“I can imagine.”

“He had this room ready for me. It was full of pink lace and these pretty dolls. The bed was massive. It had one of those things hanging down from the ceiling over it. I don’t know what they’re called.”

A canopy. I had a canopy over my bed when I was a little girl. I felt like a princess, and every night Dad would draw the voile across and lie on top of the covers with me, reading stories out of my Brothers Grimm books until I fell asleep. Poor Lacey never had that. Perhaps in some way, by giving it to her now Charlie was trying to be a father to her. But after your child tries to stab you in the back with a screwdriver, I imagine that changes things. I am right.

“He didn’t let me stay in there, though. He said I had to learn some respect and he threw me in here.”

“At least he didn’t kill you.”

“He can’t kill me,” she says miserably.

“Why not?”

“Because he told me Zeth’s not really his. And he has no brothers or sisters. No other living relatives. I’m the only other person alive on the planet that shares his bloodline. And…he’s dying, Sloane. He hasn’t got long left to live.”

******

Charlie Holsan’s on the way out. Thank the universe. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear a terminal prognosis in all my life. Does that make me a terrible, awful person? I remember Zeth saying he assumed Charlie was sick, and now that it’s confirmed it feels like a weight is being lifted from my shoulders. I have no idea why. I’m still locked in a concrete box with no means of escape. I still have no idea where the man I love is, or whether he’s even okay. But somehow, just knowing Charlie’s not got long left is faintly comforting.

After an hour of holding Lacey in my arms and comforting her, Michael begins to stir. His eyelids flicker open, his right hand making involuntary open and closing twitches.

“Michael? Michael, are you okay?” I check his pupil response again, though it’s still hard to see how his irises react with so little light. He mumbles something under his breath, eyes not focused on anything in particular, and then it’s as though his system reboots right in front of me. He inhales sharply, eyes widening, back bowing, and then Michael is suddenly awake. Properly awake. He looks up at me, two small creases forming between his brows.

“Where’s Zee?” These are his first words. No confusion over where we are. No checking himself over to see if he’s all right. Where’s Zee?

“We don’t know.” I place my fingertips against his neck, checking his pulse. Still slow, but steady. If we were in the hospital, I’d be very concerned about my patient. I’d want to keep him in a couple of days to monitor him. There would be MRIs to check his brain function and internal organs. There would be at least three people, each responsible for making sure a different part of Michael was functioning properly, watching him around the clock.

I would be in the same position. However, since we’re not in the hospital, I just have to assess how he’s feeling and go from there. Not that I can do anything about it if he does experience compression to his brain, or he is bleeding internally, of course, but still…

“Do you feel nauseous?” I ask.

“No.” Michael looks grim with the small amount of light slipping in under the doorway throwing his face into shadows. His whole head looks like that of a skull: eye sockets drowning in darkness, cheeks gaunt and hollowed out. “I feel like murdering somebody,” he grinds out.

I had the good sense to be intimidated by Michael when I first met him, but in this moment I can see how he would be truly terrifying if you found yourself on his bad side. “You and I both, buddy. But we’re trapped in here.”

Michael’s face distorts in a rictus of rage. I think he’s going to jump up and start beating at the walls, set on smashing them apart with his bare hands, but then Lacey shuffles across the bare concrete floor, twists herself over so that her back’s to Michael, and nestles herself into him. His whole demeanor changes in the blink of an eye.

“What you been doing, kid? Huh?” he whispers to her, wrapping his arm protectively around the girl. Lacey doesn’t answer. She closes her eyes and falls asleep. I don’t sleep. The mere thought of it is laughable. All I can think about is Zeth and whatever the hell Charlie is doing to him. It can’t be good. Whatever it is, it can’t be good.

******

“You want salt? They never put enough salt in the fucking food.” Charlie slides a saltshaker toward me; I catch it before it can go flying off the end of the polished oak table. The pasta O’Shannessey slapped unceremoniously in front of me, scowling the whole time, is over-salted if anything. I haven’t eaten any of it; I can just smell the overload of sodium. After the movie theater, Charlie had me hauled up two flights of stairs to what must once have been the main lobby of the place. The furniture has been ripped out. Nothing but the matted old carpet, worn threadbare in places by the feet of many thousands of people, and the concession stand remain. The place still smells faintly sweet, mixed in with the staleness of dust, age and time.  

“Doctors say the radiotherapy’s killed my taste buds,” Charlie advises me, as he winds some of the pasta around his fork and stuffs it into his mouth. “They’re full of shit, though. There are a few things left I can still taste. Garlic. Scotch.” He smirks at me. “Pussy. So long as I can still taste scotch and pussy, I don’t give a fuck about everything else.”