Page 71 of The Black Table
Lanz glowers at him, swallowing and catching his breath.
“I found her outside,” he says, “last night. Outside Broceliande. She couldn’t stand. She fell over. She looked sick. I didn’t know where else to bring her.”
And then Kingston spins, with ferocious precision, toward Lanz.
“So you thought the best solution was to drag a half-conscious freshman girl here? Do you know what would happen if someone found out? If they’d seen you? Out all night with…”
“He wasn’t out all night.” I didn’t even hear Callahan come in, but there he is, in a T-shirt and basketball shorts, his glasses on. “He slept with me. On the floor,” he clarifies, nodding at me. “She was in his bed.”
Lanz’s cheeks are flushed and pink. He throws a long look at Cal, then back to Kingston.
“They tried to poison her,” Lanz says.
My heart drops into my stomach.
“They did?” I say, at the same time as Kingston. He slides a look at me for a half second before going back to Lanz.
“What do you mean? Who’s they?”
“It’s—” Lanz looks at me again, and the pain I see in his eyes is stunning, shocking, like he feels terribly badly for me even though he doesn’t even know me.
“Elena,” he says. “Elena Shalott—she has some kind of vendetta against Gwenna, and?—”
“I’m not trying to steal you from her,” I interrupt. “I mean, you’re not even hers. I don’t know why she thinks that.”
“It’s not that,” Lanz says. “She says she’s from the same town as you. Nearby. Where there was a church…” He chews his lip, eyebrows held high, waiting for me to react.
And I don’t. I can’t.
My body has gone cold.
“Does anybody want to explain?” Kai says after a moment, tapping his hand with a cigarette against the counter. “Or…”
“It’s not my story to tell,” Lanz cuts in. I know he’s looking at me even though I can’t look up from the counter. “There was an…accident. A fire.”
I clench my fists in my lap and stare hard into the marble, as if I could crack it open and find a hiding place, just with the power of my gaze.
I can feel it. All of them staring at me.
And I can’t read minds, but I know for sure what all of them are thinking.
Did she?
I wonder the same thing.
Here’s what the official report concluded.
A combination of faulty wiring, outdated sprinkler systems, and poor ventilation left the church a veritable tinderbox. It was only a matter of time before an accident like this happened. And it was an incredible stroke of bad luck that someone was inside at the time.
Here’s what Dr. Riggs theorized.
After the divorce, I started sleeping less and less, and whatever sleep I did get was less than restorative. This chronic state of exhaustion left me more vulnerable to latent psychological issues breaking through. At the same time, as sleep treatments failed and the insomnia only seemed to get worse, I became attached to the idea that my only salvation would be through divine providence, granted through prayer—a result, he claims, of too much Catholic school. Finally, I reached a breaking point in the form of full-on spiritual psychosis—a not uncommon form of dissociative break, often preceded by a fascination with things like ritual, purity, andreligious doctrine. Comorbid disorders, such as pyromania, are atypical but not unheard of.
St. Catherine’s was certainly full of candles.
And here’s what I remember.
Waking up surrounded by fire, my skin melted halfway down my arms. Bleeding.
