Two days later, Harleen looked at the women seated in a small semicircle in front of her and wondered, What have I done?

Well, she had asked Dr. Leland for Arkham Asylum’s most egregious female patients and Dr. Leland had obliged. Not that there had been a large pool to choose from—the criminal justice system sent fewer women to Arkham. The files for these women described their behavior as bizarre, grotesque, and seemingly irrational, with the emphasis on seemingly. It varied; sometimes it was supposedly or appears to be, depending perhaps on how bad the evaluating physician’s day had been.

This was usually followed by a warning that the patient, though irrational, was capable of acting with purpose and intent. Staff were advised to be on their guard at all times and cautioned against being alone with them, even while restrained.

Dr. Leland had come by Harleen’s office a few hours earlier to tell her to stay safe. “Don’t let the armed guard leave you alone in the room with them, don’t turn your back on them, and for God’s sake, don’t let any of them touch you.”

“Their touch is dangerous?” Harleen had said, incredulous.

“Or at the very least disgusting.” Dr. Leland looked worried. “The female of the species is far more dangerous than the male. All species. That’s not a double standard, Dr. Quinzel, it’s a fact.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Harleen told her. “As it happens, I’m a female of the species, myself.”

“More power to you, and Godspeed,” Dr. Leland replied and left. Harleen began to wonder if Arkham’s female patients couldn’t get proper treatment because their problems had been blown completely out of proportion.

Now she was also wondering if she was in over her head.

All the women had arrived in full restraints accompanied by two orderlies, who proceeded to chain them to the heavy wooden chairs in the room. One of the orderlies saw the dismayed look on Harleen’s face and told her Dr. Leland had insisted the women be restrained throughout the session; he had mistaken Harleen’s growing anxiety for compassion. Unfortunately, patients weren’t as easily fooled. She tried to project an air of professional concern, detached but not cold, open but untouchable.

The woman in the chair to the left was going to be her toughest customer. Pamela Isley, who preferred to be called Poison Ivy, was the patient who looked after the tree outside Harley’s window. Or rather, she had been; her gardening privileges had been curtailed after she’d made the leaves toxic. She was still allowed time in the greenhouse where she was supposedly working on a way to reverse this. So far, she hadn’t had any success, although she had managed to reduce the toxicity so the leaves no longer ruined the paint job of any cars they fell on.

She was also permitted to have a small number of potted plants in her room, although “permitted” wasn’t quite the right word. Things just grew around Pamela Isley, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Arkham’s board of directors in concert with Dr. Leland came to a compromise with her: they would “let” her maintain a small indoor garden, and she would keep it small and non-toxic. It was better than having to send in a hazmat team twice a week to rip out rogue vegetation, or suffer with a local pollen count of ten thousand even when it wasn’t hay-fever season.

Harleen wondered how Arkham managed to keep her confined. Either Pamela Isley wasn’t as powerful as she wanted everyone to believe, or she was just biding her time while she waited for… well, whatever.

Or maybe Pamela Isley was just crazy.

She was a beautiful woman. But what would have turned heads on the street more than her good looks were the vines snaking through her gorgeous red hair. On anyone else, it would have seemed like a cheap, silly affectation—Hey, world, check me out. I’m so crazy! But on Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy, they looked—well—not normal, but not out of place. Natural, even.

The way she cooed and whispered to them, however, wasn’t natural, and the way the vines seemed to move in response to her was downright unsettling. Harleen decided she would always address her as Pamela or Ms. Isley. Openly refusing to participate in Isley’s delusion would be a much-needed reality check, even if only for the duration of the session. The patient needed to know she wasn’t the only tough customer in the house.

At that moment, Isley was making a big show of ignoring Harleen, turning away from her as much as her chains would allow, which wasn’t a lot. That was actually a good sign; the more effort it took for Isley to snub her, the more important she considered Harleen to be. It wouldn’t be easy getting through Isley’s jungle of defenses to reach the real her, but Harleen had hope. Which was more than she could say for the other three women.

The woman to Isley’s left was Harriet Pratt. Like Isley, she had a nom de guerre—March Harriet—but that was all they had in common. Isley was independent, single, and proud of it. Pratt had willingly latched onto the Mad Hatter, a foul and caustic character that even other criminals couldn’t stand.

Harleen was baffled as to what the woman saw in him. There was nothing gentle about him, nothing that suggested he might be affectionate. If Alice had met him at the Mad Tea Party, Harleen thought, she’d have woken up screaming. And if Harriet Pratt had been there with him, poor Alice might never have slept again.

At the bottom of the first page in Pratt’s file, someone had scrawled Crazier than a shithouse rat!! Dr. Leland strongly discouraged profanity or terms like “crazy” as unprofessional and grounds for a disciplinary note in the employee’s record. Despite that, the notation remained untouched, although it could have been blacked out easily. Apparently what it lacked in professionalism it made up for in accuracy.

Harriet Pratt’s time in Arkham had taken a toll on her. Poor diet had dulled her complexion and thinned her blonde hair. Her clothing was loose and shapeless; Harleen wasn’t sure if she was carrying extra weight or just had poor muscle tone from inactivity. Her file put her age at thirty-five but she looked fifteen years older.

Or that might have been the effect of her scratchy speaking voice and the cringe-inducing Cockney accent she put on, calling everyone “ducks” or “ducky” or “luv.” A little bit of that went a long way, Harleen thought unhappily; somewhere in London’s East End, a Pearly Queen was having nightmares. Pratt’s accent and her exclamations of “Crikey!”, “Blimey, mate!”, and “Oo-er!” were as abrasive as the Mad Hatter’s ugly laugh.

“Shiny! Shiny!” piped up the woman in the next chair over. Margaret Pye was definitely going to be Harriet Pratt’s stiffest competition for Most Annoying Patient, Harleen thought. Everyone called her Magpie and she was very much like her namesake. Anything that glinted, sparkled, or shone drew her eye and once she fixated on something, there was no distracting her. She would go through anyone or anything to get her hands on it, and she was a lot tougher (and meaner) than she looked.

Dr. Leland had insisted Margaret Pye be included, and Harleen hadn’t argued for fear of being shut down. But after reading Margaret’s file, Harleen was sorry she hadn’t at least questioned Dr. Leland’s decision. Several doctors had diagnosed Margaret Pye with inadequate personality disorder complicated by OCD. In Harleen’s professional opinion, what Margaret Pye needed was a carefully structured program of therapy with goals and periodic rewards. That, and medication for her obsessive-compulsive disorder, would do her more good than group sessions.

Unfortunately, Arkham’s threadbare budget couldn’t provide this kind of treatment for an indigent patient. If Margaret Pye had been high-profile as well as dangerous, the board would have looked for a researcher with a grant to cover expenses. If she’d had a wealthy, prominent family making demands, the board would have hit them up for a hefty donation.

But Magpie had been dumped at Arkham by another mental hospital after an unfortunate incident that had left three people dead. It had been somewhat shocking at the time but not particularly memorable. The news had given her name as Poe and no one, not even the hospital, had tried to correct it. She had no family of any kind and apparently no friends. A scrap of paper clipped to her file folder noted her birth certificate was missing and a replacement was “on the way.” But the note had obviously been there for a long time; no one knew whom to query as to why it was taking so long.

Harleen felt for the woman. If she had an inadequate personality, it was only because she lived in an inadequate world that had failed her at every turn. Perhaps Dr. Leland had thought being around other women would somehow stimulate her mind and get her interested in things that weren’t just Shiny! Shiny!

Well, it wasn’t impossible. Stranger things had happened, Harleen thought, and the last woman in the group was one of them.

Mary Louise Dahl had enjoyed a successful career in cinema as a famous and much-loved child star. Unlike other child stars, however, her career hadn’t been scuttled when she’d grown up, because she hadn’t, and never would. Something called Turner’s Syndrome, a rare disease exclusive to females, had sentenced Mary Louise to life in a child’s body without possibility of parole.

At first glance, most people might think she was seven or eight, maybe a little young for her age because of the doll she always carried. But she would never grow any taller, never experience puberty, never achieve physical maturity. She’d been lucky not to have the serious health problems that often came with Turner’s like heart and kidney trouble. Her worst misfortune was having a family who colluded with her agents and the studios to hide the whole truth about her condition from her for the sake of her career—i.e., for the sake of all the money she made. By the time she found out, it was too late for the hormone therapy that might have let her be a grown woman.

But while Mary Louise’s childhood was endless, her movie career was not. The adult trapped in the child’s body couldn’t remain hidden forever. What audiences saw was a non-child trying to ape the real thing, and the effect was similar to the uncanny valley phenomenon produced by human-like robots or realistic CGI animation—except, as many moviegoers put it, “a whole lot creepier.”

If there had been an award for Most-Royally-Screwed-Over-Person-Of-The-Century, Harleen thought Mary Louise would have owned it forever, and if there was any justice in the world, her family and agents and every other person complicit in her ruin should have been locked up for as long as Mary Louise was. Harleen wasn’t sure there was any path out of the dark place where Mary Louise lived; despite that, Harleen found herself hoping she might somehow benefit from the group. She communicated only in pseudo-baby-talk, but Harleen was sure it was habit, not an impairment. Being locked up in Arkham hadn’t given Mary Louise much incentive to increase her word power. But maybe after a couple of sessions she’d have more to say than, “I did-unt mean to do it!” or “Nasty-wasty asywum!”

Harleen figured today’s auspicious achievement was just having the women there at all, even if it wasn’t by choice. Harleen watched Mary Louise rock back and forth in her restraints and Mary Louise stared back at her over the top of her doll’s head, her eyes bright.

She’s watching me, Harleen thought uneasily. Not just watching—she’s watching me watch her. Sizing me up.

Something one of the nurses had said came back to her then. Esther Netanyahu had been at Arkham even longer than Dr. Leland. Harleen liked her because she didn’t seem jaded and cynical but she was nobody’s fool either. Keep your guard up, she’d told Harleen. They’ve got a lot more experience being them than you have being you, and they know it.

Mary Louise suddenly began blubbering loudly. “I did-unt mean to do it!” she wailed as tears ran down her face. “It’s not my fault! It is-unt! I wanna go home—why can’t I go home?”

“Here we go with the waterworks already,” Pamela Isley said, sounding world-weary and bored. “I hate being near that brat. Can’t somebody shut her up? Or aren’t there any grown-ups in the room not chained to a chair?”

“Now, now, ducks,” said Harriet Pratt in her exaggerated accent. “She’s just a little girl.”

“Like hell.” Pamela Isley caressed one of the vines in her hair. Harleen blinked; had she actually just seen that vine curl itself around her finger? A real vine couldn’t do that. (Could it?)

“Tsk, language, luv!” Harriet Pratt waggled her finger at the other woman. “There’s children and ladies present, you know.”

Now everyone except Pamela Isley was staring at her expectantly. Isley was absorbed in a close examination of the ends of a lock of her hair.

Harleen put on a bright, professional smile. “Since this is our first meeting,” she said, hoping she sounded assertive rather than unnerved, “I thought we’d keep things light and just get acquainted. Each of us can say who we are and mention one or two things about ourselves or that are important to us—”

Pamela Isley never looked up: “Is there anyone in this room, chained or unchained, who doesn’t know who I am? Didn’t think so. I need no introduction.”

A smart therapist never lets the patient drop the mic. A doctor at the hospital where she’d done her residency had told her that. “You could tell us a couple of interesting things about yourself,” Harleen said, defiantly cheerful. “Or that are important to you.”

Isley let out a long, put-upon sigh. “I prefer plants to people. Also, I don’t like people anywhere nearly as much as plants. If you were expecting something about long walks on the beach or my favorite food or how I make it through every day here without slashing someone’s throat, including my own, tough stuff.”

“Aren’t you a cheeky bit of rough,” Harriet Pratt said, waggling her finger again.

Harleen ignored her. “Well? Don’t keep us in suspense,” she said to Isley. “How do you get through every day without slashing someone’s throat, including your own?”

The woman kept pretending to be focused on her hair but Harleen caught the small movement of her eyes swiveling in her direction under half-closed lids. Pamela Isley had glanced at her. It was a very brief glance and she probably thought Harleen didn’t know. But she did, and it counted.

“It’s just that you brought it up,” Harleen added. “Now I’m curious.”

Pamela Isley continued scrutinizing her hair in silence. Harleen was about to give up and introduce herself when Isley said, “I can’t give it all up today, Doc. What’ll we talk about next time?”

Gotcha, Harleen thought gleefully, hiding her smile behind the file folder.

“It’s not my fault!” Mary Louise insisted loudly, as if someone had claimed it was. Her tear-stained face was red and angry, and she was glaring at Harleen now. Resenting the loss of attention, Harleen thought. The ex-movie star was still a diva.

“We was all framed, ducky,” Harriet Pratt said in cheerful agreement. “Me, I was just mindin’ my own business, not hurtin’ a soul, goin’ for a ruby down me local. Next thing I know, two John ’Ops are feelin’ my collar. They drag me in front of a judge who tells me I’m Radio Rental and there’s a flowering dell waitin’ for me in Arkham. Blimey!”

“Shiny! Shiny! Shiny!” Magpie yelled over her, staring hard at Harleen’s throat, and Harleen finally realized she’d forgotten to take off her necklace. It was a simple disk with a caduceus on one side and the words Primum Non Nocere engraved on the other; her mother had given it to her when she had graduated from med school.

Hurriedly, she buttoned the very top button of her blouse, hoping if the woman couldn’t see it, she’d lose interest. But Magpie kept staring at her throat as if she had X-ray vision. Harleen supposed a real magpie probably wouldn’t have been fooled, either, and made a note to take the necklace off before the next session.

* * *

“You don’t look like you’ve been sobbing your heart out,” Dr. Leland said when Harleen dropped by her office afterward. “Don’t tell me it went well?”

“It wasn’t great.” Harleen sat down on the leather sofa instead of the chair in front of Dr. Leland’s desk. “It was hard to get a word in edgeways between all the Shiny! Shiny! and the sobbing denials. But it wasn’t an extinction-level event. Pamela Isley spoke to me. On purpose.”

Dr. Leland’s eyebrows strained toward her hairline. “Really?”

“God’s honest truth,” Harleen said, raising her right hand. “She wouldn’t sully her eyeballs by looking at me, but she did address me directly.”

“Never mind Poison Ivy, how’d you escape with your necklace?”

Harleen grinned. “I buttoned the top button to hide it. Thought I was gonna choke to death. Next time, I’ll take it off beforehand. I’ll have a written report for you tomorrow. Spoilers: Mary Louise still protests her innocence. And thanks to Harriet Pratt, I’m so tired of Cockney rhyming slang, I could scream. I was tempted to tell her how we roll in Brooklyn. Down on Toidy-Toid and Toid, ya know?”

Instantly Dr. Leland’s expression turned serious. “Never do that, Dr. Quinzel. I’m not kidding,” she added as Harleen smiled. “Never play with them. It makes you look weak, and in Arkham, if you look weak, you are weak. If you need a rodeo clown, call an orderly. I mean it.”

“Okay, okay, no goofing around,” Harleen said, shifting on the sofa. She’d felt pretty good about the session and all of a sudden Dr. Leland was chewing her out for something she hadn’t even done.

It’s because she’s the boss, Harleen thought, suppressing a sigh. People in authority were always reminding you they were in charge. If they couldn’t get you for screwing up, they’d make you feel like you had. And there was never a rodeo clown around when you really needed one.

“I got Pamela Isley to talk to me without doing anything reckless or stupid,” Harley said, hoping she didn’t sound as defensive as she felt. “I feel like that’s something.”

Dr. Leland’s severe expression softened. “Just don’t get too sure of yourself. This was only the first session. Patients here’ll try anything once. They wanted to see how you handled yourself. And believe me, they learned more about you than vice versa. When’s your next session?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that.” Harleen sat up straighter. “Originally, it was scheduled for next week but I’d like to move it up to the day after tomorrow. If that’s all right with you, of course.”

Dr. Leland grimaced. “You can binge-watch a TV series but there’s no such thing as binge-therapy.”

“It’s not binge-therapy,” Harleen said, not entirely truthfully. “We need to build up momentum. Seven days from now is a long time. It’ll be like starting all over again, because we’ll all be trying to remember where we were last time.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” Dr. Leland said, but Harleen could see her wavering. “However, I understand what you’re saying. Reschedule for two days after tomorrow. Momentum’s good but so is getting a little distance on the previous meeting.”

“Okay, two days after tomorrow,” Harleen said, trying not to grin from ear to ear.

Dr. Leland hesitated, gazing at Harleen with her head tilted to one side. “Didn’t your mother ever warn you to be careful what you wished for?”

“Well… no.” Harleen’s smile was wry. “At our house, we learned early on we couldn’t get much of anything by wishing.”

Dr. Leland was unmoved. “All the more reason she should have warned you.”