Maisie Watson stands stiffly behind Doctor Vu with her hands fold neatly in front of her.

The light is too bright, and the men are breathing very lightly, making her extremely aware of her own breathing. She digs on her heels, tries not to shuffle her feet around out of nerves.

Doctor Vu lifts his suitcase and unbuckles the brass locks. Maisie Watson immediately drops her gaze to the floor, not wanting to see. Unconsciously, her fingers start to interlock, twisting and pressing. The rigidity building up in the room closing its fist around her. Her back aches from straining in a good posture, already screaming for her to return to the comfortable slouch, curling and ducking her head between her shoulder blade like a turtle, safe and far away from reality.

There’s a clicking of glass vial.

Maisie Watson steeles herself. Don’t look don’t look don’t look at it, she chants in her head, training her gaze hard at her fidgeting toes. She’s wearing mismatched socks, she realizes. The left dark navy glows against the black floor.

Two sharp inhales suck all the oxygen from the room as straightens in his seat.

“I do wonder, Galsworth,” Doctor starts. “I thought you’d keep to your word.”

Without looking up, Maisie Watson knows Galsworth stiffens. Duplessis shifts as if uncomfortable at where Doctor Vu is steering.

“I must say my respect for you’ve changed, now that I see you’re controlled by a woman. Are you still the same honourable man of before, I cannot tell.”

“Let’s get to business, Vu.” Galsworth says harshly. “I’ve never breath a thing about our Dark business during our marriage. And now Amira is finally gone like you wish. Are you going to dig up my honesty now?”

“Vietnamese can smell a mole for miles, you know. Once you’re a deserter, you’ll always be a deserter. Soul Masters Society won’t be tolerate toward traitors.”

“I know the ins and outs.” Galsworth snaps.

She hears a slight dry crack of skin stretching over teeth. Doctor Vu smiles. “Oh, but you don’t. You’ve never work under me before.”

“Let the innocent eye peer into my soul, then, so we will both get over this loyalty shit.”

“The eye,” Duplessis comments quietly. “It’s of the boy on the morning breaking news.”

Maisie Watson’s head snaps up at that, inhales sharply as if the boy has slapped her. The brass-brown pupil floating in the same clear preservation, staring at her, still wide and shocked from his screams.

Her hands get clammy. The eye continues to drill, boring hole onto her.

“It’s a fucking sloppy mess, Vu.” Galsworth says. “Detective as far as Fairmount come down here for inspection. We passed the scene this morning. I’m telling you, the cops will sniff her out by noon. She left tramples everywhere.” Galsworth points at Maisie Watson. “Did you even train her?”

“You’re thinking like a white man, again.” Doctor Vu chuckles humorlessly. “Chinatown doesn’t have a camera system, not a working one, anyway. It’ll all be Jacob Hurrell again.”

Galsworth narrows his eyes as if to retort, but instead his cool gray irises zero on her frail form. She looks away, hugging herself tighter, warmth drains from her face and her fingertips. She unconsciously stepping backward, scared.

Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps today, when she comes home, the police would be waiting at her parents’ front door. Perhaps this is where her sins end.

Galsworth suddenly bursts out laughing. “I can see why you pick your assistant. She’s certainly doesn’t look like a murder, at all.” He smoothes out his blazer, eyeing Doctor Vu.

Liquid sloshing as Doctor Vu stands up, abruptly puts an end to the conversation. “Let’s begin the ceremony, yes?” Duplessis and Galsworth rise in uniform.

Aras’ brown eye sears into her mind, haunting.

She bit her fingernails into her palms until it draws blood, trying to focus on Doctor Vu’s words. But his voice slurs into one long twirly string, going endlessly nowhere. He’s raising the eye, the dead black pinprick pupil glows slightly, then Galsworth is speaking. Then Doctor Vu is speaking again, raising his voice a bit.

She sways on her feet. The agonized scream of Aras drifts back and forth in her mind, soaking through her muscles, weak and loud, then weak and louder.

“Please excuse me,” She blurts, stumbling into the kitchen, not caring about the noise and grace or Doctor Vu’s meek, embarrassed call. She clutches her chest, her heart constricts and expands, constricts and expands, each movement sends a prickling throb across her flesh. She can’t breath, she can’t breath, she can’t breath at all.

It hurts, it hurts everywhere.

She braces her hands on the counter, letting the cold edges dig into her palms, squeezing her eyes shut. Acidic air teases her throat. Rumbling. Bubbling. Maisie Watson shudders, swallowing it down.

Rough fluid clawing its way up her esophagus. She clamps a hand over her mouth and scrambles to the washroom, the floor sloped under her feet. As soon as the door is locked behind her, she immediately lunges for the toilet. Her stomach empties all at once, wringing out the half-hearted digested breakfast. A brown stream pours out of her, splattering with floating crumbs and round, white specks. Her eyes tears up, brimming like a thousand needles pushpin through her eyeballs. As she stares at the spotless white porcelain, she suddenly remembers who does Aras look like. Jacob Hurrell. She retches again, though there’s nothing left but pungent air heaving out. Her nostrils are clotted, but she can feel the acrid smell of burnt toast and chocolate milk contaminating the gentle artificial pine scent.

Panting, she holds the sides of the seat to her weight. Slowly, she sinks to her knee, trembling. Aching. Jacob’s handsome, sly face comes in bits and pieces: his feral, wide eyes, his crooked, missing teeth, high forehead. He was so pretty, so pretty and fierce, so vain and beautiful, so smart and strong. The boy who gave her year middle-school graduation speech. The boy in her class who found dead fifty years ago, missing three fingers, eyes bugged out of the sockets, red tears streaming down his slender nose.

Jesus Christ, she shuts her eyes, shakingly reaches up to flush the toilet, Jesus Christ. The day Jacob’s death was discovered, the town was in a riot, bloodthirsted for the murderer. Her Mother and Father had shut off the TV when the news flashed on, but they were seconds too late. All of them had seen it. All of them had seen Jacob Hurrell’s dead body.

You cannot unsee something once you see it. You cannot unstuck something once you stuck it in.

Their parents had hushed their children to school, uptight and anxious. The teachers’ mouth-covering angry arguments throughout the day. It was an open secret that every kid in the school had known, and each feared for his or her own petty life more than mourning the death of dear Jacob.

The whole town was invited to Jacob Hurrell’s funeral. Each eulogies heighten the wrath and outrage in the audience, bring forth a chorus of war cries, not tears. Maisie Watson and her family sits at the back row, sullen. Kai would be sixteen in a month, then. He sat upright, fists on his kneecaps, stern and unflappable, But that night he came over to sleep with Maisie and Seyana. They pretended to sleep. In her brother and sister’s warm embrace, she kept going back to the asleep boy in the coffin. They tried to cover it, but the humiliated Jacob Hurrell, the beautiful, vain, fierce, strong boy had disappeared along with his fingers. What remained was a shell. A dressed-up shell, a pathetic hollowed clay, a skeleton already working its way through the rotten flesh. What remained was the dead body with his pants pull down to his twisted knees, bare buttock pointing at the sky, arms ripped out of the sockets.

Peaceful West Bass was a war zone, men and women screaming and pointing at each other alike. It was the height of the Cold War, afterall. Suspicious wormed its way through even the most pleasant ones. Everyone is a spy, and spies are everywhere. Her father was amongst the ones who get arrested and quickly got dismissed, though in the end Jacob Hurrell’s death was forever unresolved. Mr. and Mrs. Hurrells bring their shame and rage to the ground with them.

Maisie Watson still had no clue who did it. Or perhaps she does.

She wondered, bitterly, was it another person like her? Another special errand-runner?

Maisie Watson’s bowed head jerked at the sound of fists pounding on wood.

“All you alright?” A voice filters through. She blinks slowly, disoriented. Her wild, dark eyes slowly focuses on the tilting bathroom door.

“I’m OK.” She says.

The person hesitates, before continues. “Do you need help?”

“No.” Maisie Watson rubs her eyes, pressing the dizziness away. She flails her hands, grasping onto the sink edge and pulls herself up, but losing her balance and cracks her head to bathroom mirror. An involuntary hiss escapes her clenched teeth.

“Are you sure?”

“Please. I just need a minute alone.” She says, turning on the tap. The white, foaming water rushes over her skin, cold and welcome. Like the rain that conceals the crimes in West Bass, she thinks quietly, cupping her hands and sipping the water gathers there, rinses away the soiled taste in her mouth. Then, she bends and splashes her face, but it does nothing good.

She feels sleepy. Tired and worn out. She wants to lie down, curl under a sheet and nap away this pain. She wants to glide into oblivious, listen to the patter of the rain of the leaves and her father’s jackhammer snore.

Tired, so tired.

She sighs, leaning for forehead on the mirror, breathing softly. Her fingers clenched tighter around the bracelets encircling her wrist. Forty-six beads, forty-six deads on her head.

If Mama knows what sins she had committed, how many scoops of salt would she put in her corn soup bowl.

Maisie Watson peels her eyelids back and slaps some alertness into her senses.

Duplessis jumps back when she cracks the door open and steps timidly out.

“Hello,” She croaks.

A beat of silence. “You’re not born for this.” Duplessis says, gently, lowly, as if they are sharing a secret.

She examines her hands. There are some blood and dirt crammed under her nails.

“You’ve run.” Duplessis continues.

Faintly, Doctor Vu and Galsworth’s hush voices halt, and Doctor Vu calls, “Are you alright now, Mai?”

“I’m sorry for such disruption,” She says. “You must be worry.” She is about to go downstair to check on the tea and pie, but Duplessis sidesteps and blocks her way.

He glancing around him before touching her shoulders. “You’ve to run. Away from him.” He says levelly.

“I cannot,” Maisie Watson whispers back. “I’m bound to this house, to him.”

“He’s a monster,” He says. Duplessis is a small for a black boy, wins Maisie Watson by only an inches or so, mind that she is barely graze five feet. Duplessis is rather ordinary with no stand out features except for weird light-shade freckles sprinkled on his nose. The only thing that draw attention to this young man was his voice: clear like thunder. Determination hardens his every word. “Hoang Vu is monster. If it’s not for the Higher will discard him if he dares bloody his hands, he will massacre the whole town himself for the sake of Dark Magic. You’re simply a tool for him. He doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t even tell you anything about the magical world behind all this.”

Maisie Watson doesn’t respond.

“We can protect you.”

“Please. Stop.” She says softly, lifting his hands from her shoulders. “I cannot betray him. You don’t understand, but my life changed thanks to him. If kill I must, then I’ll do.”

She looks him in the eyes as she says this. Then, she pushes past him and walks away.

She is half way down the stair when Duplessis speaks up again. “He’s controlling you, Maisie Watson.”

She pauses, saying nothing.

“His guardian spirits are forcing you to mute out your doubts and loyalty.”

She half-turns, looks up at him, then shakes her head. “The Evil Maisie Watson has consumed me long, long ago. Doctor Vu just brought back the Naive Maisie Watson.”

After Galsworth and Duplessis left, Doctor Vu helps her put away the dishes and cups. He hums under his breath, seems smug that he has left Galsworth hanging for the honesty result.

“Mai,” The Doctor starts, so quiet she thinks she misheard him. “Mai, are you going to quit?”

Maisie Watson could taste again the familiar horrible numbness on her tongue from having too much salt, mixing with the faint bitterness of soap she used to wash her mouth. “No, Doctor Vu, I can never quit. I’m grateful to be by your side.” She says.