A Thousand Glittering Lights

Chapter 2

Ellie didanother lap of the house, checking the locks on doors and windows with one hand while holding her phone against her ear with the other. Nissy was sleeping in her plush cat cave in Ellie’s home office, entirely disinterested in helping to secure the house.

Night had fallen and, out here, miles from the nearest village, it was dark. It was comforting to have her best friend on the other end of the line. “How are you, Vic?” Ellie asked, testing the window bolts in her office. It was the only room in the house that held anything of real value: Nissy, and Ellie’s tech. “We haven’t caught up since I saw you in the hospital,” she continued, not adding that they’d mostly discussed physiotherapy programs and the tepid rice pudding. And that weeks had passed since then. Weeks of rehab and recuperation.

“Yeah, I’m… I’m good,” Vic replied. “Just busy, you know.”

Vic was busy. And she’d picked up a lot of work for Ellie while she was recovering, which she was very grateful for. But Ellie was back now. More or less. And Vic had been “busy” for months. “You’re not alone. If you need something, let me know,” Ellie said, moving to the next room.

“I will.” Vic’s tone was firm and friendly enough, but it still lacked the warmth it used to have. And Ellie was starting to wonder how long it would take before they felt like sisters—not by blood, but by choice—once more.

She shivered and pulled her gown closer. It was a velvety soft black fleece embroidered with tiny silver stars, and she loved it. It was a kind of armor. Protection against the darkness. Warmth when she felt alone.

“How long are you planning to work from home?” Victoria asked in her ear.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m not ready to come back to London yet. Hopefully in a week or two.” It was the truth… but not the whole truth.

Ellie trusted Victoria with her life, her business, everything.

They’d met in preschool and quickly become best friends. When Ellie’s mother died of cancer when Ellie was ten, it was Vic’s shoulder she cried on. When her father buried himself in work, distancing himself from the daughter who looked just like his lost wife, Vic became her family.

Neither of them questioned whether they would go to college together, they both simply assumed they would. They studied computer science together and they shared a house, sometimes bickering, sometimes arguing, but always as close as sisters.

They were both driven. Both determined to work hard and play harder—online for Ellie, IRL for Vi—and they brought out the best in each other. Ellie gave Vic the stability and freedom from drama she never seemed to get at home, and Vic was Ellie’s champion; cheering her on and dragging her away from worrying about her to-do list. They’d been best friends for most of their lives, staying close even when Ellie was working eighteen-hour days and Vic was off traveling the world with a backpack.

But things had changed between them and now Ellie didn’t want to admit how difficult getting back onto the road was proving. Telling Vic about her panic attacks felt like adding weight to an already floundering raft. It was easier to stay positive, and hopefully find a way back to the comfortable—and comforting—friendship they used to have.

“You don’t want to come to London?” Vic asked, a hint of something in her voice. Victoria loved the city. She loved the bright lights, the vibrant clubs and restaurants. All the glamor. But Ellie didn’t miss it—not that she’d seen much of it in the last few years, anyway.

After she’d set up Dangerous Business Games, she’d spent most of her time in London. Getting her business off the ground took every hour of every day and she’d needed to be there. But she wasn’t at parties, she was working.

Eventually she’d found her feet. Vic had joined her, taking some of the weight from her shoulders. She’d recruited great people and developed an amazing team. And she’d bought her dream home near the sea… and then she’d spent even less time enjoying London’s amusements. Property was much cheaper so far out of the city, and she used all the money she saved—and the hours of travel time—to write storylines and develop her code.

After she brought Nissy home, she’d moved to working remotely three days a week and only going up to London on Tuesdays and Thursdays unless she was really needed. Nissy was happier—they both were—surrounded by trees and open skies.

But it was more isolating, too.

Ellie rattled the kitchen door, checking it was firmly locked, and peered through the glass to her vegetable garden. It was a mass of shadows and darkness, impossible to see even if someone had been standing right in the middle.

She shivered and rubbed her arms, trying to soothe the goose bumps. To warm the chill she couldn’t quite shake—the chill she hadn’t been able to shake for weeks. She needed to do something. Change something. But she’d been caught in a holding pattern, some strange gray purgatory. As if something deep inside her had been waiting.

Waiting for him.

No. That was insane. She’d spent too long creating imaginary worlds, and now she’d started to believe her own fantasies. Ellie pushed the thought away and focused on Vic. “I’m much more productive down here without all the distractions of the office. Would you believe that I got over three thousand e-mails while I was in hospital?” She grimaced to herself, wishing she could quietly delete them all without anybody noticing. “I’m working through them in between speccing some of the later game dynamics for after Luke and Sienna find the fae lord’s mountain citadel.”

It was going to be gorgeous. The citadel was a magnificent hybrid of Minas Tirith and the Goblin King’s labyrinth. “They have to work their way through the maze for hours before they find the entrance to the sky bridge. There are so many puzzles we can incorporate. And the shadows make it so much edgier. The mist is everywhere—corrupting the earth as it spreads—so the creatures they meet can be just that little bit twisted. The best kind of sexy, diabolical fae.” A moment of lightness bubbled through her; this was what she had always loved.

“You don’t need to do any of that,” Vic replied sharply, and Ellie’s bubbles of joy popped and faded. “Don’t you think maybe it would be better to take a break for a week or two and leave it to… ah, let yourself heal?”

Well. Clearly. Since now she was seeing people. She remembered his face so clearly, like it was etched into her brain. Those eyes, looking straight into hers. Except… he wasn’t real. No one had been in her house. Nissy had been asleep on the windowsill in the dining room the entire time. Ellie’s office was empty, her firewall untouched. All the windows were closed, just as she left them. Her front door was locked. She’d tried it four times. And she’d just checked it all again.

But… why was Vic suggesting a break? Hadn’t she just said she was too busy? Had Ellie misunderstood the question about London? It didn’t sound like Victoria was asking how soon she could come back—it sounded like Vic wanted her to stay away.

No, that didn’t make sense. Vic was looking out for her. “I can’t take a break,” Ellie said slowly. “Then you’d be even busier. And it’s not a good time to take my eye off development.”

She pressed her face into the glass of the wide folding doors that led from her living room to her deck and peered into the dark garden. Maybe she should get some security lights? Maybe some cameras? Having the forest nearby hadn’t bothered her before, but now it seemed menacingly dark. An ominous presence of deep purple and pitch black, creeping toward the house.

Nissy sauntered into the living room behind her. The darkness didn’t bother her at all. Ellie reached down and scratched gently behind her silky ears, letting Nissy’s gentle purr soothe her.

“Don’t you think?” Vic asked. And judging by the hint of impatience creeping into her tone, probably not for the first time. Damn. Ellie’d left her hanging. She wrinkled her nose, frustrated. Somehow conversations with Vic kept going wrong.

“Sorry, Vic, what did you say?”

“I said that if you’re determined to work, maybe you could leave the game dynamics to my team and focus on the marketing package. We need a brief for the agency that brings some storylines to life. You’ve always been the best at that.”

Best at briefing an ad agency? Better at a junior marketing role than the essential systems for her own game?

Ellie sank into the closest sofa. Victoria was her head of Development. It made sense that she wanted some autonomy, but that didn’t change Ellie’s ultimate responsibility.

When she’d launched the first game, there’d been plenty of people who mocked her. More than one nasty troll came crawling out from under their social media bridge. But she’d believed in her idea. She still did. A lot of people underestimated the number of female gamers, and adding a sexy storyline with a fulfilling HEA tapped into a severely underrepresented market. The fantasy world she’d created—underpinned by the romance between Luke and Sienna—was a thrilling, beautiful escape for her family of players. And she took that seriously.

“There’s no point in starting work on an advertising brief yet,” Ellie argued. “The people who loved The Shadowbound Rift are already desperate for Part 2: The Binding. We need to make sure it’s absolutely perfect before it goes out into the world. Once we know what we’re doing, we can start pulling together a teaser campaign and looking at advertising.”

Victoria huffed. “Having a clear premise now won’t hurt.”

“We already have a clear premise—Luke and Sienna battling more sexy fae—and we’re sharing it across all our social media. But spending money and time on advertising when we don’t have a finished game doesn’t make sense.”

“But if we want to sell?—”

“I don’t want to sell.” Ellie cut Vic off more sharply than she intended. But she was tired of this discussion.

Vic was her family, she had been one of her earliest employees—she had the stock options to prove it—and she would take a hefty payday if Ellie sold… they both would. But Ellie wasn’t ready. She didn’t think she ever would be.

The whole idea of the sale had blindsided her. And with her accident only a week later, she hadn’t had a chance to deal with it before her world upended. And then when she’d come home, she’d put it off. Partly because she was hurting and tired. But mostly because Vic was so keen on it… and it was her father’s brainchild.

He had found the buyer and come to her with the deal. He’d been full of excitement and joy, talking about her game and the world she’d created with interest and respect for the first time ever.

The little girl in her had been looking for that approval—that acceptance and encouragement—for so long, she’d hardly known how to respond. And so, instead of shutting it down immediately, she’d promised to think about it. And then Vic had leaped at the idea, and suddenly she was stuck. Her father and her best friend stood on one side; what she wanted—what she knew was right—was on the other. She didn’t want to hurt them. Or lose them. And so she’d delayed.

Ellie softened her voice and tried to close the gap between them. “We don’t need to sell, Vic. The Shadowbound Rift means something to people. You know that.”

Ellie let her gaze travel away from the window, back to the framed character art spread over her living room walls. Some of it was from the game, but a lot of it had been sent in by fans. People so in love with the story that they wanted to build on it, wanted to add their own creativity and imagination… and a whole lot of spice. “Our players love Sienna and Luke. They want to take them through the next chapter in their story.” She paused for a second, looking for the right words. “I don’t want to put that in the hands of someone whose only focus is how much money they can make.”

Vic blew out a rough breath, but she was listening. She also loved Sienna and Luke. And Vic wanted what was best for her, Ellie knew it, just like she wanted the best for Vic.

She tried to find an olive branch. “Send me whatever you feel I can help with the most—whatever will take some of the load off your shoulders—and I’ll look at it tomorrow. And maybe you could come down and visit sometime. Let’s take that break together. It’s still a bit cold to swim in the sea, but we could eat fish-and-chips on the beach. What do you think?”

“Fine.” Vic didn’t sound especially excited about the idea. “But you are at least thinking about selling, aren’t you?”

Ellie curled her feet under her and leaned back tiredly as Nissy jumped up to sit on the arm of the sofa and kneaded it with her paws. She had already thought… and thought and thought. “I’ve been over this a hundred times now. I think it would be best to turn it down.”

“No!” Vic’s response was instant and grating.

“No?”

“I mean—” Vic took in a breath, loud enough to hear down the phoneline. “—Please just think about it. For me. For all these years, I’m asking you.”

“Vic—”

“It would be your due diligence anyway. You wouldn’t want to make a mistake because of a knee-jerk reaction. You need to think it through properly.”

That stung. God. Vic got her right in the soft, perfectionist part of her heart. “Okay,” she agreed tiredly, “I’ll give it one more look. We still have a few weeks to consider the offer anyway.”

“A few weeks. I didn’t realize we still had that long to wait,” Vic muttered.

“Yeah, we got an extension because of my accident, but honestly—” Ellie swallowed the rest. Muffled in the background of Vic’s call, almost too quiet to hear, and presumably not intended for her to hear at all, a masculine voice said something that sounded a lot like, “Too fucking long.”

Ellie dropped her feet to the floor and sat up straight. What was too long? Was it the sale? Who was with Victoria during their conversation? No one else was supposed to know about the offer. And, even more worrying, she thought she’d recognized the voice. “Is Warren there?” Ellie asked.

She’d never liked Vic’s on-again-off-again ex. He was always quick with a backhanded compliment, showering Victoria with attention one minute, then cold and jealous the next. He put Ellie down whenever he could: if she ever had to hear him call her Ellie-belly again, she wouldn’t be held responsible for her actions. And Nissy had hated him—which was enough of a veto for Ellie. But, even worse, he had definitely cheated.

She’d been glad when they had finally broken up for good. At the time, it had been awful. She’d told Vic what she’d seen, and it had devastated her friend. But their friendship had survived—intact, if a little cooler—and Vic had let Warren go. Thank God. It was worth the time it took to get their friendship back on track if it meant Vic was safely away from Warren.

“No,” Vic answered quickly.

That was weird. “I thought I heard him….”

There was a second of silence before Vic chuckled a little too loudly. “You didn’t. I… I leaned back and accidentally turned the telly on. Don’t worry; it’s off now.”

Ellie paused uncertainly, trying to listen, but there was no other background noise. Just Victoria’s voice as she moved on to talking about plans for the next day.

Vic had visited her in the hospital. She had stood beside her when her family was nowhere to be found. Vic held her hand when her heart was broken by her first serious boyfriend, and Vic bought the champagne when The Shadowbound Rift went live. Ellie trusted her. Hell, Vic was in her will as principal beneficiary. If Ellie died, Vic would get everything.

But she still felt strangely unsettled. As if she had to choose her words carefully as she navigated the rest of their conversation. By the time they said goodbye, Ellie was exhausted. Her ribs ached, and so did her heart.

She put down her phone and picked at a loose thread on the sleeve of her gown, listening to the wind. Then she pulled out the television remote and flicked through channels, scrolling listlessly. But nothing held her interest, and she turned it off again in disgust.

Nissy walked over to her and put a foot on her lap. But before she decided to sit, she sneezed delicately, whiskers twitching. Then she shook her furry head and sneezed again.

“Bless you,” Ellie murmured, kissing her on the head. But Nissy narrowed her eyes and glared at Ellie as if she was responsible for her sneezes and all the ills in the world, and then stalked away to sit with her back pointedly turned.

The rejection stung, and Ellie picked up her book, trying not to feel abandoned. She read two pages. And then realized she hadn’t concentrated enough to understand the words, and put it back down rather than starting again.

She was agitated and unsettled and she wanted… something. Someone. Him.

No. That was mad.

She stood, pacing restlessly before giving up and striding back into the hallway. She stepped up to the mirror. Closer and closer. Until she could rest her fingers on the smooth surface. Her eyes locked on the reflected hallway behind her and she bit her lip, half afraid that he would be there, half afraid that he would not.

The mirror was cold beneath her fingertips. The tiles in the hall chilled her feet through her socks. A door rattled as the wind moaned softly through the nearby woods.

And the hall stayed empty.