When he’d first started, he never expected that the same woman would keep learning his lessons, keep beating his tests, and doing whatever it took to survive. Grace Bennett’s innate ability to survive intrigued him. In her, he saw a version of himself. He saw the little boy who was so desperate to make things better, to take away his parents’ pain, to understand why his sister had done what she’d done, and make it through each day and get stronger.
Grace was the very definition of a survivor.
Now she was gone.
Anger took away his nerves. It wasn’t fair. Why did they have to take her away from him?
Didn't they know he needed her?
She needed him too. Emmanuel was positive that their survival had become a codependent thing. He couldn’t exist without her, and she couldn’t exist without him. How could she? After what had happened to her, she’d needed someone to help her understand and process things. He had done that for her, he had taught her so much, helped her reach the same level of consciousness that he had. But now that she was gone, what would happen to her?
Would she regress?
Take her own life?
Hurt someone else?
Would she try to see him? Try to find her way back to him?
The thought that she might be trying to get to him and someone prevented her nearly choked him. He had been there for her, he had helped her, he had made her all but invincible. She had to be needing that back.
Or maybe she had finally outgrown him?
Emmanuel had always believed that the Universe had a way of making things right. Sometimes it didn't feel like it, especially when things weren’t going the way you wanted, but in the end, it knew what it was doing.
It was why he had tried so hard to understand the Universe. It was the one thing that made him feel unsettled. There was power in knowledge, power in understanding what was happening to you, and power in knowing the way the Universe worked.
Fables.
It was why he loved them so much. They were the key to understanding the Universe and he had dedicated most of his life to studying them, learning them, and memorizing them all by heart. He had done his best to impart that same knowledge to others, and even though it didn't always work he had done his best, and that was all you could do.
He couldn’t stop.
There were others out there like him. Those who had been hurt, who had been abandoned, who had been left to try to figure out the world all on their own. They needed him and he couldn’t just leave them to flounder alone.
So here he was.
Emmanuel eased open the back door. Picking locks was something that came naturally to him, he wasn’t sure he’d ever struggled with it, and it certainly came in handy. It wasn’t like he could just knock at their front doors and be let in. They didn't understand yet that he was only trying to help them.
But they would.
At the end, they would realize what he had done for them, and they would die grateful, a little closer to understanding the Universe than they would have been without him.
As he crept inside the quite house and closed the door behind him, he wished he’d had someone like himself to guide him when he was just a boy. After his sister’s death, his parents had all but forgotten about him. He’d been only nine, and growing up virtually by himself had been terrifying. There had been no one to explain things to him, to support him, hold his hand, encourage him, or cheer him up. It had all been left up to him.
How different could his life have been if he’d had a mentor?
If he hadn't been alone?
These women didn't realize how lucky they were.
This house was small, just the one large room downstairs. He wasn’t a fan of these open plan houses. Emmanuel liked small rooms, they felt cozy and safe, he felt protected and tucked away, it was almost like a cocoon.
Taking quiet, confident steps, he headed for the stairs and made his way up them. He’d been in her house earlier, while she was still at work, so he knew there were two bedrooms upstairs, and that the one on the left was hers.
The bedroom light had turned off an hour ago, but he’d waited in his car a full sixty minutes just to make sure he had given her plenty of time to fall asleep. The last thing he wanted was to have to fight her to get her out of here. He would do it because it was the only way he could help her, but he didn't enjoy hurting women.
At the top of the stairs, he found the door to the spare bedroom open but the door to Patrice’s bedroom was closed. Carefully, he turned the handle and pushed the door just far enough open that he could fit through.