Rehab is hell for a Sensitive.

I didn't have to fake the symptoms of withdrawal when the night staff checked in. I lived them alongside my roommate, Patty. My body ached in sympathy with hers, my head pounded, my mouth felt dry, and I woke somewhere around midnight feeling like a swarm of fire ants had formed a colony under my skin. The entire building was like that. People in various states of physical, emotional, and psychological injury, all trying to hold on through the night. By the time morning rolled around, I felt miserable and looked worse.

I examined my reflection after my morning shower. The box dye had turned my hair an unflattering shade of blue-green. I could have gotten a better result if I'd been willing to let Thomas strap me into a chair and perform his stylist magic on me but, in this case, the sloppy job had been the point. 'Ollie' was a junkie on the brink, not a pretty socialite with money to spare. Roman would probably think I'd dyed it recently in an attempt to beat a follicle test.

And, according to Thomas, the blue would fade quickly. Lara had fed my fear and despair to her reluctant demon, and it had all but killed me. It had taken me weeks to recover physically, and some of the deficits were permanent. My hair, once golden, was now only a shade or two off from pure white, no longer able to hold pigment well. As far as my scalp was concerned, I'd gone from my twenties to my seventies overnight. I'd only have to suffer through the shade for a few weeks before vigorous washing cleared it entirely.

My reflection squinted back at me, eyes ringed with dark circles and puffy from lack of sleep. I looked paler, and I'd overdone my makeup in an attempt to contour myself into unrecognizability. I was tempted to go undercover using one of my clay dolls but ultimately decided against it. There was no telling if the Skavis would be able to sense that level of consistent magical output. As long as I kept the dear doctor at arm's length, I could keep my secret under wraps for a little longer.

I wrapped my forearms with my homemade gauze last, securing a piece of chalk to my left forearm. The rings and bracelets would go unnoticed, especially if I kept my hands stuffed in my pockets. Weapons storage was a bust, though. Everything I had was inventoried when I checked in. I'd be playing defense on this one, leaning heavily on magic to get the job done.

The oversized long-sleeve shirt hid all but the edges of the bandages from sight, which was by design. The possibility of scars beneath them was as appealing to a Skavis as the flash of garters would be to a Raith.

I flashed my reflection a weary smile and a quiet, "Knock 'em dead" before leaving the room.

Dr. Roman drew his chair close enough during talk therapy it would have discomfited even the most oblivious of vanilla mortals. For a wizard like me, his nearness elicited anxiety so acute that I wanted to wriggle right out of my skin. His benign smile never slipped, even as he probed my defenses. He seemed amused by my reluctance to answer his pointed questions. His eyes were a pale, almost reflective blue as he fought to keep his demon from sinking its silvery teeth into me. A suicide like mine would have to be planned, not spur of the moment.

Roman checked the Rolex on his wrist, then raised an eyebrow at me. "Our session is half-over, and you've barely said two words, Ms. Davis."

"Ollie," I corrected. "My name is Ollie."

He twitched a shoulder. "Of course, but that doesn't change the fact that you're being contrary. Rosanna was your friend, so I'm sure that she told you that the first step to recovery is to admit you have a problem. You're here, and that's huge, but the second most important part of the process is finding community. No one is an island. Everyone here wants to help you, but we can only do that if you let us in."

Opening up to the Skavis was essentially loading the emotional revolver he'd use to end me, but he was right about one thing. I had to give a little, or he might hand me off to a different therapist for appearance's sake.

So I crossed my arms over my chest and heaved a sigh, "Fine, I'll talk, but only if you do. We'll go tit for tat."

Roman's lips quirked almost imperceptibly, the blue leaching from his eyes by degrees. An ordinary woman would probably have chalked it up to the sun reflecting off his glasses, but I knew better. He was enjoying himself, working himself up so that killing me would be all the more satisfying.

"Quid pro quo?"

"Yeah."

He pretended to think about it for a moment. "Very well, but only if I deem the questions appropriate. I'll go first. Why are there bandages on your wrists?"

I snorted. He'd zeroed in on the bandages, just as intended. I'd been forced to reopen a few of my more recent scabs to sell the idea that I'd cut myself. A White Court vampire would smell the lie if there was no blood beneath them.

"You have my medical file, don't you?"

Roman waved a hand dismissively. He leaned forward so that our knees were touching. I could feel the warmth of his skin even through the denim of my jeans, and the contact made me shudder.

"Mechanics. I want to know what drove you, Ollie. I'm interested in the demons knocking around in your skull, figuratively speaking. What would you rather die than grapple with?"

I pretended to consider it and then was surprised when something very like the truth came tumbling out.

"I'm Humpty Dumpty."

"Excuse me?"

"You know, from the nursery rhyme. 'All the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Humpty together again.' I'm broken, and nothing can put me back together the way I was. It's exhausting to walk around day in and day out trying to hold your squishy bits inside. You're barely together as it is, and people always expect you to be normal, even when they know what you've been through. They get angry with you when you can't or won't act like you're whole, but that's the problem. You're not whole. You're never going to be whole again, so all you can do is splinter. At what point are you too disjointed to function? At what point is it better to throw the poor, broken egg in the trash? It's just stinking up the place."

I rubbed the bandages over my left wrist discreetly, and Roman's eyes tracked the motion, shining silver.

"I don't think you're eggshell, Ollie," he said, words at odds with the eagerness in his thoughts. "You're bone. Bones break, but they're stronger where they fuse. You just have to stop putting yourself through repeated trauma and give yourself time to heal."

The funny thing? He was probably right. If I could settle in Summer for another three or four years, I might be able to heal some of the damage that I'd done to myself as the Black Knight. But if I ran, who took care of Chicago? Murphy, Butters, the Alphas, and a few members of the Ordo. They'd never bring themselves to rely totally on Marcone, and it would get them killed. I wasn't a very effective meat shield for Harry's friends and allies, but I had allowed them to keep a little of their pride. I was convinced that was all that was keeping Murphy sane these days.

Roman adjusted his notebook with a small smile. "I believe it's your turn. What do you want to know about me?"

"Why do you do what you do?" I asked. "I don't think for a second that you got in this profession demon-free. Did someone close to you die? Is that why you decided to spend your life trying to mend the rest of us?"

Roman leaned back in his chair, chewing the end of his pencil.

"It was Saccharine Trust that opened the door, actually. Post-hardcore punk rock was very popular when I grew up, and my mother hated it." He smiled impishly for just a moment. "Which is why I listened to it in the first place, of course. Their second album Surviving You, Always, had the picture of Evelyn McHale on its cover. Do you know who she was?"

I shook my head.

"She was a bookkeeper living in New York in 1947. She suffered from undiagnosed depression all her life, and ultimately jumped from the observation deck of the Empire State Building and fell eighty-six floors before landing on a car, dying on impact. Four minutes later, she was photographed by Robert Wiles and was cemented into history. It's colloquially known as 'the most beautiful suicide.' If Wiles hadn't taken a photo, we'd never know about her. She was cremated as per her wishes in her note and there was no memorial service held for her. She'd have been forgotten, just one of thirty-six to have jumped from that building, and what a shame that would have been. No one deserves to be forgotten. I am...a memory keeper. I never forget anyone who crosses my path, for good or ill."

I wanted to cry bullshit, to spit on the ground and storm out but...he believed it. The open, almost longing expression was genuine, not a facade he put on for my benefit. The sick son of a bitch saw death as poetry, and the more lurid the prose the better. Roman probably thought of himself as some kind of monstrous Van Gogh, creating art from suffering. Our suffering, which made it a counterfeit in my opinion. It wouldn't shock me to learn that he had prints of every single woman he'd offed.

Was that how the Skavis started out? Terminally angsty teenagers who gravitated toward death as a matter of course? I could imagine a young Gregory Roman in school willing his own Evelyn McHale into being. If I dug into the record of Chicago's prep schools, would I find some poor girl had committed suicide by jumping from the roof?

"You make it sound beautiful."

"Life is beautiful," he replied, sliding his mask back into place with an utterly plastic smile. "Which is why we should get you back to yours. But I'm afraid that's all the time we have for now. I'll see you in small group, right?"

I returned his smile with about as much sincerity. "I wouldn't miss it, Doctor."