Wednesday's second session was scheduled for the following Sunday, which gave me exactly one week to process the fact that Tyler Galpin had already killed someone and I was somehow supposed to prevent him from killing again while pretending I had no idea he was a monster.
The week passed in a state of barely controlled panic punctuated by moments of forced normalcy. I saw three other Nevermore students for routine sessions; a vampire with social anxiety, a werewolf struggling with transformation control, a siren dealing with family pressure. With them, I could be the therapist Valerie Kinbott had trained to be: present, empathetic, professionally detached. With them, I wasn't worried about being murdered.
But every moment I wasn't actively in session, my mind circled back to the same impossible problems: Tyler had already transformed and killed. The timeline was accelerated. Laurel was moving faster than I'd expected. And I still had no idea how to stop any of it.
I'd checked the local news obsessively. The hiker's death was being investigated as an animal attack; a bear, most likely, though some officials were suggesting a pack of wolves. There was no mention of outcasts, no speculation about supernatural involvement. Sheriff Galpin was keeping that part quiet, probably to avoid panic. Or maybe to avoid the questions that would arise if people knew an outcast-level threat was active in the area.
Tyler's session on Tuesday loomed like a death sentence.
Monday night I barely slept, running through scenarios in my head. What if he transformed during our session? What if Laurel had already decided I was a threat and had ordered him to kill me? What if I said the wrong thing and triggered him somehow?
By Tuesday afternoon, I'd consumed so much coffee I was physically shaking, which was probably not the best state to be in for a therapy session with a Hyde. But I was out of options and out of time.
At three fifty-five, I heard those familiar hesitant footsteps on the stairs.
I opened the door to find Tyler looking somehow worse than he had the previous week. The dark circles under his eyes had deepened into bruises. His skin was pale, almost grayish. He moved like someone who was in pain but trying to hide it.
"Tyler," I said, keeping my voice gentle. "Come in."
He entered slowly, and I noticed him favoring his left side slightly. Residual pain from the transformation? Or just exhaustion from whatever the Hyde put his body through?
He sat in the same chair as last week, his hands gripped tightly in his lap. For a long moment, neither of us spoke. I could see him gathering courage to say something, working up to words he wasn't sure he wanted to voice.
Finally: "Something happened."
My heart rate kicked up, but I kept my expression neutral. "What happened?"
"I don't know. That's the problem. I don't know what happened, but I know something did." Tyler's voice was strained, almost desperate. "Friday night, I went to bed around eleven. The next thing I remember, I'm waking up in the woods at four in the morning, covered in dirt, my clothes torn, and I have no idea how I got there."
"You have no memory of those five hours?"
"Nothing. It's just... blank. Like someone edited it out of my brain." He looked up at me, and the fear in his eyes was visceral. "Dr. Kinbott, I'm scared. This isn't normal. People don't just lose five hours of time."
"No, they don't," I said carefully. "Tyler, have you experienced anything like this before? Any other gaps in your memory, any lost time?"
He hesitated, then nodded slowly. "Maybe. I've been having these dreams that don't feel like dreams. And sometimes I wake up and I'm not where I thought I'd fallen asleep. Or my clothes are dirty and I don't remember going outside. But nothing like Friday night. Friday night was hours, and I can't remember any of it."
This was worse than I'd thought. Tyler was experiencing full dissociative episodes, complete blackouts during his transformations. Which meant that when he'd killed that hiker, he'd had no awareness of what he was doing. He was a passenger in his own body, trapped while the Hyde took control.
"Has anyone else noticed? Your father?"
"He knows I was out. He's worried I witnessed something—there was an incident in the woods Friday night, someone died. He thinks maybe I saw it and it traumatized me so much I blocked it out." Tyler's hands were shaking. "But that's not what happened. I can feel it. Something else happened, something I did, and I can't remember what it was."
The self-awareness was both encouraging and terrifying. Tyler knew something was wrong with him. He knew he was losing control. But he had no framework for understanding what was actually happening, which meant he was vulnerable to whoever could give him an explanation.
Laurel had probably already given him one. A comforting lie about trauma and dissociation and how it was all perfectly normal given what he'd been through.
"Tyler, I need you to be completely honest with me," I said. "When you woke up in the woods, was there anything... unusual? Any injuries you couldn't explain? Any evidence of what you might have been doing?"
He swallowed hard. "My hands were bleeding. Like I'd been clawing at something. And my mouth tasted like..." He stopped, looking sick. "Like metal. Like blood."
Oh God. He'd tasted the victim's blood. He'd been close enough, involved enough in the kill that he'd gotten blood in his mouth. The dissociation might have protected him from the visual memory, but his body remembered. His senses remembered.
"Did you tell your father about this?"
"No. I told him I couldn't remember where I'd been. I didn't tell him about the blood or my hands or any of it. I was too scared." Tyler looked at me desperately. "Dr. Kinbott, what's wrong with me? Why can't I remember? Why do I keep losing time?"
This was the moment. The choice I'd been dreading since I first woke up in Valerie Kinbott's body. I could tell him the truth; you're a Hyde, you're being controlled, you killed someone and you're going to kill again unless we stop this. Or I could lie, could give him a therapeutic explanation that would keep him in the dark while I figured out how to help him.
The truth would probably get me killed. Laurel would find out I'd told him, would know I was a threat, would accelerate whatever timeline she had for eliminating me.
But the lie would leave Tyler vulnerable, would mean he'd keep transforming without understanding what was happening, would mean more deaths that he'd have to live with when the truth finally came out.
"Tyler," I said slowly, "what you're describing sounds like severe dissociative episodes. Dissociation is a trauma response—when something is too overwhelming for the brain to process, it essentially shuts down conscious awareness to protect you. The fact that you're experiencing such significant memory loss suggests that whatever you're doing during these episodes, some part of you finds it too traumatic to integrate into your conscious awareness."
It wasn't a lie, exactly. It was the truth filtered through clinical language, avoiding the most important details.
"But what could I be doing that's so bad my brain won't let me remember it?"
"That's what we need to figure out. But Tyler, I need to ask you something, and I need you to really think about the answer. During these episodes, do you feel like you're alone? Or does it feel like someone else is there with you, guiding you, telling you what to do?"
His eyes widened. "How did you—" He stopped abruptly, and I could see him processing something. "Sometimes, in the dreams that don't feel like dreams, I hear a voice. A woman's voice. Telling me what to do, telling me I'm doing the right thing."
Laurel. She was communicating with him during the transformations, giving him commands, reinforcing her control. Which meant the bond was already established, which meant breaking it would be nearly impossible.
"Do you recognize the voice?"
Tyler looked away. "I don't want to say."
"Tyler—"
"It sounds like Ms. Thornhill, okay? It sounds like Ms. Thornhill, and I know that's crazy, I know that doesn't make sense, but that's what it sounds like." He was breathing hard now, on the edge of panic. "But that's impossible. She's not there when I wake up. She's never there. So it must be me, my brain creating her voice because she's the only person who makes me feel safe, and I'm using that to cope with whatever is happening to me."
He was so close to the truth. So desperately close. And he was rationalizing it away because the alternative was too horrible to consider—that the woman who'd been supporting him, who'd been the only person who seemed to understand him, was the one orchestrating his transformation.
"Tyler, I want you to consider the possibility that Ms. Thornhill's involvement might be more than just your brain creating a comforting presence. What if—"
"No." He said it sharply, defensively. "No, you don't get to do that. You don't get to turn her into a villain just because you're jealous that I trust her more than I trust you."
I blinked, startled. "Jealous?"
"Yeah. You and her had coffee last week, right? She told me. She said you seemed uncomfortable with how close we are, that you thought she was overstepping boundaries." Tyler's expression was hard now, angry. "You're trying to isolate me from her because you want to be the only adult I talk to. That's what therapists do, they make you dependent on them."
And there it was. Laurel had already poisoned this well. She'd framed my legitimate concerns as professional jealousy, had positioned herself as the victim of my attempts to control Tyler. She'd turned my efforts to protect him into evidence of my own manipulation.
"Tyler, that's not what's happening," I said carefully. "I'm not trying to isolate you from anyone. I'm trying to help you understand what's causing these dissociative episodes. And if someone is involved—if someone is somehow triggering these episodes or present during them—that's information we need to take seriously."
"You want me to suspect Ms. Thornhill of... what, exactly? Mind control? Hypnosis? Do you hear how insane that sounds?"
"I hear that you're experiencing something frightening that you can't explain, and during those experiences, you hear a specific person's voice giving you commands. That's not nothing, Tyler. That's a pattern worth examining."
"Or it's just my brain coping with trauma in a weird way, like you said." Tyler stood up abruptly. "I thought you were different. I thought you actually wanted to help me instead of just trying to fix me according to your own agenda. But you're like everyone else. You want me to be suspicious of the one person who actually cares about me."
"That's not true—"
"I'm done." He moved toward the door. "Tell my dad I showed up, tell the court I'm attending therapy, but I'm not coming back. I'll figure this out on my own."
Panic surged through me. If Tyler stopped coming to therapy, I'd lose any chance of influencing him, of countering Laurel's conditioning. And if he stopped coming, Laurel would know I'd said something to make him defensive, would know I was a threat.
"Tyler, wait. Please." I stood up, keeping my hands visible, non-threatening. "You're right. I overstepped. I shouldn't have implied that Ms. Thornhill was involved in something without evidence. That wasn't fair to you or to her."
He paused at the door, his hand on the knob.
"But I meant what I said last week, you deserve multiple sources of support. Not because I'm trying to isolate you from anyone, but because relying on one person for all your emotional needs isn't healthy for you or for them. That's not about Ms. Thornhill specifically. That's just basic mental health."
Tyler's shoulders were still tense, but he wasn't leaving. Yet.
"And these dissociative episodes are serious, Tyler. Losing hours of time, waking up with injuries you can't explain, tasting blood—that's not something you can figure out on your own. You need help. Professional help. Whether that's with me or someone else, that's your choice, but please don't try to handle this alone."
He turned to look at me, and I could see the conflict in his eyes. Part of him wanted to trust me. Part of him was terrified of trusting anyone. And part of him—the part that was bonded to Laurel—was screaming at him to leave, to get away from the therapist who was asking too many dangerous questions.
"One more session," he said finally. "Next week. But if you start talking about Ms. Thornhill again, if you try to make me doubt her, I'm gone."
"Fair enough," I said, even though it wasn't fair at all. Even though being forbidden from discussing the person actively destroying him made my job impossible.
After he left, I collapsed back into my chair and tried to control my shaking hands. That had been a disaster. I'd pushed too hard, too fast, and I'd nearly lost him completely. And now I was walking an even finer line, I couldn't mention Laurel, couldn't point Tyler toward the truth, couldn't do anything that might make him suspicious of her.
I pulled out my phone and looked at the scheduled email to Wednesday, the one that would send automatically if I didn't cancel it. Six days until it sent. Six days to either solve this nightmare or accept that I was going to die and hope Wednesday could finish what I'd started.
My office phone rang, making me jump. I stared at it for three rings before I could make myself answer.
"Dr. Kinbott."
"Valerie, hi! It's Marilyn. I hope I'm not interrupting?"
My blood ran cold. Perfect timing, as always. Laurel had probably been waiting for Tyler to leave, had probably already spoken with him, knew exactly how the session had gone.
"Not at all," I said, forcing my voice to sound normal. "What can I do for you?"
"I was just checking in. Tyler seemed upset when he left the Weathervane earlier. He said he'd just come from therapy. I wanted to make sure everything was okay?"
Translation: I know you said something that upset him, and I'm letting you know that I know.
"First sessions can be difficult," I said carefully. "We were discussing some challenging topics. But he's committed to continuing therapy, which is a good sign."
"That's wonderful. I'm so glad he's willing to engage with the process." There was a pause. "You know, Valerie, I've been thinking about our coffee the other day. About what you said about Tyler needing multiple sources of support."
"Yes?"
"I think you might be right. I worry sometimes that I'm too involved, that Tyler is relying on me too much. Maybe I should step back a bit, give him space to develop other relationships."
It was a trap. Obviously a trap. Laurel would never voluntarily reduce her contact with Tyler, never willingly give up her control. She was testing me, seeing if I'd agree enthusiastically, if I'd reveal that I wanted her out of Tyler's life.
"I think Tyler benefits from your support," I said, choosing my words like I was defusing a bomb. "The question isn't whether you should be involved, it's whether he has enough other people he can turn to. It sounds like you're doing exactly what a good mentor should do—being present while also encouraging independence."
"You're very diplomatic," Marilyn said, and I couldn't tell if she sounded amused or suspicious. "But I appreciate the reassurance. Tyler is special to me. I'd hate to think I was doing more harm than good."
"I don't think you need to worry about that."
Another pause. Then: "I heard about Wednesday Addams' first session with you. Principal Weems mentioned it went surprisingly well."
My stomach dropped. Why was Laurel asking about Wednesday?
"Wednesday is an interesting student," I said neutrally. "Very intelligent, very perceptive. I think we'll work well together."
"I'm looking forward to having her in my class. She seems like exactly the kind of student who could benefit from learning about deadly plants." Marilyn laughed lightly, but something about it made my skin crawl. "I'm teaching a unit on nightshade varieties next month. I think Wednesday will find it fascinating."
Nightshade. Laurel was growing nightshade. She'd probably been cultivating it for months, preparing the poison she'd eventually use to kill people—possibly including me. And she was telling me this, casually mentioning it like it was innocent classroom content, because she wanted me to know. Wanted me to understand exactly how she was going to kill me.
"I'm sure she will," I managed. "Wednesday has always been interested in the darker aspects of botany."
"Kindred spirits, then." Another pause. "Well, I won't keep you. I just wanted to check in. Have a wonderful evening, Valerie."
She hung up before I could respond.
I sat there holding the phone, my heart racing, my mind spinning. That conversation had been a warning. Laurel was letting me know that she was watching me, watching Tyler, watching Wednesday. That she knew I'd upset Tyler. That she had nightshade growing somewhere. That she could get to me whenever she wanted.
I pulled out my notebook with shaking hands and started writing.
Post-Session Notes - Tyler Galpin:
Experiencing full dissociative episodes during transformations No conscious memory of kills Hears Laurel's voice during episodes (bond is established and active) Becoming defensive when I question Laurel's influence Tasted blood after Friday's kill—physical evidence his body is involved even if mind is dissociated Afraid of himself, knows something is wrong, but lacks framework to understand it
Risk Assessment:
Tyler could transform at any time Laurel has positioned me as threat to their relationship Tyler may report back everything I say Next session is critical—must rebuild trust without being able to address real problem Timeline is compressed—murders already started May not survive until Wednesday solves the case
Laurel's Phone Call - Analysis:
She knows I upset Tyler (either he told her or she monitored the session somehow) Nightshade reference was deliberate threat Interest in Wednesday is concerning—is Wednesday part of her plan? Laurel is aware I'm trying to build Tyler's support network and doesn't like it She's watching me closely
Survival Strategy:
Cannot mention Laurel in Tyler's sessions Must rebuild trust while working around massive blind spot Need to warn Wednesday somehow without revealing foreknowledge Need to document everything in case I die Need to accept I might not survive this
I closed the notebook and looked around my office. The reinforced locks, the panic button, the furniture arrangement designed to give me the best chance of escape. All of it felt inadequate. All of it felt like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
My phone buzzed. A text from Wednesday: "I've begun researching the Gates family. The historical records are inconsistent. Someone has been altering documents. I'll need access to Nevermore's archives. Can you arrange this?"
I stared at the message, feeling something that might have been hope or might have been despair. Wednesday was already investigating. Already pulling threads. In the show, it had taken her weeks to start seriously looking into the Gates family. But this Wednesday, armed with information I'd deliberately fed her, was moving faster.
Maybe fast enough to save me. Maybe not.
I typed back: "I'll speak with Principal Weems about archive access. Be careful, Wednesday. People who alter historical records usually have something to hide."
Her response came immediately: "Obviously. That's what makes it interesting."
I almost smiled. Wednesday Addams, never afraid, never cautious, always running toward danger with the enthusiasm of someone who found death aesthetically pleasing. She was going to get herself killed, and she was going to do it with perfect posture and a withering comment about how boring mortality was.
Unless I could figure out how to keep us both alive.
I spent the rest of the evening documenting everything I knew, backing up files, updating my dead man's switch email to Wednesday. If I was going to die, I was going to make damn sure I left behind enough information to solve the case.
Around midnight, exhausted and wired on too much coffee, I finally went home. The apartment felt even more empty than usual, more like a stage set than a place where someone actually lived. Valerie's life, I realized, had been almost as empty as mine was now. She'd been alone, isolated by her profession and her compassion. She'd cared about people who couldn't care back, had invested in teenagers who would graduate and forget her.
She'd been a ghost long before she died.
I fell asleep on the couch with my laptop open, still researching Hydes, still looking for some weakness I could exploit. Some way to break the bond between Tyler and Laurel. Some way to save a boy who was already lost.
I dreamed of transformations and blood and a voice that sounded like Marilyn Thornhill giving commands I couldn't refuse. I dreamed of Wednesday Addams standing over my body, taking notes on the manner of death with clinical precision. I dreamed of Tyler waking up with blood in his mouth and no memory of why.
When I jerked awake at three AM, gasping, my first coherent thought was: Five more days until the email sends. It is either save myself or accept that I was just another victim in Wednesday Addams' origin story. I still wasn't sure which outcome was more likely.