Page 136 of Hunting Pretty

That did it. She flinched, her eyes finally lifting to meet mine, wide and haunted. The silence stretched between us, heavy with the unsaid things.

I waited, my pulse racing, willing her to say something,anything.

Finally, her lips parted, her voice barely audible as she said, “Liath kept waking up with these strange bruises… and missing time.”

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut, a flood of dread rushing through me. Bruises. Missing time.

It wasn’t just stalking. Something far worse had been happening to Liath.

I could see the fear etched into every line of Aisling’s face, and suddenly, I understood why she had been so afraid.

Lowering her voice, she said, “When she woke up from her gaps, she’d always complain of this sore throat and a bitter taste in her mouth.”

A flicker of recognition startled me. But it came and went too quickly.

I was left with nothing except for a strange certainty that there was… something. Something I’d forgotten. Or was made not to remember.

“How long had this been happening?” I asked.

Aisling glanced around us again with those wide, darting eyes. “She only told me about it a few months ago. But… it’d been happening on and off for years.”

With a jolt, I remembered the soaked rag in Liath’s room. The paralytic and the memory suppressor compound in it that Seamus had analyzed.

“Your muscles would all freeze. You’d be able to hear, see, and feel but you couldn’t move, a prisoner in your own body. But worse of all, when it wore off, you’d have no memory of what happened to you.”

Someone had been drugging Liath. Not just once, but over and over.

Foryears.

The horror seeped into my bones, slow and insidious, wrapping around me like an icy grip I couldn’t shake. Everybreath I took felt heavier, weighed down by the growing certainty that this was far worse than I had imagined.

Aisling watched undisturbed as I reached across and grabbed the mug to take a big swig. The tea was still hot enough to burn my throat, but I didn’t mind. I just needed to feel something other than terribly, terribly cold.

“It’d be better with whiskey,” Aisling mumbled and then let out a laugh her heart obviously wasn’t in.

I said nothing as I pushed the tea back to her.

She wrapped her bony fingers back around the mug and continued. “She told her ma about it, but… she just brushed it off. Like Liath was just being silly. That she’d been out partying too much. She even told her therapist and he just prescribed her antidepressants.”

Aisling slammed her fist down on the table, making the cups clatter and nearby patrons glance our way. “Shewasn’tfucking partying too much. She wasn’t depressed. Something was happening to her and no one would believe her.”

“Ibelieve you, Aisling,” I said, keeping my voice calm and low. “I believe you.”

Aisling took in a deep breath as if to try to steady herself and rubbed her face before she seemed calm enough to continue.

“Anyway, the last few weeks Liath stopped taking her pills. She was trying this new form of therapy, deep memory revival something or other. I said it sounded like hippie bullshit, but she swore she was close to remembering who…”

Aisling struggled against tears again.

Pins and needles pricked my fingers and toes. My hairslifted along my arms. The temperature hadn’t dropped in the warm pub and yet I shivered.

“Close to remembering what?” I whispered.

After glancing toward the door one last time, Aisling leaned in. “Liath was sure she was being abused by someone. She didn’t knowwhobut…”

My heart was beating out of my chest. “But Liath was close to remembering?”

Tears broke loose from Aisling’s red-rimmed eyes as she nodded. “I think she remembered. I think the person who abused herknew. And I think—”

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