement. Ash had watched enough television to know that the appropriate response to his confession was a sense of betrayal and outrage. She didn’t feel either emotion, but she had no intention of letting him continue to use her—and if he couldn’t give her answers, she’d find someone who would.
    His relief had been palpable when she dropped the subject and they’d continued the session as usual. She’d waited until after he’d gone home for the evening before entering his office a final time, hoping to find a hint of information in that session’s notes. There hadn’t been anything useful, only a single, self-indulgent rumination that he probably intended to use for a journal article:
    The name she’s