Page 28 of Fool Me Twice

Cane looked into his eyes. “Why what?”

Hart jerked his chin to the door. “Why do it for them?”

“You already know.”

“But I want to hear it from you. And I think you need to hear it said out loud.”

Cane pulled his hand out of Hart’s and turned his back on him.

“They’re good kids,” he said, talking to the empty hall. “They deserved a chance. They don’t need to turn out like the rest of us.”

“And they’re grateful to you for it,” Hart said. “You don’t believe they’d betray you.”

“No.”

“Okay. Then stay here, calm down, and let me see what’s happening with them, all right?”

Cane turned back to look at him, tense and wound tight still.

“Don’t come inside until I’m done,” Hart said. “You’ll only break their focus.”

Cane huffed again, but Hart was already walking away, entering the apartment, and closing the door behind him. He released a breath, leaning against the closed door and shaking the tension out of his shoulders.

He looked in front of himself and found Raph and Soph at the kitchen table, holding each other and talking softly.

“Right,” Hart said, trying to get the situation back under control. “Are you two okay?”

Soph shook her head, holding her brother tighter.

“We ruined the best thing that ever happened to us,” she said through a sob, and Raph kissed her hair, looking up at Hart with tear-filled eyes.

“We didn’t mean to,” he said again, and Hart frowned at the words.

“You keep repeating that,” he said. “What do you mean by it?”

“We know we did it,” Raph said. “We remember doing it. We both remember thinking we had to. Thinking it was important. But neither of us remembers why. And neither of us agrees with what we did.”

Hart walked farther into the place, pulling a chair out and settling in it. “So you’re saying you had no control over your actions?”

Soph shook her head.

“It’s not like that,” she said. “I think we both know what it’s like to not be in control. We both…drank and…tried other stuff before Cane. This wasn’t like that.”

“Yeah.” Raph nodded. “We knew what we were doing. But it was like we were listening to someone we couldn’t say no to. Someone that made so much sense at the time that we just went with it. We don’t know how to explain, but we didn’t mean to do it, even though it was us that did it.”

They fell silent and Hart turned their words over in his head as much as he could. Something didn’t add up.

“Okay,” he said. “How about we check to see whether you’re cursed?”

They both nodded instantly, alert and ready to cooperate.

Hart got his bag and set his things up the way he liked them, instructing the twins to sit close enough to each other to be able to see themselves in the mirror.

Hart preferred individual diagnostics, but he knew he’d never be able to pry the two of them away from each other emotionally, so tandem it was.

He explained the process to them in full. He allowed them several moments to breathe and settle into the state of mind he needed them to be in before he started guiding them toward the answers.

They were cooperative, their minds young and malleable. Open to suggestion from him. Open to being led where Hart wanted them. As easy as it made his process, it also had him worried.

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