Chapter Seven #2
Lucy crawled into the bed, which was marginally bigger than her own upstairs, and rolled to face the wall. Mila’s sheets smelled a little like her sweater. Like unscented laundry detergent that nevertheless had a smell to it—a little clean, a little sweet.
Her eyes had been closed for about thirty seconds when Mila spoke to her again. “I’m sorry if I snapped at you upstairs.”
“You didn’t snap,” Lucy said, without opening her eyes. Mila had been remarkably patient with her, all things considered. It was what was making this so much worse. “And it’s not like you were wrong.”
She kept her back turned to Mila, who was quiet for a moment. She didn’t fidget, like Lucy did when she was stressed. Her breaths were still calm and measured.
“I understand that you have had a lot less time to adjust than we did. And don’t get me wrong. You need to adjust, if you don’t want to see anyone else hurt. But…” Mila took a deep breath. “She was your roommate. It’s—normal, to try to protect her.”
“I didn’t even like her,” Lucy mumbled. “She got upset if I moved around the room too much. She once implied that I breathed too loudly for attention. And I think she was kind of classist.”
“Yeah, well.” Mila sighed then. “It’s also normal not to want terrible things to happen to people. Even when they suck.”
Lucy didn’t answer that. Even if she’d had the will to, she wasn’t sure if she had the energy. Her shock and sadness and fear still curled heavy against her, but even those weren’t as powerful as her own exhaustion.
“I’m going to try to sleep,” she said.
“Go ahead,” Mila said. Whatever ripples there had been in the evenness of her voice had long since smoothed. “I’ll keep watch.”
Lucy tucked her face into the pillow and breathed deep.
Maybe it was her own keyed-up senses, but she thought she smelled something floral on the edge of the pillow.
A smudge of lotion or perfume, maybe. It smelled like the night-blooming jasmine bush outside her bedroom window at home.
It sent a softer, blurrier unease through her.
It should have been impossible to sleep through that unease, through the weight of Mila’s eyes on her. But it was hardly the most impossible thing that had happened that week.
Two hours later, the thing that wasn’t Lucy Easting pried her eyes open.
She didn’t move, at first. Just marveled at the velvety warmth of the dark as it unfurled across the mountain. The night leached into Quincey Hall. Crooked its fingers at her. Said, Come here.
Lucy had been right, earlier that day. She had felt someone watching her. His smile was a faint curve against her mind. He smelled like fresh-turned dirt, and something sweet.
She sat up in bed. The motion rocked the mattress gently under her, and she pressed down a hand to still the juddering springs. They did not bother her. But Lucy moved her body cautiously, like a deer trying not to be seen.
“Lucy?” The hunter hadn’t moved from where she sat cross-legged on the floor. In the dark, every cautious line of her face was sharply visible.
She could answer to that name, still, though it was incorrect. She could sound like that name, too. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she said.
She stood, and it looked natural—she moved the way she was supposed to, slow and tired. But it was hard to move so slowly when the body was so much more responsive to her now. It was not as worn or as wrung out as Lucy believed it to be. If she treated it right, it would sing.
But that was for later. The hunter was still watching her. “Be my guest,” she said.
The thing that was not Lucy Easting crossed the room, turned the corner. Eased the door closed behind her. And she waited until she felt the unseen pressure of the hunter’s attention leave her before she flicked the light switch.
There was a window at the other end of the bathroom, its blinds partially closed. And as the lights extinguished themselves, the silhouette beyond the blinds snapped into focus. A head and shoulders and torso on the other side of the pane.
The heart in her chest quickened. Every nerve in her body prickled like hairs standing on end.
“I’m here,” the thing whispered with Lucy’s mouth.
Good, the man in the night whispered back. Are you afraid?
Her head shook. In the hazy bathwater warmth of the dark, not many of her feelings had names.
But standing before the silhouette was no more frightening than standing at the edge of the ocean, or under the stars of an unpolluted sky.
It was a comforting smallness, a helplessness.
There was no more fighting here. There was nothing left to fight.
The gift you asked of me, he said. Are you ready to have it?
Two tears slipped out of Lucy Easting’s eyes as the thing that was not Lucy closed the distance between herself and the window.
She’d been ready for days. She’d been ready even as this body had rejected its own readiness.
As she reached for the blinds, watched every line of the silhouette, she breathed in that scent in the air.
It really was so, so sweet. Whatever it belonged to, maybe this visitor would let her taste it.
She opened her mouth as she drew open the blinds. There were two words that he needed to hear.
Something seized her by the waist and pulled her off her feet.