Unhinged (Splintered, #2)(17)

“You’re going to leave me for work on the first night I’m awake?” I cringe at the neediness in my voice.

Jeb wraps my hair around his fingers. “Your mom made it clear I should be gone before she gets back. Ivy’s in town, so I’m going to meet her and let her choose a painting. She’s not in the country very often. We have to take advantage while she’s here.”

“But it’s a holiday. Isn’t the gallery closed? Is Mr. Piero meeting you there?”

“He’s home with his family. He’s letting me use the showroom as a favor.”

My lips tighten. I don’t like him going alone, though I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe it’s my netherling side, because the emotion feels animalistic … feral. A dark and disorienting instinct that’s pecking away all of the trust we’ve forged over the past year.

Jeb’s mine. Mine mine mine.

A snarl tugs at my lips, but I suppress it. What’s wrong with me?

The stuffed clown flops to the floor with a metallic twang, and Jeb and I both jump.

“Huh,” Jeb says as he picks the toy up and rearranges it on the windowsill. He tugs at the oddly shaped hat. “There’s something metal under there. Must be top-heavy.”

“Who’s that from?” I ask.

“The guy who helped on Friday after I pulled you out. I was trying to get you to breathe, and he appeared out of nowhere … said he saw an ambulance going down the street and waved it down for us. My cell phone was lost in the flood. He got the help I couldn’t give you.”

There’s something about the clown. Apart from it looking distantly familiar … apart from it being bigger than the other toys. It almost appears alive. I keep waiting for it to move.

As it stares back at me, the shadows seem to change its expression—from a smile to an evil sneer. Even the cello in its hand can’t soften the image.

A cello.

My wariness kicks up another notch. That’s the one instrument that I know how to play. The one instrument I haven’t touched since last summer. How would a stranger know that about me?

Jeb said the guy appeared out of nowhere …

Trepidation knots in my throat. “What’s this person’s name?” I ask.

“I didn’t get it,” Jeb answers. “The card on the clown said, ‘Hope you’re feeling up to your old self soon.’ No signature. But we checked with everyone else and no one we know sent it. So it must’ve been him.”

The toy’s beady black eyes zero in on me like eager cockroaches.

“Up to my old self,” I mumble. “That’s a weird thing for a stranger to say, don’t you think?”

Jeb shrugs. “Well, maybe that’s how they talk in England.”

My pulse jumps. “England?”

“Yeah. After the ambulance left, the guy helped me drag my bike from the water. He’s a foreign exchange student, enrolling at Pleasance High. Seems pointless to enroll during the last week of school. But his parents insisted.”

My arms feel limp. “He told you he was from England?”

“He didn’t have to. He has the accent.”

Morpheus’s threat rings loud in my memory: By the time they find your body, I’ll already be there.

Heart pounding, I kick off my blankets. “We have to get out of here!”

“Al!” Jeb tries to keep me from sitting up.

Instead, I use his arms for leverage to stand. “Please, Jeb, take me home!”

“What? No, c’mon, you’re going to hurt yourself. Just lie down.”

When he attempts to guide me back into bed, my pleas escalate to shouts. I rip the IV from my skin before he can stop me. Blood drizzles out the back of my hand, getting on the blankets and sheets, slicking up Jeb’s fingers as he tries to stop the flow while pushing the nurse’s call button.

Mom and Dad return. Mom’s face pales to the color of my sheets as she takes over for Jeb.

“I think you need to leave,” she tells him.

I cry out, “No!”

What I really want to say is that my panic has nothing to do with him and everything to do with the netherling guy who played a pivotal role in her commitment to the asylum twelve years ago.

“Nobody needs to leave,” Dad interjects, the voice of reason amid the chaos.

Nurse Terri comes in, and her sad gray eyes coax me to behave.

She and Dad ease me back into bed. She mentions something about a delayed reaction from being in shock and comatose for three days. Then she reinserts the IV and sticks a sedative-filled syringe into it.

As I watch the needle appear on the other side of the clear tubing, I move my lips to ask her not to do that. Not to leave me vulnerable to my dreams. To please at least take the sinister clown away. But my tongue is frozen and my mind is racing.

I’m groggy within five minutes. Jeb kisses my hand, says he loves me and to get some sleep. Dad hugs me good night, and they both walk out together. Mom strokes my hair, folds down her cot, and goes into the bathroom. Then, despite all my efforts to hold them open, my eyelids droop shut.




I’m not sure what time it is when I wake up. I’m just glad to be awake at all.

The scent of disinfectant reminds me where I am. It’s dark. There’s no light coming through the blinds or seeping under my door from the hallway. I assume Mom shoved some rolled-up towels there. Sometimes she sleeps better if she seals herself in, a habit she formed while living at the asylum. Each night she’d check every crevice of her room—from the walls to the floors—for insects. Once convinced that none were there, she’d stuff the bottom of the door with her pillowcase.