“Right.” Ross typed something on his tablet, nodding as he did. “Max and Josh, correct?”
“Yes,” I said, remembering back to the first day I came to the Damned House and saw Max playing in the sunbeams by the window. “We’d held high hopes for Max. But, at night, when we had no control over the sunlight, he’d become monstrous and hard to handle.”
“Yes, we had to restrain him after he tore the hair from a little girl’s scalp on his first night,” David said. “He was just too traumatised, and it seemed the dark only aggravated his torment.”
“Right,” Mr Johnson said. “And Katy, your head psychologist, mentioned that Charles and Sophie showed signs of dissociative personality disorders.”
“Yes, which may actually have been present before they were turned.”
He wrote something else down, and I checked over my shoulder to see if Lacey and Harry were listening.
“Why don’t we take this discussion into the secure section?” David suggested, winking at me.
“Yes, of course.” Mr Johnson looked up then at Harry and Lacey, realising finally that we weren’t alone.
“Ara?” Harry called, holding up a large rectangle page. “Look what I did.”
I left David and Mr Johnson by the security door and wandered over to the art corner, my eyes going wider when I got a closer look at Harry’s picture. “I love this, Harry.” I squatted down and pointed to the house sitting under a sunny sky. “You’re using so many colours now. And, can you tell me—” I aimed my finger to the red apples in the tree. “What colour is this?”
“Um.” He considered the apple for a moment, scratching just beside his nose. “Purple?”
I looked over at David. His smile grew.
“Very close,” I said. “But we call that one red.”
“Argh!” Harry folded over his page, slapping his brow. “Stupid! Stupid! Stu—”
“Hey,” David said gently, appearing suddenly beside Harry, gently taking both his hands. “Do you want to know something, Harry?”
Harry looked at David. He idolised his king and wanted to be just like King David when he grew up, which saddened my heart immensely, knowing the Damned might never actually grow up. But his love for David had allowed them a certain connection neither had with anyone else at the House, and David could always get through to him.
“When I was a little boy,” David started, “I always got the colour red and purple mixed up. They look exactly the same, don’t they?” His eyes slowly drifted onto mine, sparkling with a grin, asking me to play along.
“I’m never gonna get this right,” Harry said, dropping his head between his hands.
“You will.” David lifted his face again. “Because all you have to remember is that the colour red—” He pointed to the apple, “—is the same colour as blood.”
Harry sat up straight.
“And you like blood, don’t you, Harry?” David finished.
Harry nodded.
“Okay.” David stood up, tousling Harry’s orange curls. “And if you keep getting the colours wrong, guess what?”
“What?” Harry said.
“It’s okay. No one’s going to hurt you, son. We like it when someone makes a mistake around here because it means they’ve got another chance to learn. And what do we get when we learn something?”
Harry’s eyes lit up. “Chocolate!”
“Right.” David reached into his pocket and pulled out a Hershey’s. “Here you go, buddy. You learned that blood is red today, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then you can have this.”
“Thank you, King David.” He jumped up and threw his arms around my husband. And my eyes watered. I loved seeing the children happy. It was just so easy to make them smile. All they wanted was a little love, a little encouragement, and when given anything—didn’t matter if it was a flower from outside, a pin from my hair that one of them liked, or a new pack of pencils—they were just so grateful it was heartbreaking.
David patted Harry’s hair, holding back his own tears.
“Okay, see if you can draw me a picture of a puppy, and I’ll come back after I’ve taken Queen Ara to see Max and Joshie, okay?”
“Okay.” Harry sat back down and tore open his chocolate bar, leaning in to share with Lacey.
“Come, My Queen.” David draped his arm over my neck. “I believe we’re invisible in the presence of sweets.”
My head turned as we walked away, my eyes staying on Harry long enough to see him enjoy his first bite. “You’re good with kids, David.”
“Kids are easy.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Just feed them sugar and they love you.”
I laughed. “I’m sure those principles will change when we have our own baby.”
“Of course.” He tugged me closer and kissed my hair. “Because she won’t be allowed any sweets.”
“Any?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“If she’s anything like her mother, no amount of sugar could possibly make her any sweeter.”
“Aw.”
“Charmed, I’m sure,” Mr Johnson muttered flatly.
David shook his head, ignoring it, for the most part, and keyed in the code to the security door.
***
The tall, lanky boy with sandy-blonde hair stood up as we approached. Between us, a glass window sat as a divider from the hallway: a bullet proof, smash proof, and soundproof one that was mirrored on one side. Max couldn’t see us, but we could see him. Josh, however, had the finely tuned instincts of an adult vampire, a very old adult vampire, turning his gaze directly on us before we even stopped walking.
“How is he?” David asked, and only then did I notice Katy had popped up beside him in her long white coat, clipboard in hand.
“He’s showing progress, David. We closed the curtains today while he was playing in the sunlight, and he looked up, but he didn’t screech or back into the corner this time.”
David smiled, his eyes staying on Max. “Jason asked to do one last session with him. What are your thoughts on this?”
“I have to say, I agree.” She took one step closer to the glass, her loving eyes on the two boys as if they were her own children—the very reason we hired her and made her immortal. “He has no memory of his past before he came to the House, but he’s showing signs of repression. I’m worried it might all come back to him at once if we don’t dot every ‘I’, so to speak.”