Deja Vu

Paige

Standing in the basement of the Mansion, I handed the last woman a set of clean sweats and stepped back as she began to change. The ceiling, padded to reduce noise traveling upstairs in a way I hadn’t understood last time I was here, pressed down on me.

No, it didn’t. It just felt like it did. I scrubbed my hands over the goosebumps on my arms and forced myself to stop looking. I didn’t need to see this place through all new eyes. Riccardo Marino was dead. No one else would ever be kept in the tall, metal cages I hadn’t known to appreciate when I was last here.

That was another train of thought I didn’t want to follow. I turned to a couple of women, who’d already been checked out by Sera, sitting on the floor together and crying.

“Is there anything I can get for you?” I asked. “We’re moving out soon”—as soon as Sera finished checking over the last few, if I had my say—“but if there’s anything immediate, I’ll see what I can do.”

One of them looked up at me with her lower lip quiv