When Duplessis ignites the engine, the skeptical voice inside her head has amplified into a snarling.

You’re being a snake. You’re abandoning Doctor Vu, it accuses.

No, she protests, This is for Mama’s sake.

You wouldn’t stick your head out until your fate that is mentioned, the voice snaps, and she flinches for the hard truth in its words. You’re an ungrateful brat. You accept to be loyal and devoted to him, yet you’re still selfishly keeping things for yourself.

“You OK?” Duplessis shoots her a sideway glance. “Don’t puke here, yeah? It’s a rental car, Galsworth will have my head if they charge extra fee.”

She swallows, staring straight ahead, conscious of her movements. The newspaper lining on interior of the car crinkles even if she breathes.

Duplessis stops at the stop sign, then turns to West Gessner Road. Her throat is dry, so dry, the saliva is not producing fast enough. She licks her lips twice, clearing her throat, before croaking, “How did you know about me and the—” She hesitates, her jacket suddenly feels itchy. “—killing of the two boys?” She mutters the last words, not brave enough to hear it with her own ears. She had been repeating it over and over again in her head, but saying it aloud is like confessing. When she was small, even sitting in a dark pew, facing a veiled window, confessing is something she struggles at. The voice of Father Frier sounded holy, but she knows once the truth stuttered out, there will be at least one person who know something dark about her.

Duplessis accelerates down the street, turning right once, then left, then straight, eyes peeling on the side. “Only Soul Masters leave X’s and take out specific organs.” He pauses, then adds. “He truly did not tell you the business you’re involving in, didn’t he?”

“No.” Maisie Watson says distractedly. She curls deeper into her coat, shivering although the heat is cranked all the way up, blowing hot air right into her face. It’s a bit over eight. Outside the window, vacant surroundings bleed into bold threads of colours. Black, gray, red, green, orange.

Duplessis steers into St. Faustina Catholic school’s parking lot, parked directly underneath Jesus Christ so that the Christ’s agonized face is crying down at her. Maisie Watson raises her head. Out of all places, he chose St. Faustina. Her old school. To their left is China Market and the construction site where she murdered Aras and Rookie in cold-blood.

She cannot bite back a bitter, sarcastic guffaw.

Duplessis curls his fists around the locked steering wheel, his eye twitching to her convulsing snorts, a vein on his jaw pulses as he moves his teeth back and forth.

“Is there anything you don’t know about me?” Maisie Watson says. She’s hit by a sudden absurd epiphany, a cold realization that she’s a fictional character and everyone but her have a blueprint of her life. To say this is Duplessis’s first time to the town would be stupid. He has deliberately finds St. Faustina, deliberately sets this up. It made her questions everything in her existence. Is anything hers anymore? Is there so much as secrets or privacies that she can hide?

Although he tries to play it cool, as the seconds stretch his uncomfortable surfaces more clearly. She wonders for a second does he feel disturbed seeing a woman turning mad. Does he feel pity as her laughter skittles to a sob? Or, perhaps, he feels nothing. Just an empty apathy as he calculating his next appropriate move.

“What do you want from me, Sir?”

Duplessis lifts his fingers and turns on the radio, tuning to a Christian Rock channel. A lazy country symphony floats off, filling the space between them. Then, he reaches a gloved hand inside his vest and pulls out a chain-like loop with round, smooth objects. He rubs one stone, checks his watch and places it on the dashboard, letting their faces facing both of them. The second hand ticks away, nonchalant.

“I need you to kill more people.” Duplessis says.

She turns to him, gaping.

“How long have you work for Doctor Vu?”

“You want me to kill more?” She says, almost yelling on top of her lungs.

“Do you think Doctor Vu trust you?” Duplessis presses, his words hailing on her like rapid fire. She cowers, flattens against the window, inching as far away from him as possible. Her hand crawls to the door handle. “You’re his Assistant, that must counts for something.”

“I’m only his housekeeper.”

“Housekeepers don’t kill people for the sake of their household.”

Maisie Watson swats down an awkward giddy bubbles rising from her throat. “No, of course not.” Her eyes dart to the watch and the stone. She notices one of the stones has an eerie glow from within, almost as if there’s a larvae waking up to life.

“Listen, we don’t have much time. What do you know of Hoang Vu?”

“Why do you need to know about Doctor Vu?” She blurts. “What wrongs had he did to you?” She snaps her mouth shut, blood draining from her face when Duplessis’s demeanour hardens.

He scoffs. “The question should be what wrongs had he did to you?” She parts her lips, but he cuts her off. “He made you a serial killer, used your fucked-up insecurity, chained you and the whole town to this goddamn hellhole. And yet you’re asking me what on Earth is he doing to me?”

“I—” She stutters. “—I did on my own free will.”

A crack punctuates her sentence.

“No, you did not.” Duplessis says calmly. He picks up the little chain and dangles it in front of her. She counts. There are twenty stones. Green, red, blue, brown, white. One of them is fractured, broken into two pieces. The glow transforms into a liquid-ish air, seeping through the opening. “You are too handicapped for a murder job. Too mentally weak.”

The line stings Maisie Watson into silence.

“You’re actually possessed by one of the vengeance spirit. He must have picked very carefully for that one to reside and seamless integrate into your mind.” Duplessis leans forward and stares at a spot between her brows as if he can see through her skull and picks apart whatever inside. The voice snarls at his invisible touch. “The stones, they are counteract whenever the spirit tries to sway you.” Duplessis taps the broken stone. “You must have experience a slight personality shift, or second-thought yourself for the spirit to pursue you back to your loyal position.”

As if on cue, an adjacent stone flares alight and ruptures, sending Maisie Watson clutching for her heart.

“Right.” He sets the stone loop back on the dashboard. “So what do you know of Hoang Vu?”

She opens her mouth and closes again. “Not much. He’s a herbal doctor and a—” She furrows her brows, searching for the right word to describe the other part of Doctor Vu’s life, the part that involves filling up glass jars with human’s body parts. She eyes one of the intact stone. One of them gleams, the yellow-white light filters through and casts greenish shades onto the glass. Again, the same spectral luminosity, although this time the glow is almost like a current circulating slowly through the core of the stone. “—and a witch, I supposed.” She finishes.

“It’s not Dark Magic. Soul Mastering is the correct term.” Duplessis explains. “I mean, outsiders look in and see them summoning demons, but they’re just storing and dispersing souls.”

Maisie Watson nods.

Duplessis examines her via the rearview mirror. “Assistants, like you and me, are their hands and legs. They cannot kill any living things with a soul, for the Guardian Spirits will not allow a bloodied hand near them, so they must entrust us for such task. It’s supposed to be a counteract checkpoint since the Master would have to watch his back and be cautious of his actions.” He glances away, muttering an afterthought. “But those ancient bards must not be dealing with a psycho who wants to exploit people.”

A white stone clefts. One part free-falls down from the dashboard, hitting the radio dial along the way, turning off the music.

She inhales shakingly, dropping her gaze down to her lap. Her fingers lay interlocked. She summoned all her strength before managed out. “So what exactly do Soul Masters do? I mean, does Doctor Vu do?”

“Well, they’re Soul Masters. Their job is to, well, master the souls. Control the souls.” He splays his palms down. “Basically, we’re living on a grid. Within that big grid we’ve smaller units. Each Soul Master oversee about two hundred to five hundred souls.” He glances up at her. “And Doctor Vu is in charge of West Bass. It’s very similar to a database and codes. You know those tombstone veiled things? The tablet?” She nods. “Those are transmitters, allowing the Soul Masters to communicate with the Guardian Spirits. The Soul Masters are able to manipulate so that their regional souls or a specific soul would suffer through a specific fate.” He pauses, as if waiting for her to say something.

A green stone cracks apart.

She stares blankly at the Roman Numerals on Duplessis’s watch. It’s a common watch, not silver nor gold, but a rusty colour of iron. Similar to the one Papa has given to Kai as graduation gift. She remembered taking a photo of Mama, Papa and Kai in front of St. Paul’s flower-woven scroll gates, right under the Congratulation to all Grads of 1999-2000 sign. Mama was leaning over to kiss Kai’s cheek, while Papa has his hand planted proudly on Kai’s shoulder, beaming. Mama was saying “You should wear a tux more often, Kai,” when Maisie snapped the picture. The summer sun lit their faces, her slouched-shadow fallen over the ground in front of them.

The longer she looks at the watch, she realizes it’s dead.

“The hands aren’t moving.” She says.

“Oh,” He says. “Yeah.”

“Is this a family heirloom?” She asks, caressing the side of the watch. Her fingertips brush against a much rougher surface than she expects, when they come back with a few discoloured-silver flakes.

Duplessis chuckles under his breath. “Not exactly a heirloom. My Mom bought before I enrolled into the Armed Force.”

“You were in the Armed Force?”

“Yeah,” He scratched his nose, grinning sheepishly.

Maisie Watson is about to respond when the watch suddenly blinks. A light. Turning on and off, on and off, on and off.

A code. A Morse code.

“It’s time to go.” He says abruptly, restarting the engines. “We don’t want your father to catch you sneaking out, eh?”

“What was that?” She says. “What is it?”

“As I said, West Bass is a database.” Duplessis says as he flicks on the taillights and swiftly switches to the middle lane. “There’re ‘scrub’ times, when the Guardian Spirits will patrol the town and report back to him through dreams. If they catch me nearing you, God knows what will happen to you.”

She notices he doesn’t mention neither himself or Galsworth into the equation.

“You never explain anything else to me,” She says. “How can I get my family out of West Bass? Why can’t I get out of West Bass?”

Duplessis makes a sharp right, forcing her to grip the handlebar above. The stone chain slides off the dashboard and tumbles into Maisie’s lap. Another stone breaks apart.

“Don’t you get it?” He snaps, impatient. “If you’re the one who kills for him, you’re technically involve in this business, even though you don’t know the details.” He keeps glancing at the watch face, now, as the light blinks faster and more erratic, holding his breath as he accelerates down the streets, their surrounding bends and rushes through them in waves. “To risk letting you go is to risk exposure. He would strap you here for as long as he could. That, or he will kill you, somehow.”

She stutters, grasping another shattered stone. The sharp edge cuts a slice across her palm. For a second, the pink, gaping sliver remains pink and numb, then the dull aches arise with the blood, sending jarring throb from her hand to her eyeballs. The weight of Duplessis’s words aren’t have enough time to register deep, yet she could already feel the rattle in her bones. Her head spins to the high speed of the car, heading down a one-way highway. Duplessis breaks at the red light, sending her hitting the dashboard, the tires screeching as it almost swevers sideway to a stop, however they miss the line and skid to the middle of the intersection.

A shriek screams at them. Massive headlights shine at them.

“Shit,” Duplessis says. “Shit, shit.”

A truck, she recognizes from the heavy, oppressed blares.

Duplessis reves the engines and roars off again. Barely manages to get off the truck’s way.

“Holy fuck,” He twists his neck and looks as the truck’s driver shakes his fist out the window and spits. The spittle lands on the hearse’s back window. “Holy fuck. Are you OK?” He turns to her and sputters out something between a triumphant laugh and a surprise.

She still white-knuckled the handlebar, practically flattening herself against the seat, breathless and wide-eyed. It’s until they pull up a block from her house that she finally manages to breath again.

Maisie Watson closes her eyes and leans her forehead against the cool window glass, letting the outside condensation seeps onto her dry skin. In, and out, she breathes. In, and out.

“Are you going to tell me about the kills I’d make later?” She whispers.

on considering his next words, before saying.

He considers his reply. “We don’t know if we can trust you yet. If you aren’t strong enough to forbid the spirit inside you, that means you’re still loyal to Doctor Vu.”

“Doctor Vu doesn’t trust me.”

“Soul Masters naturally don’t trust anyone,” He says. He cracks his jaws, exhaling hard. “But you’ve been with him for more than a decade, I presume? An Assistant’s average working time is two and a half years. I can’t tell if he ensues a hard cast on you, but I think he trusts you more than you think.”

She shakes her head.

Another stone cracks, the pieces like glittering breadcrumbs across her long skirt.

“I think I should go.” She stumbles out of the car.

Duplessis reaches across the stick shift, saying after her. “Be aware, Miss. Nothing is as it seems.”

She slams the door shut and hurries down the walkway, back to her safe home.