The next day, Al called in for me. I didn't even wake up until well after she got home.

"I have a plan," she said when I stumbled into the kitchen.

"No. I am not going anywhere near that man again. You take your plan and—"

"We drug him."

"Drug him?" I repeated, fully intrigued by the thought of Jonathan Crane lying on the floor, crying and begging us to end his torment.

"Yeah, knock him out and steal his keys."

"Oh."

"I'll stay with him while you check the files. If he wakes up early, I'll stall him long enough for you to get away."

"Oh. And what are we supposed to do with these files, anyway?"

"We call the police once we have proof that he's up to no good." I glared at her. "Well, sorry, but I don't think you qualify as proof."

"And I don't think your plan qualifies as smart. Why not call the police now and let them get the proof."

"I'll let you smack him around a little."

Fair enough.

--

I spent the next day jumping at every sound, chanting a variable mantra. Every scream was ripped from the throats of the damned souls in the basement. Sine. Every walking lobotomy in a hospital gown was a ghost from the beyond. Cosine. Every time I passed Dr. Crane in the hall, his look told me he knew what I was up to and was just waiting for a chance to give me a full dose of his drug. Tangent.

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to hide. Mostly I wanted my mother.

As soon as I could slip away unseen, I went to visit my old roommate in Recovery. She was looking much more like her old self, still too ready to laugh at nothing, but a vast improvement over the last time I'd seen her. She looked much better than I felt. They would probably be releasing her soon.

I always have attracted the unstable ones. Harleen wasn't at all bothered by my request to hide under her bed until the nightly headcount was done and the daytime staff went home.

From under the bed, I heard Al's voice, and that of Dr. Crane, and Harleen's answering giggle as she bounced on the springs above me. The lights went off, and I heard the door close. Al didn't lock it.

After a few minutes, I slid my way out into the open air. In the moonlight, Harleen's grin looked almost demonic.

"So, whatcha up to, shug?" she asked perkily.

"Oh, you'll probably hear all about it soon." I hugged her and wished her the best of luck. She would have laughed if she had known the way things would turn out.

I slipped outside and down the hall, into the bathroom across the hall from the doctors' lounge.

"You don't look so good, Dr. Crane." I could hear Al speaking clearly; the same ducts that carried the screams would carry her voice directly to me as long as we both stayed near the vents. "Maybe you should have a cup of coffee."

"Coffee? You made coffee this late at night?" His voice made my skin crawl.

"Well, yes. You told me to."

"I did no such thing." He sounded patient, slightly amused.

"You did, Dr. Crane." Laughing. "Before we started the rounds. You said you would be working late, and…"

"Oh, yes. It had completely slipped my mind."

"You work so hard, doctor. You look like you need a good rest." Half innocent seductress, half caring mother in her voice. Oh, she was good. "Let me pour you a cup. Do you mind if I join you? I'm getting started on my thesis, and I have so many questions to ask you."

They moved away from the vents then, but I could still hear them speaking, though I couldn't understand what they said. Al asked her questions in a hypnotic, droning voice, and the doctor's answers grew slower and more labored, as though he were struggling against a mental fog. I imagined that she'd made a mistake with the dosage, that his heart would fail, that his last sensations would be a sharp pain and a lack of breath, that perhaps Al would smirk and he would die knowing that he had been murdered.

But of course, my too-practical mind had to carry the scenario to its conclusion: that the evidence we were after was somehow not there, and we, the killers of a prominent and respected psychiatrist, would go to prison, to death, or worst of all, to Arkham.

But Al knew what she was doing.

The voices trailed off. Moments later, I met Al out in the hall. Beyond her, within the lounge's warm circle of light, I could see Dr. Crane asleep on the lumpy couch, his feet hanging over the edge. In sleep he looked almost boyish. Al had taken off his glasses and spread her own coat over him like a blanket.

She dropped the key into my hand.

"You have about an hour. When he wakes up, I'll stall him long enough for you to hide."

"Could there be someone else behind all this?" I asked, feeling my first real misgivings. Dr. Crane had always been retiring but unfailingly polite to everyone who worked for him, from the other doctors to the hired help. He might not have been anyone's buddy, but for the moment I couldn't envision that slumbering child in the next room injecting a drug into an old lady that would bring her fears to life and torment her until death was her only escape.

"Only one way to find out," said Al.

Only one way.