Chapter 10

"When I want your opinion, doctor, I will give it to you." Roxanne grumbled at Julia.

"I thought you might be interested. I ran some tests on Jeb Hawkes and..."

"How many times do I have to tell you that Hawkes was only a decor? Forget your experiments with him. You wouldn't have won that game unless you were meant to win it."

"I ran some chemical tests..." Julia insisted.

"I have no patience with you, Doctor. I wish I could get hold of werewolves any other way, so I didn't have to stay in the same room with you."

Julia paled at that.

"It was your idea that Barnabas killed me, wasn't it, doctor? From the start. And now I am supposed to be polite? I wish I could skin you alive. And Barnabas and Angelique too."

"Is that why you tormented Phillip?"

"I wanted information out of him."

"You wanted t strike at Barnabas through him. You wanted to torture him so that through his link with him, Barnabas would be tortured too."

"And you didn't lose any time telling that to Barnabas, did you?" She moved towards Julia menacingly. "What next, will you tell Megan the same story?" She put her hands on Julia's throat.

"You can't kill me." Julia said, quickly fighting down her fear.

"I will be the judge of that."

"There will be an investigation. And a new director... and you might have to move out. You may lose this base of operations..."

Roxanne's eyes narrowed, but she stopped squeezing Julia's throat.

"Well, then, I won't kill you yet." she said, twisting Julia's head to the side.

Julia had been bitten before. But never that brutally. Roxanne threw all her contempt and desire to hurt as she drank. And she let Julia know how much she enjoyed her sufferings.

She drank deeply, knowing how weak Julia would be afterwards. And stopped only when she knew it was getting dangerous.

"Well, doctor" she said, releasing her "That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."

Her mouth was smeared with blood and the red liquid trickled down her chin. She made not effort to wipe it off.

Nausea gripped Julia. She couldn't give in to it, though. Not where Roxanne could see it and mock her for it.

She forced herself to stand up straight and face her. "Are you done?"

"Just watch your step, doctor." Roxanne warned her. "Next time I will not stop."

"Do you think that Roxanne knows what she is doing?" Angelique asked.

Sebastian said "A few months earlier I would have said yes. Now, I wonder."

"Why does she object to my scrying. We need to know what they are doing and how much time we have. She should be glad that I help."

"But that would mean being grateful to you, and she hates you too much for that.."

"But you cannot let hatred or other personal feelings dictate how to run an operation. I though that with her experience she would know better than that."

"It looks beautiful" Barnabas surveyed the broken bottles accumulating at Phillip's feet. Too bad that it can't last.

"What do you mean?" Phillip said, disappointed.

"You are going to be released soon. But if you keep on tearing papers and breaking glassware on the outside you'll have a lot of problems. I want you back working for me, but if the Old House looks like this room, I will have to fire you."

"Released?" That was all Phillip had heard. "You mean that I am well again?"

"Yes. You are, except for your habit of breaking bottles, that's it."

"But I need to!"

"And that's the problem. We need now to work on your being able to be around bottles without having to smash them."

"Live among bottles? Not breaking them?"

"There are plenty of bottles on the outside, and breaking them is not accepted social behavior. You have to learn to coexist with the things. Leave them alone, and accept that they will leave you alone too."

"But..."

"We can try to get you to that point. Bit by bit. Gradually?"

"Gradually?" The color was coming back to Phillip's face. He shouldn't have been upset like that. He had trusted Barnabas until now, hadn't he? And it was worked..

"Yes. A little bit each day. Following the rules. Treatment only happens in this room. You come here when you say you do. You set the pace. And if becomes uncomfortable you stop immediately. If you stop, you have five minutes to rest. After five minutes you decide to go ahead or not. We will do it in stages, and we will not start a stage until we are done with the previous one."

"What will the stages be?"

"Looking at a bottle from a distance, not touching it. Seeing for how long you can stare at it without being uncomfortable."

"And the next ones?"

"Move closer and closer to it. Stand next to it. Touch it. Then handle it. Put it away. Then take it out. Fill it up with water, empty it again. Treat it as a bottle."

Phillip swallowed.

"If it gets too bad, do I get to smash something?"

"At first, yes. Later I hope you won't need to."

"When do we start?"

Barnabas beamed at that. "How about tomorrow"

"Is there any chance about a third party candidacy? Oriana asked.

"He is going to be the Republican nominee" Amy said defiantly.

"But in case he isn't. does he want to file as an Independent?"

"No."

"I hope he doesn't . Look, I think that he's the best man for the job, and it is a pity that he's not a Democrat. But if he runs as an Independent, he might well elect Reagan or someone like that...

"Carter is not much better."

"Perhaps... I am not so sure."

He wanted to talk to Julia. He had not told Phillip what he would be doing later. The reasoning was that he only told Phillip what he could handle, and no further.

Still, it bothered him, and he needed to talk it over with someone who understood.

"Julia?" he went into her office. "Julia?"

She was not at her desk. And there were drops of blood on the papers there...

"Julia!"

A moan answered him. A moan from the next room.

Julia was lying down on the couch. He came closer and she moaned again.

"Roxanne... she got mad at me..." she said, as he touched her shoulder.

"Roxanne!" he called.

"No... don't... I will be OK. But if we make her mad, she may take too much next time... she threatened to."

He stood there, torn between the desire to have it out with Roxanne, and his unresolved feelings about her.. And the desire to protect Julia. And the knowledge that there was much more at stake...

"I will be all right. I just need to rest. Just get me some tea."

He did so. Thoughts churned in his mind. Roxanne was out of control... He knew the symptoms. He had been out of control himself often enough, and could recognize the pattern... But he could not interfere with Megan's operation...

He looked at the phone. He almost used it, but remembered that Roxanne could have someone she controlled overheating the conversation.

"Can I leave you? " He asked Julia. "Will you be all right?"

"Yes. I will feel better tomorrow. If you have something to do, go. You make a lousy nursemaid."

He went out, checked that he had enough change in his pockets and flew away. There was a public phone on the road and used it.

"Megan. I do not want to interfere. You know that you said that when I was not sure what to do, before I blundered, I should call you first? Well. You need to know that Roxanne is out of control. I am afraid that she cares more about revenge on me, Julia, and Angelique than what she has to do. Check with Angelique, Please, do something before she does really harm Julia."

He hung up. It was up to Megan now. He could now fly back.

"Well, I see that you are being smart now."

He looked with amazement at Dave Woodard who looked at him with arms crossed and an amused expression in his face.

"Why? What did I do?"

"Refrain from rushing where angels fear to tread. A novel experience for you."

"Well, Megan trained me not to interfere with her cases. It was a painful lesson."

"She's smart. She gave you what you needed most. A reality check. Poor Julia was so intent on curing your condition that she did not see that what you were most in need of was a couple of head slaps."

"You are right."

"I wish I had done that now. Give you a resounding head slap, and told you that Stupid Is Not An Option. It might not have saved my life, but it would have been a more satisfying exit."

"It might... " he looked at Dave again, surprised how easy it was. "But why?"

"Why am I here? Because I sense that your are in need of a professional consultation, and Julia's in no shape to give her opinion. And because I believe that her opinion is not as good as mine."

"But I am not..."

"You are in the profession, even if never got a degree. You handle well your patients, and they get better. So, you better explain what is bothering you."

"It is... embarrassing. Not something that I want to be talked about."

"I which case share it as a professional consultation. That will bind me to keep it secret, too. When you are in a profession you love its rules bind you beyond the grave."

"All right. It is Phillip. He was assaulted by Tom Jennings. Specifically he was raped by means of a bottle. And now he's reliving it."

"And you are applying desensitization training to him. With a degree of success, if I may say."

"Yes. He's learned that he can fight back. Now he is about to learn that bottles cannot hurt him."

"So why are you so glum?"

"Because it is not enough. The reason why he was assaulted was to suppress other memories. Memories that certain people want, and other people want erased. Those people who want the memories will use whatever means to get them , no matter what damage they do to him.. A new breakdown can easily be triggered, and used to jog his memory. He will not be safe until he can remember why bottles scared him even before his attack. And to do that, I have to destroy the terror that the memory of his rape bring him."

"And how do you plan to do it?

"More desensitization training. Only geared to the act itself... I have two patients who were victims of Tom Jennings. Sandy and Phillip. Sandy got fixated on being bound and helpless in Tom's cellar. She worked through it being chained during the full moons. Phillip is not so lucky. He got fixated on the assault itself. And working through it means..."

"It means repeating the act, only in a way that keeps his calm, and makes him understand that he will come out in one piece and that that he is stronger than it."

"Yes. I have to make him lose his fear of it... Or rather that I have to take a bottle and stick it up..."

"No wonder you are upset. Do you want an excuse not to do it?"

"If I do not do it, the he'll have another breakdown, and one from which he will not recover."

"Not much to choose from, is there? Unless you want to explain that you can help him, but you are unwilling to because he got fixated on a part of the body that cannot be mentioned in polite company."

"Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?"

"Very ridiculous."

"So?"

"It is that when I think about it, I cannot see myself... I cannot even imagine..."

"How does desensitization work?"

"You go at it bit by bit, every day going a bit further, at a safe pace, until your fear and objections disappear.. Gradually."

Woodard laughed "And if you go through that, do you think that Phillip will be the only one desensitized?"