O’Toole House Chapter 10
Even though Gabriella had been going nonstop since she got to work, it was surprisingly satisfying to get those exercise machines out of the medbay. She and Bradley hauled them up the bulkhead stairs and put them out by the trashcans.
“The Foundation is going to need to pay for a dumpster for these,” Gabriella said as they dropped the final one.
“I’ll submit a request,” Bradley said, rubbing his knee.
That might or might not work, depending on how guilty the Foundation was feeling at the moment they received the request. But it was their best option right now since the Leominster DPW wasn’t likely to willingly take a medbay’s worth of garbage.
Bradley left from there, saying he’d be back in the morning. She was pretty sure he was going to check on James before he left, and sure enough he walked past his car and down the street as she stood by the trash cans, taking a moment to appreciate the wind that had been so sharp and unpleasant earlier.
As Gabriella went back inside, the medbay seemed almost empty. It had to be an illusion because it had been such a mess before. But she didn’t have to squeeze through piles of trash to get to the door now, and the looming shadows cast by broken workout machines had disappeared. This room could potentially be cozy someday.
She still had about two hours left of her shift, but she’d probably be here longer to finish up everything she needed to do. Elliot was gone, possibly coming back tomorrow. She’d wanted to talk to him for a little bit without Bradley there. About what, she had no idea. But he’d texted as they were coming back, saying Amelia let him go and he’d see her later.
Amelia was sitting on the couch when Gabriella came up the stairs, cold and sweaty. She wasn’t doing anything, which was unusual since she’d been moving nonstop for over a week now. “Hey,” Gabriella said as she got up to the living room.
“Hey,” Amelia replied, very deliberately not looking in her direction.
Gabriella knew that look. Even if she never saw it on Amelia, she saw it in plenty of other places, including the mirror. “What is it?” she asked, coming over and sitting down on the couch too.
“It’s nothing,” Amelia said, quickly wiping her eyes.
James’s office door was open wide, revealing the piles of paperwork and boxes she knew contained even more cases they’d never actually get to. Despite everything, Gabriella half-expected to look in and see him behind his desk, glaring at some ridiculous email he’d just received.
“No, it’s not,” Gabriella said softly. “I get it.”
“He’s your cousin, I’m not going to dump it on you.”
“And he’s your best friend,” Gabriella shot back. “And all of his responsibility just got dumped on you. And it’s way too much for him, so why wouldn’t it be too much for you?”
“No, it’s fine,” Amelia said. “It’s not anything I can’t manage. It’s…”
She hesitated, biting her lip as she looked around the room. Her bright red hair was hanging dully around her face and she played with a piece of it as she considered what she was going to say.
“I feel bad about how I handled it,” Amelia said finally. “I know I did what I had to, but I feel so gross.”
“About what?”
“No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about it, it isn’t fair to you.”
“No,” Gabriella said, taking her hand. “Come on, you can tell me. I know I didn’t see the whole process, but I know it was bad.”
“I had to get him into the bath, you know?” Amelia said, blinking back tears. “And the way I learned it in that workshop was that you tell them that the person who poisoned them wants them to do something. And whatever it is, they’ll do it. It’s a protective measure built into the magic. Whatever you tell them to do in the poisoner’s name, they’ll do it. So you exploit that to save them.”
“That was the test you told me to do,” Gabriella said, making the connection. “When you or Bradley called.”
Amelia nodded, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “We didn’t know how she infected him, so we had to make sure you guys would be safe if it got us. But I did it. I told him she wanted him to drink the antidote and she wanted him to get in the salt bath. And he just…trusted me. He went from trying to kill me to just following my orders. I could have told him to do anything and he would have. Just like her.”
Amelia had been right, Gabriella didn’t want to hear this. But she owed it to both Amelia and James to listen. “And I know it was for the right reasons, but I did what she was doing. It was the same thing. When he was out of the bath and fighting us, I was scared he might hurt himself or one of us. He’d already hit me, but it was fine. But then he almost hurt himself again and I used it again to make him stop. And he did, but he was so scared and he was screaming, begging us to get him away from her. And I don’t-”
She sniffled. “I know he’d say I did the right thing,” Amelia said. “But he’d say the same thing if I’d killed him.”
Fuck, she wasn’t going to cry. Gabriella was here to be the comforter right now. “He would, wouldn’t he?” she said.
They sat in silence for a moment, Fang strolling through the room to look at them curiously before continuing on into the dining room. “He was crying,” Amelia said, looking at the floor. “He came out of his office with a knife and when he saw me, he just stopped. And I knew he was going to do it if I couldn’t stop him. And yeah, I was really scared. But the worst part of it was that he was crying.”
Gabriella could smell the forest floor as she unwillingly pictured Amelia and James like that. “So was Robin,” she nearly whispered.
Amelia’s hand tightened on hers. “James was being controlled,” Gabriella said. “You saved him.”
“I know.”
“There was no other way to do it.”
“I know.”
“And he’s alive.”
“Yeah. But Adele’s gone. And they haven’t said anything about looking for her since that last false alarm.”
So they were all coming to the same predictable conclusion then.
“And I keep thinking about how it was when James took over as captain, and how he must have felt,” Amelia continued. “At least for me, he’s still alive. And it’s temporary. He didn’t get that. Robin died and it all fell on him.”
It had to be temporary, they all had to just keep believing it was going to be temporary. James would be back in a few weeks.
“You’re here all night, right?” Gabriella asked.
“Yeah.”
“Want to take a break? I’m going to be here for two more hours.”
She expected Amelia to reject it, especially since she just got here. But she was clearly doing work at home between her shifts. And maybe Amelia realized it was necessary, because she nodded.
“You can take one of the bedrooms if you want,” Gabriella offered.
Amelia hesitated for a second. “I’ve been avoiding the gray bedroom,” she admitted.
“Me too.”
“Maybe I’m being stupid. Like, it’s just a room. Something bad happened in there, but hasn’t something bad happened in every room ever?”
“I keep trying to tell myself the same thing,” Gabriella said.
“Is it helping?”
Gabriella just laughed and glanced down the hallway toward the bedrooms.
“I’m going to take his couch for a little while,” Amelia said.
“Good. I’ll be here.”
“Thank you.”
She wasn’t sure how to respond, but Amelia got up and walked into James’s office, laying down on the couch with the door partially open. Gabriella moved away to give her some privacy, again ignoring the empty computer station as much as possible.
