Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

“Until?”
Her eyes slid unfocused as she looked off into nothing. “Until someone
came for me and offered me a job. He told me who—what I was. And with
the proper training, what I could do. He brought me here to Hugo, to see if
we’d make a good match.”
“The Manager,” Wallace said.
“Yeah. But don’t worry about him. He’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“Then why do you seem so scared of him?”
She startled. “I’m not scared of anything.”
He didn’t think that was true. If she was telling the truth and was human,
she’d always have to be scared of something. That was how humanity
worked. Survival instinct was based on a healthy dose of fear.
“I’m wary of him,” she said. “He’s … intense. And that’s putting it mildly.
I’m grateful he brought me here and taught me what he knows, but it’s better
when he’s gone.”
From everything he’d heard about the Manager, Wallace hoped he’d stay
gone. “And he … what? Made you this way?”
She shook her head. “He fine-tuned what was already there. I’m a sort of
medium, and yes, I know how that sounds, so you can shut your mouth.”
He did.
“I have…” She paused. Then, “It’s like when you’re standing in a
doorway. You have one foot on one side, and the other foot on the other side.
You’re in two places at once. That’s me. He just showed me how to lean into
one side of the doorway, and how to pull myself back.”
“How can you do this?” Wallace asked, suddenly feeling very small.
“How can you be surrounded by death all the time and not let it get to you?”
“I wish I could tell you it’s because I always wanted to help people,” Mei
said. “But that would be a lie. I didn’t … I didn’t know how to be. I had to
unlearn so many things I’d been taught. Hell, the first time Hugo hugged me, I
didn’t hug him back because that’s not something I’d ever really had before.
Contact, much less physical affection, wasn’t something I was used to. It took
me a while to appreciate it for what it was.” She grinned at him. “Now, I’m
pretty much the best hugger.”
Wallace remembered how her hand had felt in his the first time, the relief
that’d washed over him. He couldn’t imagine going an entire life without
knowing something like that.