Page 51 of Eye of the Beholder

“I bet Virginia would be willing to hold your hand if you—”

“Shut up,” Cohen says, but he smiles.

Well, that’s better. His hands are still shoved deep in his pockets, but a smile is a step in the right direction.

“This doesn’t look like a house,” I say with a frown as we approach the building.

We’re close enough that the others can hear me when I speak, and Virginia turns around.

“It’s not a house,” she says, her voice sweet, which catches me off guard. “It’s an old asylum.” Then her eyes do that little dagger thing they do so well.

I gulp. “Like…an insane asylum?”

“Yeah,” Jack says, grinning over his shoulder. “Cool, right?”

No. Not cool. Not cool at all. Suddenly I’m with Cohen; we don’t need to be here for this.

“You know what?” I whisper to him as we walk up the long stone steps leading to the large front doors, and he leans down slightly to hear me. It always makes me feel short when he does that. “You’re right. We can go.”

“Nope,” he says, his voice dry. “We’re here now; we’re about to go in. It’s too late. And look—Jack is holding the door open for you. How sweet.”

His voice is faintly mocking, which I don’t at all appreciate. “I could use a little less of the attitude,” I say, but he just grins.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he says over my shoulder as I walk past Jack—who is indeed holding the door open for me—and into the asylum.

16

Cohen

I’m not sure it’s good for my body to spend this long in fight-or-flight mode, but it doesn’t show signs of calming down any time soon.

This asylum place is straight out of a horror movie. Any second now something truly creepy is going to happen. I’m just waiting.

Mina has her nose buried in a pamphlet they handed us when we got inside. She might be staring at the pamphlet so she doesn’t see anything else. Apparently this place was a real asylum once, which makes it a billion times scarier. There are broken pieces of wood all over the place, graffiti on the walls, wheelchairs in the corners every now and then…

It’s not that I’mscared. I just…don’t like scary things.

“Hey,” Mina says, nudging me with her elbow. “This says there’s a hidden room in here somewhere.”

I swing my gaze down to look at her and frown. “A hidden room? In an asylum?”

She nods, still staring at the pamphlet. “That’s what it says.”

“Doesn’t that seem like a bad idea?”

She smiles up at me. “It does.”

I smile back, partly just because she looks so silly in that costume that it’s hard not to laugh. Somehow it’s cute on her instead of ridiculous.

Jack clearly thinks so too. He’s a bit ahead of us, walking with Virginia, but he looks back frequently, and I know it’s not me he’s checking on.

We pass through a small room with peeling paint on the walls and some old pipes on the wall. There’s a nasty-looking bathtub in the middle; it’s rusted and ancient. A chill runs down my spine when I see that there are chains with cuffs attached to the floor next to it—like they had to keep people restrained in the tub.

I regret coming here. I regret it deep down in my soul. I don’t need this in my life right now.

Virginia stops next to the tub, and Jack stops with her. I stand back, well away from them, and Mina does the same, which makes me feel a little better.

But then Jack yelps, and Virginia gives a loud shriek, and before the rational part of my brain can talk me out of it, I’m right there at the tub with them.

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