Page 132 of Drift

“He came back alone, but Grace turned up a few days later.”

Martin cocked a brow. “She’d followed him.”

“She’d been with him since he’d gone to Farlands, only she’d stayed back in the shadows, watching where he went, who he was with, and I think that… that caught Grant’s attention more, that she’d watched without him knowing she was there. But me and Ava, we were brought up on hide and seek, and sometimes we’d get into neighbours’ houses without them knowing in order to play. We’d always run together. I’d always find her. She’d always find me.”

“So why didn’t you tell Grant what had gone down back at Farlands? And I mean all of it? How Ava wasn’t… stable?”

“None of us are fucking stable,” he said quietly, and Drift looked at him, his knee tapping lightly under the table. “Even Grant had his weirdness over damn pigeons.”

Martin searched his look. “Because you missed her touch as well as her, and part of you was… glad to see her?”

Drift straightened in his chair a little. “I missed not feeling the hurt and the bone-deep cold of the streets when it came to not holding my sister. There’s a difference.” He rubbed a palm hard into his head. Christ, he hoped there was. “But a better part of me just wanted her away from Farland.” He snorted. “It still does. That maybe if I’d gotten her away from Farland, she’d somehow be okay…” He shook his head. “But I hated her too, so damn much. In those early days with Grant, her stay away from me said she knew. And, dammit, she changed around Grant, I swear to God she did for a while. We didn’t talk for months, but she’d sort any equipment I needed for feeding, and I started to do the same for her. I didn’t want her caught and sent back to Farland, and with West coming in a few months later, it was like being away from Farland took away the poison.”

“Only it hadn’t.”

Drift shook his head. “It started small, y’know. Feeds arranged that took West out of the playing field and kept her ‘safe’ back with Jackson, so it was just me and her. We’d break into homes, and she stand staring down at kids in their beds, then steal the toys they held on to under the covers. Then she’d slip them into their parents’ bed. At first I thought it was her way with dealing, with coping, and the toy was somehow her, desperately looking for the right kind of hold from a parent. But then one night she carried one young boy into his dad’s room, and put him in bed together. Then she winked my way before climbing in the far side, her finger against lips almost an offer from a mother that we be quiet as she… she rested the boy’s hand between the dad’s thighs.”

Drift briefly closed his eyes. “I dragged her out, but her brushes of body against mine came with such a… fucked-up smile that said—”

“She liked you being there, getting angry as you watched?”

Drift wiped a hand over his face, the need to bolt eating into him. “She likes the loss of control I have when she always holds on to hers, nothing more.Shefucks with my head, and it has this… this poisonous effect on my body because there are times when I damn well, when—” He stopped that there. “I don’t know who I hate more for it. Me for allowing it, her for being fucked up by Farland and doing it, or Farland for triggering just how twisted her head and touch can go.”

“It’s purely a self-gratifying cover with the Farlands,” said Martin. “An alibi, where she can use ‘Grace’ to hide what Ava is doing.”

“That pissed me off the most,” Drift said over to him. “I wanted her away from all of his poison, so to see her….” He stopped that anger there. “She was late back to Grant’s base spot one morning, so I followed her to find out why.” He snorted. “I was ten, her just twelve, and I found Farland on the doorstep of our house, all smiles and lowering his look away from her, as if she denied him the right to look until she allowed otherwise. So after he followed her in, all sweat, and heat, and scent, I waited until she left… then burnt his fucking home down.”

Martin stayed quiet for a moment. “Only Farland got a brand-new house for it, and Ava, she still kept going back because she knew you’d follow.”

Drift fell quiet for a moment. “Each time through the years even when she turned Night-walker, I’d catch her glance back over her shoulder to see if I was following, and I swear thatdarkness and smile was only there to see if I’d burn through more homes for her.”

“And that part of you that wanted her away from it all, you would have done, hmm? But so too for that darker part of you, how Ava had schooled you to only find release from it with her.”

Drift pushed the phone over to Martin. “Not My Job Anymore,” he said eventually. “She can’t be. Her sickness is too deep, so is mine, and…?” He shrugged. “Her life maybe could… should have been so different if she’d been dealt a better hand. And I wish, I wish to God it had been so different for her: not all psychopath’s kill, but…” He looked at the phone. “West. She sees it all, gets caught up in it, and I’m so damn scared I’ll lose her because of the dirt on mine and Ava’s skin neither of us can shake.”

“It’s not a sickness,” Martin said quietly. “It’s phobia indoctrination that started with Ava,” he said eventually. “Being left alone saw Grace’s damage start long before Farland came on the scene. Then the paedophilic element ruling him continued with the same behaviour modification, how he knew she was terrified of being left alone. So he instilled athem versus everyone elsesnake pit. He told her she could be taken away, and when you said run, it became her reality, and everything he said was proven right. You’re right with how that was a trigger point for her psychopathy. So she looks to control every aspect of life now, especially Farland, but more so you.” Martin tipped his head at Drift. “Farland’s mistake was trying it on with a young, emerging fast-lane psychopath, where you, you stumbled unknowingly into her head and path. Her natural instinct is to dominate and control any and all threat to her.”

Martin pushed the phone back at him. “So she isn’t the problem here. You can’t control a psychopath, not fully,” he said flatly. “So you’re the problem.”

Drift eased back in his chair.

“The worst kind of asylum comes without walls and borders,” Martin said quietly, “where the lunatics run with you no matter how fast you run, no matter how far the distance you try and put between them.” He tapped his head. “Both Grace and Farland played indoctrination with you, locking you away in here too much, so that the only peace you think you find is in Ava’s touch. But it’s an illusion. The main concern here is with how you couldn’t remember smacking that nightlight over Farland’s skull. How Ava saw your… potential for uncontrolled aggression, only with her as the watcher.”

Drift stiffened. “What the fuck do you mean?”

The blackness in Martin’s eyes filtered in so very slowly. “I missed it back in the hall: you said it back there: details in the name: you Drift by name. But from forgotten details to headaches, you… drift by nature too.”

Drift stiffened, so badly. How… how in the hell had he worked that out?

Martin frowned. “From her reaction on your first aggressive absence, though, it was new to youandher.” He fell so quiet. “That was your first one, and—oh, oh now this is something else. You only have thegeneticdisposition… thepotentialfor seizures.” He tapped the table, and thatwasto focus Drift now. “Tell me, did any more absences creep in when you were with Grant?”

Drift creased his face. “One, maybe two.”

“Before or after Ava joined you?”

“After.”

Martin smiled and eased back. “And it made sure Grant sent Ava out with you to keep an eye on you, hm?”

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