Page 121 of Hospital for Immortal Creatures

“Don’t think about her death. Think about the time when she was still alive.”

Amelia conjured up one of the most powerful memories of her grandmother. It was a rainy summer night. Lightning tore the sky, followed by blaring thunder. She had never before seen such a ferocious storm. She lay curled up in her bed, with her hands pressed over her ears, afraid that the sky wouldn’t endure and very soon the thunder would break it and send it crashing down on top of everything. Her grandmother hadn’t appeared the least bit worried. She’d stroked Amelia’s hair as she’d sang to her.

“The song. She would sing me a song.”

“Do you remember it?” When Amelia nodded, Mikhail murmured, “Sing it to me.”

She bit her lip, hesitating. Could she share that with him?

He smiled and squeezed her knee in encouragement.

Her lips moved of their own accord. “Sleep, wind. Sleep, storm… The little girl’s asleep and warm… Wake her up when winter comes…”

“I like it. Keep going.”

She did, singing quietly, until her legs were no longer shaking.

Then she realised that Mikhail’s palm was still on her knee, causing a pleasant warmth to spread through her thigh. She stopped singing and lifted her gaze to him. This almost stranger had managed to pull her out of her panic attack easier than any other technique her psychologist had been teaching her for months.

And now, she owed him the truth.

“I had a vision,” she said. “Dave was running down the hallway. Someone was chasing him. The boy was terrified. He knew he wouldn’t make it. The pursuer did as well… And she… seemed to enjoy it, although she convinced herself it was just a job…”

“You saw who chased Dave?” Mikhail’s voice could have cut glass.

“Yes. A woman. She wanted to kill him. I think…” The invisible hairs on her neck bristled just thinking about it. “She wanted to carve a message into his chest. But someone showed up and she couldn’t.”

“What did she look like?”

“I... don’t know.”

He stood, towering over her. “What do you mean, you don’t know? How do you know it was a woman?”

The absence of his palm left a strange emptiness on her knee. “Because…” Amelia got to the part that was torturing her the most. “I was her. I was inside her body, her head, I knew her thoughts and feelings.”

“You were in Dave’s chaser’s head?”

“I could see through her eyes… My hands were her hands.”

“But you didn’t see her face,” he pressed.

“I’m sorry, no. There were no mirrors around.”

“Then how do you know it was a woman, Amelia?”

She stared down at her palms. “Her hands. They were feminine.”

“The nails were polished?”

“Well, no, but the fingers were long and graceful.”

A faint furrow creased his brow, the only change in his otherwise stony expression. “This is not enough, damn it! Tell me something more!”

Amelia had much more to say, yet she was aware it would probably enrage him further. “She was strangling him with her bare hands,” she continued. “Squeezing his neck between her arm and body. She thought she’d killed him. Then… she took off a glove. Her nails turned black and sharp.”

“Many immortal species have nails. Manticores, lycanthropes, nymphs, vampires…”

“Yes, but yours… They come out of a paw. These were emerging from a delicate female hand. No hairs…”

---