Page 103 of Kill Me Again: Psychics

“You wanted them to feel so much guilt that they spent the rest of their lives pandering to you in every way possible.”

“I said, shut up.”

“And instead, you got a flicker of interest that petered away to nothing.”

“You know nothing.”

“Except I do. Because I’ve lived it. I guess it’s good to know that it wasn’t all about my sexuality, that the disinterest would have been there anyway.”

I watched Owen as he took another trip along the length of the wall, holding my breath as he executed the tricky turn before coming back the opposite way. “If your parents bought you, then I don’t understand why they treated you so badly. Why spend all that money on something you don’t really want?”

Owen laughed bitterly. “People with more money than sense do it all the time. They buy expensive cars and use them for racing. They buy pedigree dogs and chain them up all day. I was the pedigree dog.” He ran a hand through his hair, the slight tremor visible. “Perhaps they thought they wanted me, but I didn’t live up to their expectations. Unfortunately, they don’t have obedience classes for children.”

“No,” I said quickly. “You were a child, a baby. It’s not your fault. It could never be your fault. They were just bad people.”

That caught his attention, Owen turning to face me. “They were bad people.”

A realization sank into my bones—one I didn’t want to voice, but had to. “They’re not around anymore, are they? What happened to them?”

A smile tugged at the corner of Owen’s lips. “There was a house fire one night. The father smoked. They think he had too much to drink and fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. The mother had been drinking too. They were so out of it that the theory is that they simply slept through it. Did you know that rather than waking them, the toxic gases from smoke often put people into a deeper sleep?” He waited for me to shake my head. “Nearly half of all residential fire fatalities occur when the victims are asleep, so it’s nothing unusual.”

“Or suspicious,” I added.

“The son was lucky,” Owen continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “His bedroom was far enough away from the source of the fire that he got out. He tried his hardest to get to his parents. So hard that he had to be held back by the neighbors, but it was to no avail. By the time the fire brigade arrived, it was already too late. The son was treated for smoke inhalation in hospital for a couple of days. He was devastated, the poor thing. He could barely talk to the police without crying. If only he’d woken sooner. If only they’d had fire alarms. If only he’d been successful in persuading his father to give up smoking. If only they weren’t such heavy sleepers.”

“How old were you?” There were two reasons for my question: genuine curiosity and a desire to cut through the third-person bullshit.

“Seventeen. Only a few months shy of my eighteenth birthday.”

“Perfect timing,” I said.

“I was due some luck.”

“And I’m assuming all their money went to you?”

“Minus one very crispy house, yes. It was the least I deserved.”

“Was it a lot of money?”

“Enough.”

The nausea was back with a vengeance. Should knowing I wasn’t his first victim make me feel better? It didn’t. There was an argument that they had deserved it. They’d bought a child and then treated that child in a reprehensible way. But two wrongs didn’t make a right, and the picture Owen had painted of the poor orphaned child pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes was nothing short of sinister.

A gust of wind caught Owen’s coat, knocking him off balance again. “Come down,” I repeated.

“You understand, right?” There was something beseeching in Owen’s expression. “You said it yourself that it wasn’t my fault.”

“I was talking about the abuse. Not the fire. You could have gone to the police and told them what was going on. There were other ways to deal with it.”

“They weren’t good people.”

I laughed. “There are lots of people in the world who aren’t good. You can’t kill everyone who wronged you.” It made me wonder who else had fallen victim to Owen, both before and after I had.

“I had no choice.”

“You had choices. There are always choices.” Over Owen’s shoulder, streaks of red announced the impending sunrise.

“Give me a better choice.”