Inside the room, the scent of damage wasn’t metaphorical but an animal stink of blood and sex and excrement and fear. The room was even darker than the corridor, heavily curtained windows visible only by seams of gray light. The blue eye of a computer monitor winked from a desk.
A large bed took up most of the room. I heard deep breathing, also a gargling snore. At least two people slept here. As I took a step forward, my boot fell on something soft. I kicked at it—a mound of clothing, not a body.
I stiffened as something moved beside me: Tindra, her face a rainbow mask where the light from Ludus Mentis leaked onto it. She crept to the side of the bed and stood there, holding the mobile as though it were a candle. Again I found myself entranced by that malevolent carnival light as I heard an echo of my name.
Cass, Cass…
I wrenched my gaze away, kept my eyes shut until the voice died away. When I opened my eyes, I saw Tindra leaning over the bed. She moved the mobile slowly back and forth, its glow illuminating one of the sleeping figures: Freya.
“Freya,” murmured Tindra, her voice a sleepwalker’s. “Freya, vakna.”
The shadow in the bed stirred, turning so that her arm flopped onto the mattress.
“Freya. Freya, vakna. Titta pa mige.”
Freya’s eyes fluttered open. The light from Ludus Mentis took on a scarlet tinge. “Vad är det?” she asked thickly.
Tindra whispered something I couldn’t hear. Freya bolted upright, flailing at the tangled bedclothes. Her hair hung loosely to her shoulders, and she wore a long shift, sleeveless. In the coruscating light I could clearly see the valknut tattoo and circle of abraded skin I realized must have come from a restraint. The bruises on her arms extended to the base of her throat. Tindra’s implacable calm gave way to pity.
“Du också?” she asked.
Freya nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks. There was terror in her eyes, and pleading. Tindra met her gaze, then turned to me.
“I said you should go.”
I didn’t move. Tindra shrugged and raised her hand higher. The mobile’s glowing screen began to pulse, releasing a cascade of light: crimson, toxic yellow, acid green. I heard a gasp as Freya gazed transfixed at the screen, trying to shade her eyes with one hand.
As though a prism had been shattered, the light exploded into a fountain of sun wheels and tridents, crosses and arrows, numerals and runes and crowns, horned circles and ideograms, hashtags and swastikas: a thousand lost alphabets flowing across Freya’s face like rain over a darkened window. She stared uncomprehending at Tindra, as though she’d awakened from a bad dream to a worse one.
In the bed beside her, the other figure moved. I heard Erik’s voice ask sleepily, “Freya?”
When she didn’t respond, he pushed himself up, crying out in confusion, “Freya, vad fan gör du!”
Freya remained mesmerized as Ludus Mentis scattered symbols like an out-of-control projector. I could no more look away than I could stop breathing: I felt myself sucked into it, too, heard that sibilant voice hissing my name.
Cass. Cass. Cass.
At the edges of my vision flickered my younger self, like a phantom figure captured by CCTV. A car drove up slowly behind her, its headlights joining the galaxy spinning from Tindra’s hand. My boots echoed down the deserted alley, I saw the girl squinting, dazzled by the headlights as a hand reached for her from the car window.
“Cass—look at me, Cass!” a voice urged.
My head snapped back. The hand was Tindra’s, grasping my wrist. My fingers loosened and the mallet I’d been holding hit the floor. I scrambled away, saw Tindra gesture at the mallet, then at Freya.
Erik shouted, struggling to climb from the bed as his wife bent to pick up the mallet. She straightened and with nightmarish slowness turned to her husband. He fell, hitting the floor with a loud thud. I heard him scrabbling to crawl away as Freya stepped closer and one of her bare feet came down on his back, pinning him. She was a big woman, with muscular arms: as she grasped the mallet with both hands and lifted it, it seemed insubstantial as a broom. Erik screamed.
“Sluta! Freya, sluta! Jag är ledsen, jag är ledsen…”
Freya raised the mallet higher, iridescent letters and symbols flickering around her like moths. I watched, my horror building as I felt myself falling back into my own loop of terror and helplessness, the dark room now a dark street, Erik’s cries my own as I tried to run. That spectral hand reached for me again, and I saw the knife it held, knew what happened next as it had happened a thousand times before, in dreams and night terrors and the moments before a blackout. The hand was within inches of my face, its blade engraved with letters and symbols that I couldn’t read, that made no sense, that had never been there before.
Light blinded me, incandescent white. The world divided into before and after, with me posed between, seeing it all at once: the barefoot young woman dancing along the Bowery and the ravaged woman observing her from a lifetime away. My footsteps continued to echo through the deserted alley as the car drove up alongside me and a hand extended from its open window. But I no longer felt fear but rage, a pure cold fire that burned through me as I halted, turned toward the car, and, instead of running away, grabbed the hand with the knife.
My fingers closed around a wrist, the knife flashed and spun into the shadows. Someone screamed: not me but Tindra as her mobile flew from her hand. In the dark room Freya grunted, counterpoint to a rhythmic, muffled sound as she lifted and lowered the mallet repeatedly.
Erik’s cries had ceased. The mobile struck the wall and dropped to the ground. Tindra stumbled toward it, but I still had hold of her. I yanked her so she faced me and saw in her eyes terror and fury, anguish and guilt, and the inexorable longing for annihilation and revenge that had consumed her.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
I pushed her away and strode to where the mobile lay screen up. With all my strength I brought my boot down on it, grinding with my heel until I felt the screen shatter. I ignored Tindra’s shrieks, shoving her to the floor as she tried to stop me.
Tindra had said she didn’t need the mobile except as a talisman—from her screams, a talisman she couldn’t bear to lose—but I wasn’t taking any chances. I stomped on the mobile until it went dark and kicked its fragments across the floor. Maybe someone with military-grade forensics at their disposal could trace the data from it, but that wouldn’t be my problem. No one here would be able to use it. Tindra flung herself at me again, screaming in Swedish. I sent her careening against the wall. She dropped to her knees and crouched there as I yanked the door open and stalked into the hall.