“Three years ago,” Lucciano supplied.
The number stole my breath. My lungs seemed to close. I’d worked out as much, in my bouts of lucidity, but hearing it so plainly was hard to take.
“Three years ago,” I echoed, and a tear dashed down my cheek.
“So, that makes you twenty-five years old, correct?”
I just shrugged. What did I know? My life was slipping through my fingers like sand.
“It says in your file that you’re a flight risk, violent with the orderlies, and known to self-harm.”
I forced a jagged laugh. “Quite the catch, aren’t I? I’ll have a hell of a dating profile when I get out of here.”
Lucciano’s mouth twitched, and I felt sure for a second that he was going to laugh, but the moment passed. Unlike the man I’d seen smoking and peeing against the side of the chapel, the Father Lucciano who haunted the halls of the institution was sober and unreachable. An emotionless well so deep, it pulled you in if you stared too long.
“Do you plan for life after this place?”
“No—here, all my wishes have come true. Of course I do,” I snapped.
“What kind of things do you wish for?”
“To be normal. Next question.”
“So, you think about leaving?” Lucciano continued.
“Every day. I should never have been here in the first place. Sleeping around with married men?” A bitter chuckle left me. “I’ve never so much as kissed a man.”
Lucciano’s eyes narrowed at me. “But you did stab an orderly and slash a nun across the face, did you not? And you do hear voices in your head.”
I sighed. He’d definitely read my file. I lowered my lashes and batted them. “Like angels whispering... or devils. Either one would work.”
“You hear angels speaking to you?” Lucciano pressed. “What do they say?”
“Nice try, Lucifer,” I murmured, and sank into a chair opposite him. “You’re not getting any divine secrets from me.”
He looked bemused at my refusal to share. But what could I really share? Sometimes I heard a voice in my head saying the stupidest shit. Other times it was screaming absolutely terrifying shit. Most of the time it was quiet. It had all started when I’d met Ivan.
He peered at the clock on the wall.
“We’d better end there.” He glanced down at the file. “Oh, one last question. Who was Mira?”
I froze.
Mira. An angel.
“It says here that you were close. She comes up often in your psychotic episodes.”
“I don’t have psychotic episodes. I have moments of lucidity where I realize how much the people who run this place need to suffer for what they’ve done. What they continue to do to the patients here,” I burst out; probably not a great idea, but the mention of Mira had stirred my emotions up too far to wrestle them under control.
“If you don’t have these episodes, then why do you have a list of medications a mile long?”
“That’s a good question. Maybe Father Benedict can answer it one day in court,” I snapped.
Lucciano narrowed his eyes at me again.
“Let me guess, you’re going to report back on everything that I just said, right? Like a good little demon. I expect nothing less. This is a cursed place, forsaken... Only evil can walk through these doors. You are no different from them. Your hands are stained just like theirs... I can smell the copper... and ash. You smell like the pyre of the people you’ve killed.” The words left me thoughtlessly on a wild rush. I had no idea where they’d come from, but that was all just part of losing your mind. From the brain fog, sometimes crazy shit emerged.
Lucciano stared at me, his hand tightening on the desk. I wondered what the other fathers thought of the tattoos on the back of his hand.