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‘Am I?’
Obvious, now, why his voice sometimes sounded so disembodied. Throughout, she’d put that down to her exhaustion or disorientation, or perhaps the ghoul’s filthy drugs. Belatedly, she realizes she experienced it only when Elijah was standing, magnifying the difference between the height she imagined him to be and the reality. Upright, he must be taller than six foot.
Despite her horror at what the candle flame has revealed, and the starkness of its implications, Elissa considers her earlier plan. Because of what she’s just learned, the consequences of a misstep are likely fatal:There’ll never be anything, ever in this life, that you can conceal from me. And yet inaction carries consequences just as bleak.
‘Elijah, I’m sorry,’ she says, trying to smooth the tremors in her voice. ‘But if we can’t get a signal, we can’t download the software. Underground, the phone just won’t work. No calls, no data, no nothing.’
The thick folds of his neck contract. She hears himswallow, a hard-soundingglop. When he blinks, the computer screens floating in his eyes wink out, then reboot.
This is it.
This is the moment.
Suddenly, it feels like Elissa’s entire life has been moving inexorably towards this point. So much hangs in the balance. A future, or no future at all.
Wetting her lips, she leans forwards and kisses him.
II
The world goes still. The blood in Elissa’s arteries ceases to flow. Raging rivers become dormant canals. Even gravity seems to fade away. She feels no floor beneath her, no bonds of mass holding her down. If not for the chain, she might float out through the open cell door and up into the night.
Elijah’s lips, loose and slightly parted, are rougher than she’d expected. He tastes strange: sour, almost fizzy. Closing her eyes, filling her lungs, Elissa opens her mouth. When she pushes her tongue between his lips, the world returns like air rushing into a vacuum. Her ears roar with equalizing pressure.
She’s never, ever in her life, kissed someone like this. She didn’t expect it to be so intense. Elijah’s tongue is hard and hot, a strip of pan-fried stewing steak surrounded by sharp teeth. If he chose, he could bite down and cut her own tongue to pieces.
And then his mouth is gone.
Elijah reels away from her, groaning as if he’s been stabbed. He skates backwards across the floor, a clumsy mess of limbs, until the darkness swallows him. ‘What wasthat?’ he shrieks, his falsetto voice ringing off the walls. ‘What did you DO?’
When he scrambles to his feet, she’s convinced he’s going to rush forward and attack her. She’d expected a reaction, but not this.
‘WHAT DID YOUDO,ELISSA?’
The sight of him scurrying from the light, like a soft-bodied sea creature retreating into its burrow, is burnt on to her brain. Two more backward steps and Elijah is through the open door. It squeals in its frame as he slams it. The deadbolts shoot home.
Elissa leans forward, retching. She wants to vomit, wants the taste of him out of her mouth, but with her Evian bottle empty, she can’t afford to lose any fluids. Instead, she spits on the cell floor. That kiss – the dark, compulsive horror of it – belongs in the deepest dungeon of her mind, locked up tight with the key hammered flat.
One hand supporting her manacle, she inches across the floor. Elijah was sitting in D6, but when he lurched away from her, the iPhone fell face down into B7. When she turns it over, she sees a crack running right across the screen. Elissa gasps as if she’s been kicked, but the apps are all still visible. When she scrolls sideways with her thumb, the phone responds as it should.
How much time does she have? Once Elijah recovers enough to realize his mistake, it’ll take him no more than fifteen seconds to unlock the door. Once he’s inside, there’s no hope of fighting him off.
She has a phone, but no signal. She can’t make calls, can’t get online. Her brain is too skittish with adrenalin to cut through the chaos. But there’s a way to make this work, there has to be.
Think, Elissa.
Think!
Is that a sound outside? She hunches over the screen, trying to concentrate, trying to tune out her panicked keening.
Tapping the SMS icon, she brings up a blank message. Typing with her left thumb is far trickier than she’d expected, but the software auto-corrects her worst errors. Getting the phone numbers right will be vital.
There’s that sound again – something new, that she hasn’t heard before. Not from the door, or behind it, but above her head.
Completing the message, Elissa taps the address panel. Carefully, trying to steady her shaking fingers, she keys in all the mobile numbers she knows: her mum, her granddad, Lasse Haagensen, Mrs McCluskey.
That sound above her is racing now, rattling and ticking. She wonders what it is, what Elijah – in his rage – has done.
If she presses send immediately, the phone will attempt delivery. After a few failed attempts, it’ll abandon the task. Instead, Elissa opens the email programme and writes the same message. Adding email addresses is more laborious than phone numbers. Several times, she has to correct her mistakes. All the while, her heart beats so fiercely it feels like a hammer is breaking through her chest.