Chapter 13
I'm flying.
Wind tousles my hair as I glide over the skyline. I bask in the raw sensation of moving through cold air at a dizzying height with the city spread below me.
I feel no fear, only a sense of freedom. And underneath it, power.
"Sara."
The voice sounds familiar but far away.
The city tilts and begins to recede.
"Hey. Sara. Wake up."
Is that Paul? It sounds like him. There is a new sensation, like someone shaking my shoulder. The rooftop surface feels cold and wet against my cheek. Pain flares at the back of my skull.
My eyes snap open. I gasp and sit up.
Paul is crouched beside me, his hand on my shoulder, his face filled with both relief and alarm. The sky above him is white-gray, overcast, the first fat drops of rain beginning to fall. The rooftop stretches out around us, empty and wet.
And for one second, before the next wave of pain arrives, I'm disappointed.
I miss the dream.
In the dream I soared high above the urban canyons and nothing could touch me. I was the thing other people should be afraid of. And some part of me wishes I could close my eyes and return to that weightless state of power.
Then the moment passes, and I'm just a woman with a head wound, lying on a roof covered in dead birds. There’s no sign of the grotesque or the ghosts or the severed head.
"You weren't answering your phone," Paul says. "I got worried."
I put my hand to the back of my head. "How did you get into the building?"
He almost smiles. "Remember who you're talking to."
I grab his arm, gripped by a sudden urgency. "Marian."
"What?"
"Marian. She's the third victim."
He looks around the rooftop. He clearly wants to be supportive, but he is also standing on an empty roof in the rain with no evidence of anything weird having transpired.
"Marian?" he says. "Your neighbor? The?—"
"I know what I saw." The certainty in my voice surprises me.
He wisely doesn't argue. Instead he looks at the parapet one more time and then back at me.
I stagger to my feet. Less graceful than I'd like, the dizziness nearly getting the better of me. I stand and look out at the surrounding buildings, and I feel something shift in my chest.
I know the grotesque is out there. And I know something else that I'm not ready to say out loud yet.
It didn't kill me. And that raises an important question.Why did the monster spare me?
It had every opportunity to finish me off, and it didn't and that means something I don't fully grasp yet. The only thing I know for certain is that I don’t want to spend an additional second on this haunted roof.
"We need to get off this roof," I say.
"Sara—"
"Now, Paul."
I walk toward the access door.
Paul takes one last look at the carpet of dead birds and then follows.