“Will you stop saying that?” His gaze snaps to mine again, and I freeze at the haunted look on his face. “It’s all my fault. Don’t you see? This place wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for me. I’m the reason for my own tortured existence.”
I shake my head. “If you weren’t here, they’d find another way.”
“No!” He slams his fist into the floor. “I’m the reason for all of it. I’m the reason Clausen started Madison Academy.”
The room spins for a moment, and I blink it back into focus. “What are you talking about?”
He swats at his eyes, shivering against some unseen truth. “Clausen is my stepfather. He didn’t even know people like us existed until he met my mother and me.”
The small room becomes a coffin as I fight for a breath.
“So this place isn’t a school? They’re not trying to help us?”
He shakes his head. “On the surface, sure. It even functions like one since most of the staff don’t know the truth, but that’s not the fundamental purpose, no. Clausen uses this place like his own personal toybox. He studies us and uses our abilities for hisgain without the students even knowing what he’s doing. He’s obsessed.”
My heart slams into my ribs as I consider everything he just said. It’s absurd. Horrifying. Everything in me wants to scream at him and strike back with some angry retort, and yet… I believe him. I do. I believe him.
“Have you tried to tell anyone?”
“Yeah, right. A violent, unstable drug-addict? People wouldn’t trust me on what I ate for breakfast let alone a story like that.”
“What if I told it?”
“They wouldn’t believe you either. And even if they did, Clausen has so many people in his pocket by now they’d cover it up without a fight.”
“But if Clausen uses blackmail to gain all his allies, then he probably has a lot of enemies as well.”
Daniel huffs a dry laugh. “Blackmail is a last resort. Clausen usually goes with more subtle tactics to gain his advantage. Trade secrets, insider knowledge, can’t-lose investments. You’d be amazed what people have in their heads. Once, a senile old man was visiting his granddaughter who attended here, and I saw he owned a priceless painting. Clausen convinced him to sell it to him for fifty dollars and turned around and made millions at auction. All of that is on my conscience.”
I bristle at that. “On your conscience? Are you serious? I’ve seen the visions. I’ve seen what they do to you. How can you blame yourself for this?” I grunt when he still refuses to look at me. “I’m not here because of you. I came to Madison Academy on my own. It was my choice.”
He glares at the door, clearly trying to reconstruct his walls.
“There’s more, isn’t there? It’s not about the money,” I reason out-loud. “What aren’t you telling me?”
He shakes his head, jaw tight.
“Daniel, what is it? Why are you really here?”
He still doesn’t respond, and I exhale in frustration. After a long, painful pause, I give up and use the opportunity to take his hand and search his memory again. He allows it, probably reading my willingness for a truce, and I manage to find a happy thought from his distant past.
“You had a goldfish.”
The shadow lifts from his face with a slow grin. “You see Nein.”
I snort a laugh.“Nein? Isn’t nein ‘no’ in German?You named your pet No?”
A faint smile flickers over his lips. “Yes, I named it No. Well, technically, we never named it. It became No because every time I tried to play with it, my mother would yell, ‘Nein!’”
I laugh again, sudden emotion searing through me. Sadness, joy, terror, love—they all mesh together in an immovable lump in my throat. I find myself clinging to the image of a sweet, dark-haired boy being chased away by his loving mother. It’s so foreign from the young man in front of me now, tortured and held captive by his extraordinary abilities.
“There’s nothing you can do. Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says. I wrap my arm around his and rest my head against his shoulder.
“That doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”
“You think too highly of me. I’m not as perfect as you think.”
“So? Perfection is boring.”
