The Psychic Next Door

[First Draft] Chapter 17: Honest

I spoke first. "Polly?" I asked tentatively, ready to bear the brunt of her displeasure for me holding her back and impeding her attack on Luc.

But Polly was surprisingly calm when she turned to me.

"What... do you... think?" I was being extremely carefully approaching the subject.

"He seems... sincere. I mean, when I knew him, he was never good at lying," Polly said glancing back at the closed door of Luc's room. The emphasis on sincere showed her reluctance to trust him. "But that might be a new skill he's picked up since I last saw him."

"You don't believe him," I said, sounding sad which even surprised me.

"I can't!" Polly countered, anger tinging her voice. "I still don't know what's going on, neither do you! You can't deny the weird coincidence of the same attacks on you and my sister... and the only thing you have in common is HIM! We can't trust what he says at face value! And until I'm one hundred and ten percent sure that he's telling the truth... I'm going to keep my guard up. You should too."

I cringed at Polly's reprimand, but I knew she was right. Maybe I was so desperate for help that I was willing to blindly believe that Luc was trustworthy. But I couldn't bring myself to mistrust him either; I knew how much he had done for us, how much trouble we had caused him and yet he still wanted to work together. And that was one thing I was one hundred and ten percent sure about: working together was our only hope.

"Fine, we'll be cautious, but you can't try and murder him anymore,"

"Deal," Polly said, a little grudgingly. "Unless he does something to deserve it."

I rolled my eyes, but smiled. I was frustrated, but I was also just glad to have Polly back.

"How long have I been out of it? How did we even get here?" Polly asked, suddenly interested in our surroundings now that the crisis had past. The beast let out a particularly loud snarl next door, as it sometimes did, but it made Polly tense up reactively, just like I used to. "Why is that thing...?"

I knew what she was confused about; she hadn't been informed like I had. I took her by the hand to explain to her all the things she had missed out on, hoping that with a little insight, she would grow to trust Luc more.

Polly listened carefully but—true to form—skeptically.

"So, the spell worked?" she asked, after I had finished giving her a brief synopsis of what had happened and what I had learned. "Or so he says."

"Yeah," I said, my eyes narrowing at Polly, reminding her to keep her hostility towards Luc to a minimum. I wasn't sure why I was feeling so protective of him.

"And he's keeping us here because the Beast—," she casually motioned to the shared wall between the apartments and the entity growled as if on cue, "—can't come in and if we go out, it'll attack us."

"He's trapped here too," I reminded her. "He earned it's ire when he used the last of his powers to save us."

"Right, right," Polly said, waving her hand to cut me off. "So now what?"

"I don't know," That was true; this was where my knowledge ended. Since our awkward encounter the day I woke up, Luc hadn't been in much of a sharing mood. Even now, he was back in his room behind a locked door.

What I did know was that this depended on communication now. There was no more time to be wasted on social awkwardness. He may be under the impression that we hated him—which was only half-true on account of Polly—and I was pretty sure he hated us for stealing his powers, but we had to put that aside if we wanted to save ourselves... and each other.