Page 78 of Lovely Darkness

I don’t need to, though. Merc knows. I can see it in his eyes and when he speaks, I can hear it in his voice. “Tell me how he died, Nick.”

I picture it in my head and say the words out loud for Merc. I tell him about the look on Wendy’s face when she switched. The look on Chek’s face when he saw it happen. The blood. The feeling I got in my stomach. That sick, sick feeling.

And then the way she came out of it. Blinking. Stunned. Like she just teleported in and needed a moment to collect herself and figure out where she was and what was happening.

Then she saw the blood. Chek’s lifeless body. His neck tilted at a wrong angle. His vacant, dead eyes. And the stab wounds.

Then Wendy’s scream.

Bloodcurdling. Shivers up the spine. The absolute realization that things would never be the same.

“She had blood all over her,” I continue. “She kept looking at her hands. She was still holding the knife. But she wasn’t completely back yet. I did what I had to do to save her, Merc. She wasn’t going to come back from that moment. She wasn’t.”

“She killed him.”

I nod. “She did it. Something, or someone, triggered her when we were in that estate and she killed him. She slit his throat, Merc. He bled out on the floor. But that wasn’t enough. She snapped his neck and just kept stabbing him. Over and over. And I couldn’t—”

“OK.” Merc puts up a hand. “I don’t need the details. I just need to know what you did that night. You went into her mind and what, made her forget?”

I nod.

“How?”

“It’s called replacement. Ever heard of it?”

“Sure, I’ve heard of it. Used it plenty of times. But is that all you did?”

“No. It wasn’t working. Not well enough. She was snapping in and out of it as I tried to get her out of the mansion and through the woods to the place where I stashed a dirt bike.”

“Dirt bike, huh? Sounds familiar.”

“Does it?”

He shoots me a look, but I’m stuck in that night and don’t care what he’s thinking. “She kept screaming. She kept remembering. So I stopped in the woods and took control of her head.”

“Drugs?”

I shake my head. “No. Just words.”

“Wow.” He seems impressed.

“I have a set of words that I use. They are nice words. Beautiful words. I came up with this litany just before Lauren was born. I used these words on all the little Zero girls just before I killed them. It made them calm. It made them smile. It—”

“Made it easy?”

I nod. “They didn’t fight me. They just looked me in the eyes and agreed with everything I said.”

“So you put Wendy into this state of mind, and then what?”

“I made her believe those words. ‘You are sweet, beautiful, perfect, and whole. You are everlasting, transcendent, exceptional, and extraordinary. You are remarkable, exquisite, priceless, and sublime. You are flawless, marvelous, divine, and sensational. You are heavenly, powerful, glorious, and delightful. You are lovely. You are gorgeous.’ And then I made her say it with me. She memorized the words and after a few years, I think she started saying them to herself. I mean, when I wasn’t there to direct her. That’s how this whole fucking mess started.”

Merc is quiet for a few moments. Finally, he says, “So what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” I say, stalling a little—because I’ve never said this out loud, not even to myself—“the problem is, Merc, that she still has no idea she killed Chek. She has no idea I took control of her mind seven years ago. And it’s breaking down. Fast. I’ve had to fix her three times in the past year alone.”

“How many times have you done this, total?”

“Seventeen. But that’s just me. Get it? How many times has she done it to herself?”