The Best Defense by Kristine Kathryn Rusch 5 page

What sprouted from Wylde’s body was white then black. Cohering in a roiling ball of vapor, it verged on the brink of solidity. Of reality.

And then in my head: Not yet time.

I didn’t stop, didn’t think what that meant.

“Dr. Wylde!” Closing the distance, I grabbed her by the arm and yanked, hard. A queer electric thrill, like a charge jumping from a Van de Graaff, cracked, but I hung on. “Wylde!”

Either I’d broken her concentration, or she‑it‑was done.

Or I was nuts because nobody said anything like Hey, you see that? Or Jesus, she’s a witch!

And ten to one, they weren’t hearing voices, either.

The air pruned. Whatever that thing had been‑it vanished.

On the floor, Dickert drew in a wheezy, rattling breath. His nose was streaming blood.

Wylde turned. And then, for the briefest of moments, Sarah Wylde was not… all there.

Superimposed upon her body, like the ephemeral penumbra of a darkened sun, was the smeary translucent avatar of the girl from the DVD. The girl’s imago drew in upon itself, folding into Wylde’s body until she was gone.

And then it was just Sarah Wylde, her brilliant green eyes firing to emeralds.

“I’m not a gook,” she said, reasonably. I saw where Dickert had split her lip. Blood dyed her teeth orange. Her eyes rolled. “ Devaputra‑mara. ”

I caught her before she hit the floor.

Later, when I remembered, I drew the charm from my pocket. But it was just a pretty piece with weird symbols and gemstones, and cold.

IV

“… What you’d expect after extensive blood loss,” Kay was saying. “Official cause of death is cerebral anoxia secondary to exsanguination.”

“No surprises there.” I stood beneath the ER’s breezeway off Washington Circle. Freezing my ass off, but you can’t use a cell in a hospital. Messes up the machinery. The sun had staggered up to lighten the clouds to pewter, and the traffic was picking up. “Anything else?”

“Just interesting: MacAndrews served in Vietnam. Army, Third Brigade. He even had this funky tattoo on his bicep. Rollins could run down his service record if you want.”

“And that’s interesting… how?” But then I answered my own question. “The DVD.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

Hunh. The disk was being looked at by the computer guy to see if he could clean things up. “Kay, you at your computer? Can you Google…” I spelled the name. “Check for family.”

She was silent a moment. Then: “Don’t tell me Preston Wylde’s involved.”

“I don’t know yet. What’d you get?”

“Hang on.” Sound of typing. “Lot of hits, but… here we go. Just says that he’s got two daughters. No wife mentioned. No names.”

That tallied. Guys like Preston Wylde might not want too much personal information out there. “Try Sarah. Same last name.”

More typing. “ Hunh. Well, this is interesting. She comes up as faculty at the medical school. Her specialty is transcultural psychiatry. She’s been all over, most recently a couple of years in Thailand and Cambodia researching cacodemonomania…”

I thought of that Asian family. That Ψ. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know. I’m a pathologist. Hang on… hunh. ”

“You keep doing that.”

“Well, that’s because it’s hunh. Cacodemonomania is the delusion of being possessed by a demon.”

This time I was quiet. My mind jumped to something that most cops would find well‑nigh certifiable. Maybe if I’d been more open to possibilities, though, Adam might still be alive.

See, I’d investigated an angel.

It was complicated.

And I know what I heard out of Dickert’s mouth. And what Sarah Wylde said… “Anything else?”

“Well, there’s a pretty funky paper entitled ‘Green is for Goblin: Exorcism in Buddhist Magic.’ ”

I closed my eyes‑and saw Wylde’s own glittering, emerald eyes.

Kay: “Is there something you’re looking for in particular?”

Yeah. Try Googling Wylde and witch and Satan. “I don’t know. That’s okay. Thanks, Kay.” I disconnected, then dialed Rollins. He answered and I heard background noise: men’s voices. A phone ringing. “Where are you?”

“In the office, finishing paper. I hate paper. What’s up?”

I filled him in, then said, “Run Dickert through the system, see if you get anything.”

“And he’s connected…? You’ll notice the ellipsis.”

“Well, he’s an asshole.”

“The world’s full of them.”

“So I’m betting there’s something.”

“And it connects…?”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“So observant. You must be a detective.”

“So will you run him?”

“Okay, okay. What about our case?”

“I still haven’t had a chance to talk to the girl. I was going to interview her now.”

“Wait for me. Give me twenty minutes.”

“This is Washington.”

“Forty.”

“That’ll do.” I closed the phone and ducked back into the ER.

Things had more or less gotten back to normal except Gerber was nowhere in sight and Dickert was in leather restraints, snoring from whatever he’d been given. Someone had also taken soap and water to him. Didn’t really improve his looks. A walrus in a flimsy hospital gown that had hiked up in unfortunate places. Obligatory biker tattoos: a ring of barbed wire around his left bicep that, with gravity and a couple years, would end up a bracelet; an American flag on the right. He had a thing about skulls: skull on fire, Jolly Roger centered in an ace of spades peeping from an ass cheek (too much information!), Grateful Dead skull haloed with red roses.

I hoped Wylde pressed charges. There was just something about Dickert I didn’t like, and it wasn’t about the t‑shirt or that he was a drunk and a bully. His tattoos were unoriginal, but you couldn’t throw a guy in jail for his taste in tattoos.

Just… something. That voice, for starters.

And the one in my head…

Oh, don’t go there. I’d just about convinced myself the whole thing was stress.

The medical student sat on a stool next to a surgical resident who was stitching Dickert’s scalp back together. “Your sister around?” I asked the student.

If she was surprised that I’d put it together, she didn’t show it. “Zoe,” she said, and stuck out her hand. We shook; her grip was firm. “Sarah’s with the Chouns.” Zoe tilted her head toward the bay where the Asian family was hidden behind a drawn curtain. “She might be a while. They’re family friends.”

“She okay?”

“Sure. I don’t think she’s going to press charges, though.”

“That’s a shame. And here I was hoping.”

“The guy had an idiosyncratic reaction to alcohol. It happens. Once their BAL goes down, they’re pretty reasonable people. Well… maybe not him. ”

“Your sister always take risks?”

“Yes,” the surgical resident said, without turning around. “Rushing in where angels fear to tread. Can’t tell Sarah anything and never could, if you listen to the attendings. On the other hand, can’t tell Zoe anything either. I pity the chief resident of whatever specialty she ends up in.”

“A fan club,” I said to Zoe.

“Part of the family charm. We go all sorts of places.” She mock‑punched the resident. “Harry’s just worried that I’ll end up his intern for his first big case.”

“Are you kidding?” Harry tied off, snipped. “When that day comes, and if you’re very, very good, I’ll let you staple the skin.”

“So generous.”

I debated a half second about waiting for Wylde‑to ask her… what? Hey, whoa, nifty parlor trick. Do all the witches in your coven do that? But then I spotted Rollins trundling in, and I really did have work.

“Hey,” Rollins said. He was open faced and big in a solid, apple pie, Midwest kind of way. Last person in the world you’d peg as a computer geek. “Computer guy thinks he might have something. I’d have given it a shot, but I was doing paper. ”

“My, my, everyone is working hard and on a Saturday morning. What’s the story on Dickert?”

Rollins fished out some flavor of PDA and started tapping. “Mostly small stuff. Couple DUIs. A breaking and entering kicked down to illegal trespass, along with two assault charges. All three were in connection with a girlfriend. Charges were dropped after the girlfriend didn’t show to testify. Got an address out in Springfield, and a couple rental properties in Arlington. Looks like that’s how he makes a living, renting out the houses and general all‑around handyman.”

Odd he lived out there, given his reaction to the Chouns. Route 50 near I‑495 was wall‑to‑wall Korean, Vietnamese, Thai. “What about military? He said he’s a vet. Well, implied. ”

“Drafted in ’65, did two tours. Army. Third Brigade, Twenty‑fifth Infantry Division.”

Hmmm. “Two tours? He volunteered?”

“Dunno. Honorable discharge in ’69 and then nothing until the DUIs start up. You’re looking for…?”

“Nothing.” I let it go. Dickert was trouble, but a brigade was a big place, and I had plenty to deal with.

Lily Hopkins looked very young and very scared. A trace of baby fat under her chin. Maybe thirteen. But there also were purple smudges in the hollows of her cheeks and beneath her eyes, and she had that kind of haunted, hunted look you saw in runaways.

“I don’t know what happened. I just… it was like I was dreaming. Only I couldn’t move at first. I almost couldn’t breathe. Like someone sitting on my chest. Then it was kind of like… You know how you get in a crowded room and people are shoving you and shoving you? That’s what it was like. I got shoved aside.” A quick flick of her eyes to my face and then away. “There was somebody else.”

“Somebody. Not something?”

Shake of the head. “A girl. She talked about her mother and an aunt.”

“You heard a voice?”

Really hesitant now. “N‑nooo. Know how you hear your own voice in your head sometimes? When you’re reading? Like that. Her voice but not really talking to me. I don’t think she was American.”

Rollins and I looked at each other. “How do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean, she didn’t sound American. Like she thought about this guy. I think he was… you know, she… was doing what Mackie made me do. Only either his name was like a joke in her head or she really didn’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“In my head, she said he was Call‑Me‑Bob. You know, the old joke. Guy shakes your hand and you say, ‘Lily’ and he says, ‘Call me Bob.’ Like that. And she mentioned a place named Poy… Polypett or something, and said a bunch of words… yama and mutra … stuff I didn’t get.”

I snagged on mutra. Like Wylde… “Tell me the rest.”

She did. It gave me a little chill, the way she described a presence residing in her mind, watching, waiting. Of being yanked around like a doll and commanded to do a horrible thing.

I couldn’t help but think of Wylde.

I expected to see Gerber waiting when Rollins and I pushed through the curtain. But he wasn’t.

“Detective Saunders?” Dr. Wylde offered her hand. “I haven’t had a chance to thank you properly.”

I liked her grip: firm but not overly so. I introduced Rollins, then asked, “How’s the lip?” Actually I could see how the lip was: swollen.

She touched the knot with slender fingers. “I think the plastic surgeons were disappointed. My dignity’s hurt more than anything else. We usually don’t have situations like that get so out of hand here. Anyway.” She held up a chart. “Ms. Hopkins has been transferred to the psychiatry service for evaluation. Dr. Gerber will consult, if needed. He said that he hadn’t had a chance to go over the EEG results with you. So.”

We followed her to the nurses’ station. A quick glance at Dickert’s bay‑empty now, I saw. Ten to one, his ample butt was parked on his Harley. Ten to one, he didn’t use a helmet.

Good. The world needs more organ donors.

Wylde flipped pages. “Okay, here are the EEG findings.”

A lot of scratchy scribbles. “What am I looking at?”

“We do a routine run to get a baseline, and then we introduce various types of stimulation to evoke a response. For example, here, you see normal brain activity and then, with photic stimulation‑light‑there’s activity in the occipital lobe, where visual information is processed.”

“Okay. So?”

“So, everything’s going fine, with no abnormalities until… right… here. ” She stretched past to point with a pen, and I saw the vivid scroll of a tattoo at her right wrist, a weird line of script.

Angelina Jolie.

What?

Before I could figure out what my brain was trying to tell me, she rolled on: “Time index is plus thirty minutes. Where the waves are faster, closer together? That’s called beta rhythm. You see beta in REM sleep, when we dream. But she wasn’t asleep at the time. This rhythm just appeared.”

“Was she having a seizure?”

“No. If she’d been asleep and then awakened, I would’ve said sleep paralysis. In REM sleep, we’re all partially paralyzed. It’s called REM atonia. Perfectly normal. In sleep paralysis, the subject awakens, but the paralysis persists. Many subjects experience quite vivid hallucinations. In some cases, sleep paralysis will transition to what we call lucid dreaming. For all intents and purposes, the person is conscious, but the brain is still in REM sleep. If you listen to Lily, she was in deep sleep, and then she awakened, convinced there was someone else in her mind. This EEG records REM breakthrough into the conscious state, which you might interpret as a lucid dream. But I don’t think so. Here, it’s as if there are two brains. Two people. One’s Ms. Hopkins,” she indicated a set of tracings, “and the other’s not. Like a split brain: two completely independent patterns, but her CT is stone‑cold normal.”

“Was she aware of it when this happened?”

“Yes. She said someone else came in. ” Wylde paused. “Not‑Lily was how she put it.”

“Is she…?”

“Crazy? No.”

I said nothing. My eyes dropped to the EEG again, those two independent brains occupying the same space at the same time. Then my eyes snagged on the initials on the front sheet. One set was P.G.: Phillip Gerber.

The other: S.W.

She said someone else came in.

I said, “When did you come into the EEG suite, Doctor?”

Rollins said, “What?”

Her expression was unreadable, though I saw her pulse bounding in her neck. She opened her mouth to reply, but Rollins’s pager chirped. “Computer guy,” he said, heading for the exit. “I’ll let him know we’re on our way.”

I waited until Rollins had gone and then looked back at Wylde. Just came out with it. “You’re Preston Wylde’s daughter.”

“It is an uncommon last name. My father’s always tried to maintain a distance between his professional life and home, but…” She shook her head. “Things have a way of coming to roost.”

An odd statement. I let it hang.

She said, “Is the fact that my father works for the FBI a problem?”

“No. But I can’t imagine it’s easy being the daughter of a famous profiler, especially given the men your father tracks down.”

“Demon hunter is what the press prefers.”

“I don’t get anything near that sexy when the press talks about me.”

“Maybe you need to get sexier then.” She checked her watch. “I have to go. Was there anything else?”

“Yes. What was that, Doctor? With Dickert? And don’t tell me nothing. I know what I saw, damn it.”

Her face was still as smooth glass. “What do you believe happened, Detective? What do you think you saw?”

Not what, who. And I believe you stopped him somehow. I believe you command things the rest of us only have nightmares about.

And does it have anything to do with what’s happening to me?

When I still said nothing, only then did her expression shift: a tiny blur, as if she were a projection going briefly out of focus, the pixels scattering, then coalescing around the edges until she was sharp edged, like something scissored out of black paper and superimposed upon a perfectly white background. She was almost too real.

“I’ve got work.” She turned to leave.

For no reason I could think of, I said, “Dr. Wylde, how is the old man? Mr. Choun?”

Her back stiffened just the tiniest bit, and when she turned her face was midway to rearranging itself into something close to neutrality. But I saw the emotions chase through‑and there was grief, most of all.

“He’s about to give up the ghost,” she said.

“That’s an odd way of putting it, Doctor.”

“I guess it depends on your point of view. One thing, Detective, about my father? What they call him?”

This was not what I expected. “Yes?”

“Sometimes, a name isn’t all about sex. Sometimes, Detective, the truth is right under your nose.”

V

“I’ve been able to clean up the image pretty good,” said the computer guy. “Best I can tell, this is old stock film transferred to three‑quarter inch and then to disk. A lot of degradation in the transfer. Black and white, silent. Almost looks like newsreel footage, you know what I’m saying?”

Black and white? I could’ve sworn I saw colors: the dirty brown of that bedspread, that girl’s black hair. The blood where she’d bitten her tongue. That green and white thing on the bed. “Let’s see it.”

The thing was no easier to watch the second time around. But the computer guy had been right: black and white.

Hunh. “Can you tell us anything about where and when?”

“Yup.” The computer guy tapped keys. “I’ve isolated a couple items in the room, did freeze‑frame, blew ’em up.”

What he brought up were two stills of objects on the bed: one, a triangle protruding into the frame from the right, and the packet alongside the pillow, only black and white now instead of green and white. He zoomed in on the latter with a couple of mouse clicks.

I stared for a few seconds. “Chiclets?”

“Chewing gum?” said Rollins.

“But a very special pack of chewing gum. It’s only two pieces, and what store sells that? Then this other thing.” He did the zoom thing again, and I now could see that the triangle was the bottom third of a box.

I said, “Does that say what I think it does?”

“It does indeed.”

First line: Marl

Second line: 4 CLASS A CIGARE

“Who sells cigarettes with only four smokes a pack?” Rollins asked.

I thought I knew.

The computer guy looked smug. “Before I get to that, there’s one more thing. This is from the guy. That splotch there?”

“Yeah, I thought that was a mole,” I said.

“Not a mole. Let me just enlarge it here… clean it up… there.”

My whole insides went still.

Not a mole. A tattoo. One I recognized.

An ace of spades with a Jolly Roger in the center.

The computer guy said, “The gum and the cigarettes were standard C rations for American soldiers. That tattoo is a copy of a death card, what PsyOps developed during Vietnam and which some soldiers used to leave on the bodies of dead Viet Cong. Here.” More mouse clicks, and this time a webpage came up with a screen, the kind on YouTube. “This is actual footage of something called Operation Baker. Happened in 1967.”

About ten minutes long, the film was silent and consisted mainly of soldiers on patrol, burning a village. Then, at the end, footage of American soldiers putting cards in the mouths of dead Vietnamese.

“Ace of spades,” Rollins said. “Looks like a regular card from a Bicycle pack.”

The computer guy nodded. “Some lieutenant got wind that the ace of spades was some kind of bad luck symbol to the Vietnamese or something. He was wrong, but he contacted Bicycle, and they sent over thousands of packs. Said Secret Weapon right on the pack. Not all units used the same cards, though, and some designs were more popular than others.”

“You know what company that was?” I asked. “In the film?”

“Yeah. Third Brigade. Twenty‑fifth Infantry Division.”

“Dickert,” said Rollins.

“And MacAndrews.” Opening my phone, pressing speed dial.

When I got Kay on the line, I said, “MacAndrews… did he have any identifying marks?”

He did.

Thirty minutes later, Rollins was still tapping keys and frowning. “Can’t you go any faster?” I asked.

“Learn to use the damn computer,” Rollins said, though he didn’t sound mad. It was a partner schtick. Just as Adam and I’d had ours. “Okay, it says here that Jolie has several tattoos.”

“Go to Google Images. I want to see them.”

“You want to drive?”

“I like watching you earn your pay.” Pictures winked onto the screen. Obscure tribal signs, a huge tiger on her back, several dragons, a large cross. “The woman’s a walking billboard… There, on her left shoulder blade. What is that?”

“Supposedly, a magical tattoo,” Rollins said, and read. “Says here it’s written in Khmer and is supposed to protect her and her loved ones from bad luck, evil, stuff like that. It’s a… yantra tattoo.”

Bingo. “That’s it, that’s what she’s got.”

“Who?”

“Tell me about yantra tattoos.”

“Jesus, you’re demanding. Hold on, hold on…” A lot of hits on Google. Silence as we read.

Then Rollins said, “This is some funky shit.”

Here was how it worked.

A yantra tattoo had to both adhere to a certain Sanskrit pattern‑the yantra ‑and be coupled with precise muons, chants dating back to the Vedic religion, the historical predecessor of Hinduism, which the monk who applied the tattoo was to recite.

A monk. That old man, Chuon. And those smudges on his forearms and neck: They’d been tattoos.

The actual verses tattooed in special ink were in Pali, the religious language of the earliest Buddhist school, Thervada, or “The Way of the Elders.”

If you believed these things actually worked, there were patterns that might make a warrior stronger, give someone good luck, allow someone to become invisible. Give you superstrength. If you believed in magic.

I thought Sarah Wylde might.

And me? Well.

I had met an angel a year ago. Maybe I was due a visit from the other side.

And I found out one more thing, courtesy of one of Wylde’s papers.

In Cambodia, sleep paralysis has a very specific name: khmaoch sângkât.

Translation: The ghost knocks you down.

Because the people who suffer from this also report seeing demons that hold them down. Another paper suggested that the symptoms were really PTSD; one woman suffered an episode whenever she remembered how soldiers razed her village and killed everyone.

I don’t think it was either‑or. Could be both. Could be, maybe, that the old monk had been carrying the girl on the DVD. And maybe now, Sarah Wylde was picking up the slack.

Like she said: Right under my nose.

VI

Wylde wasn’t at GW.

“This is nuts.” Rollins was driving fast, no flasher, the light fading and the day slipping away. Flakes beginning to fly. “We’re driving a million miles an hour to intercept someone you’re not even sure will be there so we can deal with a murder that’s over forty years old in a country we’re not by two guys‑”

“Maybe just one. Maybe two of them, or even more. And this isn’t about just the past. Remember what Lily said: The girl in her head had a red dress. There was the TV news saying snow in Washington.”

“So you’re saying‑”

“We know Mackie was a pimp, and we know that Dickert’s got rental properties in Arlington, right? So maybe he’s renting to himself. Maybe what he’s got are a whole bunch of little girls just like Lily, only they’re Asian.”

“Because that’s where they’d have started, when they were in Vietnam. I can’t believe I’m even thinking this. Jason, you’re taking the word of a kid who killed a guy and said the devil made her do it. Man, are you hearing yourself? How are we going to explain this? And it still won’t help Lily. She killed a guy. It’s out of our hands.”

But this was the right thing to do, I knew it. As soon as the idea set in my mind, the charm Dietterich had given me had begun to warm, heating the skin of my chest as soon as I slipped the cord around my neck.

Why was I wearing it? Beats me. Same reason I didn’t tell Rollins what I thought about Wylde.

We were racing down Route 50 now, the strip malls blurring, and then the traffic starting to pick up. Cars started creeping. At the first flake, everyone in Washington panics and crashes into each other out of sympathy.

Screw this. I stretched, reached into the glove compartment, reeled out the flasher and slapped it onto the hood. “No choice, just don’t use the siren. Go, go!”

It was like the Red Sea parting, cars scuttling right then left like headless chickens. Rollins swore, jinked the car. I hung onto the safety strap on my side as Rollins took a hard right, accelerating through the turn. “You know, it’d be real nice if you get us there in one piece.”

Rollins was grim. “I’ll get us there. Just hope it’s the right there. ”

Dickert’s rentals were in Arlington, but his house was in Springfield, an older section of identical 1950s ranch houses near I‑495. It was dark by the time we made it. Snow silting down. A meager puddle of silver light from a street lamp illuminated the front drive, but I knew it was Dickert’s place as soon as I laid eyes on a Harley in the driveway.

There were no lights. The house felt empty. I didn’t see a car‑I had no idea what Wylde drove‑but I did notice that the house backed on dense woods. Lake Accotink Park. “They’re not in there. But I think.” I pointed at the woods.

“How do you know that?”

“Just do.” I popped the car door.

“Damn it, Jason, wait up!” Rollins pushed out of the car as I started around the back of the house. He grabbed my arm. “You have no idea where you’re going. Let me call for some backup. Man, we’re not even on our own turf. We’re going to end up getting our asses fried.”

“You’re right. So you should stay here.” I pulled free before he could protest and started for the woods. “Call for backup, Justin. Cover your ass. Better yet, go to those rental houses and see what you turn up.”

“I don’t have probable cause.”

“Find a busted window.”

He stood there a second, then hissed after me: “Jason, you don’t even have a fucking flashlight!”

“I know,” I said, and then I plunged into the woods.

I didn’t have a flashlight because I didn’t need one.

Reeling out the charm on its black cord, I let it hang outside my clothing. It was white‑hot now, though it didn’t burn. The gems glittered in brilliant colors and shone beams that lanced the night. Showing me the way.

And my path was clear. Monstrous gleaming prints, partly human but clawed, tearing up and trammeling the earth. Think of the way white glows under UV and that’s how they looked.

Just as I also knew that anyone looking at me would’ve seen only a dark silhouette and no light at all. The ability to see‑my second sight‑was coming from within.

That there was only one set of prints worried me. I was pretty sure the prints belonged to Dickert‑or whatever lived inside. But where was Wylde?

I couldn’t believe my intuition about this was wrong. Although I hadn’t seen her car on the street. Maybe she wasn’t here at all.

So I’m finally cracking up. Well, that’s just great.

But, no, I felt something striding alongside in my mind, a presence. Adam?

In my mind: Hurry, Jason.

The voice was sexless. I couldn’t place it.

I moved swiftly, silently. Almost too quietly; I should be making all kinds of noise. But there was none, as if I skimmed the earth. Snow getting thicker. Ahead, I sensed a space opening up, and in the next moment I smelled water. Getting close to the lake.

Ahead, I heard a low basso rumble, the sound of a man’s voice‑and then the higher tones of a girl. And I knew: I’d found Dickert. Heart hammering, I ducked into inkier shadows at the edge of a clearing.

In the center stood Dickert, naked in the glare of my second sight. He seemed, if anything, larger than I remembered, and his skin was shifting as his body rippled, changing colors before my eyes, going from pallid white to a deep cobalt that was almost black. His eyes reddened to fiery pits; slashing white fangs sprouted from fleshy, crimson lips; the skulls on his body grinned down‑

At a slip of a girl cringing on the ground in a pool of blood‑red gown. Not the girl I’d glimpsed in Wylde; this was the one who’d inhabited Lily’s mind.