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It was the same as in her hallucinated memories.

She shook her head and looked down at her lap again.

“When you recall these memories of yours…how do they make you feel?”

She shrugged. “I told you.”

“Marguerite.”

“I think I prefer ‘Maggie.’ It’s much easier to say.” She smiled faintly. She hated all the questions. And the one question she had learned she hated more than any other was the one he had just asked. It always felt pedantic. It was somehow saccharine.

“Very well. Maggie, how do these memories of yours make you feel?”

She shifted to sit with her legs crossed in front of her. Namely so she could stop bouncing her leg like an asshole. She leaned on them to quiet the nervous action. “I told you. Afraid.”

“What else?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“Something’s always chasing me. Or…or hunting me, I don’t know. I’m always running away.”

“From the figure?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he ever hurt you?”

She opened her mouth to answer then paused. She thought she had known the answer. The answer should be “yes.” He was a monster in her dreams. A nightmare. A creature stalking and chasing her.

But she did remember something after falling from the castle balcony. She remembered those inhumanly long talons lifting her from the ground. She remembered being cradled against black fabric.

“You will never die alone.”

A promise and a threat.

Comforting and terrifying.

Angry…and mournful.

She was afraid of him. She was afraid of dying. But that wasn’t all she felt. There was something else there, lurking in the shadows of her stilled heart.

“Maggie? What do you remember?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Sorry.” Embarrassed, she smiled at him. “Defective brain went for a walk. It’s fine.”

“You aren’t defective.”

“If I weren’t, I wouldn’t be here. I’m nuts.”

“That’s for me to decide, isn’t it?” He smirked at her. A twist of lips, the bottom just slightly fuller than the top. He had a white goatee, neat and carefully trimmed. Silver eyes sparkled with a playful humor. “Unless you’re gunning for my job.”

“Sit here all day and listen to whackos go on for hours about how they’re a chicken stuck in a human’s body or how they remember being chased and slaughtered by some weird Lord of the Rings knock-off Nazgul?” She scoffed. “No, thanks. I think I’ll pass. Rather be the whacko.”

“I don’t have a client who believes he’s a chicken.” With another twist of his lips, he glanced back down to his notepad. “Anymore.”

She laughed and leaned back against the sofa cushions. The room was decorated to feel comfortable but sparse. Books lined the walls, and she suspected he didn’t actually own any of them. It was well-lit. Bright and sunny. Everything about it was meant to feel cheerful and hopeful.