Dylan smiled at the sentiment, but it was very hard hearing her mother referred to in the past tense already. "Thanks for the box, Janet."
"Oh, you're welcome, honey. Would you like some help finishing up in here?"
"No, thanks. I'm almost done."
She waited as Janet made her exit, then she went back to the task at hand. It was difficult to tell what might be important to her mother and what could be tossed, so finally Dylan just started gathering papers and old photos by the handful and placing them in the box.
She paused to look at a few of the pictures - her mother standing with her arms around the thin shoulders of two young shelter girls with bad 1980s hair, tube tops, and short shorts; another of her mom smiling behind the counter of an ice cream shop, beaming at the "Employee of the Month" award the young girl next to her was holding up like a prize.
Her mother had befriended nearly every troubled young woman who came through the place, genuinely invested in seeing them succeed and rise above the problems that had made the girls run away from home or feel that they didn't, or couldn't, fit into normal society. Her mother had tried to make a difference. And in a lot of cases, she had.
Dylan wiped at the tears of pride that sprang into her eyes. She looked for a tissue among the clutter and couldn't find any. Just what she didn't need, to be sitting in her mother's office crying like a baby in front of the evening shift staff.
"Shit." She remembered seeing a stack of loose paper towels in one of the drawers of the back credenza. Pivoting her mother's chair around, she scooted across the worn carpet and began a quick search of the cabinet.
Ah. Success.
Dabbing at her wet eyes and face, she spun back around and nearly fell out of her seat.
There, standing before her on the other side of her mother's desk, was a ghostly apparition. The young woman was joined by another, both of them wavering in and out of visibility. Then another girl appeared, and still another. And then, finally, there was Toni again, the girl Dylan had seen in her mother's hospital room the other night.
"Oh, my God." She gaped at them, only half-conscious of the shelter employees going about their business outside, completely unaware of the ghostly gathering. "Are you all here because of my mom?"
The group of them stared at her in eerie silence, their forms rippling like candle flames caught in a stuttering breeze.
Help them, one of the unmoving mouths told her. They need you to help them.
Damn it, she did not have time for this now. She wasn't in the right frame of mind to deal with any of this right now.
But something prickled within her, something that told her she had to listen.
She had to do something.
He won't stop hurting them, said another ghostly voice. He won't stop the killing.
Dylan grabbed a scrap of paper and a pen and started writing down what she was hearing. Maybe Rio and the Order could help make sense of it, if she couldn't.
They're underground.
In darkness.
Screaming.
Dying.
Dylan heard the pain and fear in the mingled whispers as the dead Breedmates tried to communicate with her. She felt a kinship to each one of them, and to the ones they said were still alive but in terrible danger.
"Tell me who," she said quietly, hoping she couldn't be heard outside the door. "I can't help you if you don't give me something more than this. Please, hear me. Tell me who's hurting the others like us."
Dragos.
She didn't know which one of them said it, or even if - or how - she might have been heard through the barrier that separated the living from the dead. But the word branded into her mind in an instant.
It was a name.
Dragos.
"Where is he?" Dylan asked, trying for more. "Can you tell me anything else?"
But the group of them were already fading. One by one, they dissipated...vanished into nothingness.
"I almost forgot to give you these, honey." Janet's singsong voice in the doorway startled a gasp out of Dylan. "Oh, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you."
"It's okay." Dylan shook her head, still dazed by the other encounter. "What do you have?"
"A couple of pictures I took from the river cruise Mr. Fasso hosted earlier this week. I think your mom would like to have them." Janet came in and put a couple of color prints on the desk. "Doesn't she look nice in that blue dress? Those girls at the table with her are a few of the ones she was mentoring. Oh - and there's Mr. Fasso way in the back of the room. You can hardly make him out, but that's the side of his face. Isn't he handsome?"
He was, actually. And younger than she imagined him. He had to be about twenty years younger than her mother - in his late forties at most, and probably not even that old.
"Will you take these to your mom for me, honey?"
"Sure." Dylan smiled, hoping she didn't look as rattled as she felt.
It wasn't until Janet had toddled off again that Dylan took a good look at the pictures. A really good look.
"Jesus Christ."
One of the girls seated at the table with her mom on that river cruise a few short days ago was among the group of dead Breedmates she'd just seen in the office.
She grabbed a stack of older photographs from the box she'd packed them into and sifted through the images. Her heart sank. There was another young woman's face that she'd just seen in spectral form a minute ago.
"Oh, God."
Dylan felt sick to her stomach as she bolted out of the office for the ladies room. She dialed the number Rio gave her and barely gave him a chance to say hello before she blurted out everything that had just happened.
"One of them said the name Dragos," she told him in a frantic whisper. "Does that mean anything to you?"