"I don't care what you want. I'll make you as comfortable as I can while you're here, if you do as I wish."

I nodded, staying silent. I swallowed down tears over the giant lump in my throat. I hated that I felt like a scared little girl, but I was.

"Don't waste your breath pleading and begging for me to let you go. If you're very obedient and cause me no trouble, I won't kill you."

I watched his eyes but stayed silent.

"I may let you go someday. I may not. Your best chance of staying alive and unwounded is by making yourself very useful to me."

I nodded, a tear sliding down one cheek, and then the other.

He watched me and tilted his head slightly. "It is unfortunate that you have your special ability. It makes you extremely rare and highly sought after by people like me."

So he was a collector, of sorts.

I looked at his hands. They were long fingered. Pale. Inexpressive.

"You'd better hope that this talent you have doesn't fail you now."

With that, he got up from his chair and stood in front of me. "I'm sure you've figured out that you're not the only person here with special talents. Don't call out for help or try to reach out to them. Believe me. They know better."

My heart ached as the realization that Delia was gone forever fell over me. The thing that had taken her place seemed to have settled further into her body. If the thing hadn't taken over her body, but had mimicked her likeness, then Delia's body was somewhere, hidden, and may never be found.

"Get some sleep," he told me, clearly feeling nothing for my devastation. "We start tomorrow." He turned and walked out of the room, letting the door click shut behind him.

I lay awake a long time with my bedside lamp on. I was fortunate, I supposed, that they had afforded me that. The blanket was acrylic and rough, and I had trouble getting comfortable, but that was the least of my troubles at the moment.

Where was Mick? Was he looking for me? Was he even alive?

The possibility that the Delia thing had killed him lay heavily on my heart, and I swallowed down bitter grief and regret. I had known that Delia wasn't quite right, but I'd gone with her anyway, and I might've gotten Mick killed because of my stupidity.

Don't trust anyone, she'd told me. I'd had no idea that anyone had included her.

I knew that tears wouldn't help me now, but I couldn't seem to stop. I cried into my pillow until my sinuses were so swollen and blocked that I couldn't breathe through my nose. I opened my mouth and took long shuddering breaths until I fell into the sleep of the hopeless and utterly forlorn.

Sometime in the night I awoke to the alarming sound of a female screaming and crying. I sat straight up and listened.

The words were m.u.f.fled because of what I imagined was soundproofing of the walls. But even if I hadn't been able to make out the words, the tone was unmistakable.

What I was hearing was abject terror.

I remembered the first man to enter the room, and felt my stomach clench.

The cries became more m.u.f.fled, and after a while sounded helpless.

I wondered how long my act would work on him, to keep him from raping me.

Maybe there were others like him whom the act wouldn't work on.

I began to tremble.

When the door opened the next time, it was early morning. A young woman came in, maybe a couple of years older than me, her white blonde hair all jagged edges around her head-a modern s.h.a.g that required a lot of hair product to keep it standing outward. Her eyes were such a pale blue that they looked almost silver. She was pretty in a cold way, her features sharp.

She moved smoothly, her lean frame clad in red: jeans, red turtleneck, black knee-high flat boots. She walked up to the bed and tossed some clothes on the foot of it. I blinked. She'd moved so quickly she was almost a blur. I was tired. My mind was playing tricks with my perception. I looked down at the clothes she'd dropped on the bed. A pair of jeans and a pink sweater. A pair of clean underwear and a beige bra.

"Get dressed," she said, her voice devoid of emotion.

I stared at her as she stood looking down at me, her arms crossed.

"Now," she said.

I pushed the blanket off me and shivered in the chilly room. A flash of Delia's warm kitchen smelling of morning coffee made me feel like crying again, but I swallowed back the tears.

She took a step back as I stood, and watched me undress.

I looked at her face as I slowly unzipped the jeans I wore and began pushing them down my legs.

She exhaled a harsh breath and rolled her eyes. "We don't have time for your modesty. Hurry up."

I moved more quickly; the not knowing what was coming next was making my nerves shiver and my breathing quick and shallow. When I had finished, I crossed my arms over my chest. My bladder was ready to burst. "I need to use the bathroom."

She turned and the thought of jumping on her back crossed my mind, but I had a feeling she'd seen it all and had moves I hadn't even dreamed of for disobedient guests.

She opened the door, stepping aside so I could go before her, a smirk on her face. "Smart girl," she said. "I'm not one you want to screw with."

I walked past her, saying nothing.

"The bathroom is just beyond that door."

I walked to the end of the white hall, past other closed doors.

"Who is in those rooms?" I ventured to ask her.

"Other people who have rare talents, such as yourself," she said.

I was surprised she'd actually answered me.

"Right there," she said when we'd reached a blue door.

I opened the door and was surprised when she walked in after me. "I don't need any help."

She snickered. "Get used to it, sweetheart. You don't get to do anything on your own now. Even when you sleep there's always someone watching you on camera."

I looked around the bathroom, horrified. "There are cameras in here, too?"

"Yes there are, which means that they are watching me, too, so I have to do what I'm told. Get it?"

I got it.

I unzipped and paused. She sighed and looked up at the ceiling.

I pulled my jeans down and performed the humiliating act of urinating with unseen people watching me.

How could it get much worse? "Where am I?"

She regarded me with an almost bored expression, her silvery eyes shuttered against me. "It doesn't matter."

"Look," I said. "It matters to me. I was kidnapped by a woman I thought was my aunt, but wasn't." My voice became thick with emotion. "She'd changed into something...bad."

The girl's expression didn't change, like this didn't surprise her at all.

I stared up at her. "Please help me." I didn't know why I was asking her to help me. She clearly didn't care about me, and obviously found the task of babysitting me to be a pain in the a.s.s.

Then something almost human pa.s.sed over her face. "I couldn't even if I wanted to, sweets."

"Why not?"

Her face hardened again. "Hurry up."

She took me up four flights of stairs to a room much different from the one that had become my cell. Warm and inviting with plush red carpet, there was a black leather couch, loveseat, and chairs placed around a large, round coffee table. The walls were painted a coppery, sparkly gold. Soft instrumental music drifted around the room from unseen speakers.

"Sit there." She pointed to the loveseat.

When I didn't move right away she gave me a little shove, and her touch felt like a small electric shock.

Walking lightning, I thought. Terrifying and fascinating all at once.

I moved to the loveseat and sat.

A man dressed in an expensive-looking charcoal suit and silky red shirt carried in a tray of small cut sandwiches and a pitcher of water. He found a gla.s.s on a shelf inside the coffee table and placed it in front of me. Wordlessly, he left.

"Eat. Then we get busy," the girl said to me, sitting in one of the leather chairs. She watched me and tapped long red nails on the armrest.

I thought that because she had access to luxuries like hair product and nail polish, she must be a higher ranking captive.

Nibbling on a small, triangular cut sandwich-turkey and cheese, it turned out to be-I decided to take the risk and try to get some information on her.

I sent out my psychic feelers, probing. I got a single vision of this girl getting into an expensive car with a leather interior, and replaying, in her mind, her plan to steal his wallet after he drove into the alley. Her name, Morgan, flashed in my mind.

Then she was next to me so quickly, one hand clutching my throat, that I almost choked on a piece of sandwich I hadn't yet swallowed.

Her face was a mere inch from mine, and her furious eyes burned into me. "Don't," she said through gritted teeth. "Ever."

I stared at her, my eyes as big as quarters. I nodded as best I could with her hand clamped on my throat.

Slowly she leaned back, and then suddenly she was back on the chair, her nails tapping the armrest, as if she'd never moved.

I started to talk, and then coughed. I tried again. "How are you doing that?"

"It's my talent. Super speed. That's why they got me."

Surprised that she'd shared this with me, I asked something else. "But you're not really a captive now, are you?"

"I stay because I want to. But if I wanted to take off, obviously I could do it, but they would find me eventually and end me."

The little I'd learned from stealing one of her secrets told me that she'd been living on the streets as a prost.i.tute. "You had it bad out there, didn't you?"

"It wasn't a day at the park," she said.

"You only pretended to be a hooker though, right? You could pick their pockets and not have to...perform for them."

"Are you done?" she asked me, refusing to answer my question.

I nodded.

"Okay. This is the deal. I'm leaving this room. I'll come back with someone. Your only job is to steal secrets from them. It should be easy. It's what you do."

"Every secret the person has? That could take a while."

She fixed me with an "as if" stare. "There will only be one worth taking. You'll know what it is when you see it."

Then she was a blur, and the door opened and closed so fast it was as if she'd only been a figment of my imagination, and I was sitting in the room alone.

Chapter Eleven.

Minutes later a middle-aged man sat in front of me. He was in good shape, chest and shoulder muscles bulging under his Henley shirt. Thick blonde hair streaked with gray was cut neatly and combed back. He was handsome behind stylish tortoisesh.e.l.l rimmed gla.s.ses.

He leaned forward on his knees, looked down at his clasped hands. "I have a secret I need to unload. I can't keep it any longer. It's killing me." He looked up at me. "A close friend told me about this place..."

At the very least there were psychics here.

My heart went out to the man, even though I didn't know him or what his secret was, yet. I nodded. "Okay. I can help you."

He lifted his hands. "How does it work?"

"Just think of your secret and give me a few moments."