Page 30

I sit upright in bed, heart thundering as hard as if I’d been running, sweat rolling down my body.

I was having a dream about Beth Ann vacuuming incessantly outside my door… I look over at River, whose mouth is open, emitting a rhythmic rattle. Right. Snoring roommate.

Well, there’s no getting back to sleep in this heat.

Is the AC off? I cartwheel my legs over the side of the bed and pad over to the digital thermostat by the bathroom.

Ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit? That can’t be right– and yet I can feel the confirming thickness in the air, like I’m inhaling hot soup.

When a sharp, rapping sound comes from the door, I muffle a yelp, adrenaline jolting me more awake than I’d like to be at this hour. I put a hand to my chest to try and help my heart recover. Anger follows. Who the hell is knocking at this time of night? Daniel?

I walk over to the door ready to give someone a piece of my mind, but first, put my eye to the peephole. I nearly reel back in shock as I take in the distorted face looking at me, hair in disarray, eyes wide, mascara smudged.

Carli Elle?

My fingers make a frantic fumble to unlock the chain and deadbolt. I fling open the door.

The hallway yawns back at me. No one there. The hall lights flicker, then dim.

‘Carli?’ I say softly, as a gust of chilly air raises goosebumps on my body.

Using a foot to keep the door propped open, I step out into the hall. There she is, all the way at the end of the hall, walking quickly away from me. The lights are flickering and buzzing like a beehive.

‘Carli!’ I call out. Damn it– if I go back inside the room to find my key, I’ll lose her. There’s only one thing to do. Letting the door close behind me, I sprint after her, to the corner she disappeared around, just in time to see her slip through a doorway.

It’s a lot chillier out here, reminding me that I’m dressed only in my sleep tank top and a faded pair of polka-dot PJ shorts.

I shiver. I reach the place where she disappeared– the ice machine room– and step cautiously inside.

No Carli. The buzz is louder here. Something must be going on with the building’s electrics.

The vending machine has an Out of Service sign taped to it.

There’s only one place she could have gone from here: the door marked RESTRICTED ACCESS, where this floor’s electrical panels are.

The handle gives– unlocked. Not good. I push it slowly open, her name on my lips, ready to release a torrent of questions.

Empty. It can’t be. I turn, then turn again. There’s literally nowhere else to go. But someone has been in here: the electrical panel is open, a cable pulled out. And on the floor lies a pair of black electrical gloves, curled like dead, dark fish skins… and a hair dryer.

I pick it up with a shaking hand. The GFCI cord is cut off. Shit. And yet… it can’t possibly be the hair dryer I threw into the ocean. That one sank. No one could have possibly found it.

What the fuck is going on? A copycat crime? Some sick re-enactment?

I drop the hair dryer and return to the hall, just in time to hear the click of the emergency exit door across the way.

I follow, muscling the door to the stairwell open. It’s echoey in here, all cinder blocks and no carpet. The floor is cold against my bare feet. I can hear quick steps somewhere beneath me.

‘Carli!’ I shout, and take the steps two at a time, my voice taking on monstrous proportions in the empty stairwell. At the bottom of the stairs, I push open the heavy door that takes me outside the hotel.

The air is clammy, sticking to me like a skin as I run after the dark figure.

Above, the sky is pulsing with heat lightning, illuminating Carli’s shadowy figure as she runs up the cliff.

The natural stone path is harsh underfoot.

To my left yawns a killer drop. The hungry, dark ocean rumbles its menacing presence somewhere down there, just waiting for someone to fall into its throat.

‘Carli! Stop! Let’s talk!’ I shout. And then, a light in a window flips on, bright and cold, stopping me in my tracks.

It’s one of the Riovan’s luxury villas, the building appearing out of the dark like a slap, as if it wasn’t there a second ago and has simply materialized.

I squint. There’s someone there. An outline. A man.

‘Daniel?’ I say.

Suddenly, I understand.

Carli hired Daniel to investigate me. To find evidence. To bring me down.

‘Aaah—’ I yelp, as something wraps around my throat. The pain is horrible; my breath is cut off.

An angry voice says, hot, into my ear, ‘You ruined me.’ It’s Carli. I claw at the thing around my neck. It’s a wire. It’s cutting into my skin already. I can smell my own blood and feel its wretched pulse as it oozes around the wire like a rising swamp.

‘Ca—’ I gasp. I crash to my knees. My lungs are in shreds. I feel her pulling tighter, now bracing a knee against my back. She wrenches my head up with her force, and I can see Daniel’s silhouette, still unmoving. Can he see us?

Help , I want to cry. But I have no voice.

‘You thought you could do whatever the hell you wanted,’ says Carli. ‘But you had no right. My career died with Michael. And it’s your fault!’

My hands keep working uselessly at the wire. They’re wet with blood. I’ve got to explain, make Carli see that Michael was actually destroying her– but my vision is swimming with spots.

‘No more playing God, Lily Lennox. You’re a murderer.’ She’s speaking through a smile now. ‘Time to taste your own medicine.’

My lips move– No, you’ve got it all twisted around – but no sound comes out.

I fix my vision on the bright star of the villa. The silhouette, unmoving.

I fall.

*

I blink awake. The sky is fresh with a pink sunrise, the ocean happily splashing against the cliff.

I prop myself up slowly; my whole body hurts.

My fingertips brush my throat. I’m alive.

It was a dream.

But why am I outside, on a stone path? I gingerly sit up, feeling the knots in my back. Holy shit, I sleepwalked.

‘Motherfucker,’ I groan as I work myself to standing, my joints and muscles clamouring their protest.

I should feel relieved that it was all a dream. But sleepwalking is freaky business, especially when it takes you to the edge of a fucking cliff.

As I stretch the kinks out of my back, I register someone watching from the nearby luxury villa a little further up the path.

Not Daniel idly observing my murder, thank God.

A woman in a robe, standing in the sliding door.

In sunlight, the villa is stunning, its clean modern lines contrasting with the natural edges of the cliff.

The whole wall facing the ocean is made of glass.

The woman straightens as she notices me and shields her eyes, clearly wondering what I’m doing here.

‘Hi,’ I call out, feeling the need to put her at ease. ‘Beautiful morning.’

Her response is to disappear back inside. The path leading to the luxury villas is private; I’d better leave in case she’s calling hotel security.

I head down the pathway, taking care where I place my tender bare feet, and head back to the hotel. First stop, front desk, because my sleepwalking self didn’t grab a key.

The first time I sleepwalked was with the Miller family, back when I was in foster care.

I liked them. They had a girl my age, and a boy two years older– Shari and James.

They played board games on Saturday nights as a family, went on long Sunday bike rides, and genuinely seemed to like each other.

But one night, I was dreaming that I had accidentally killed James with a skillet and I had to run away before they realized what I’d done.

When I woke up, people were screaming at me.

I was confused, overwhelmed, and I remember bursting into tears, because I didn’t understand why I was in the driver’s seat of the family’s Honda Odyssey.

Thankfully, I hadn’t actually tried to drive it yet.

The minivan was just idling in the garage, and the family woke up because the carbon monoxide detector went off.

I was reassigned to the Loetz family within the week.

The Loetzes weren’t into board games. They were a self-described ‘boring’ family, which meant that they and their adult son who lived in the basement watched a lot of TV.

They knew about my sleepwalking, so every night, the dad locked me in my own room ‘as a precaution’, with a toddler potty from their bygone baby days in case I had to go in the night.

One night, I dreamed that they were poisoning me through the vents so that I would be weak enough for them to take out.

I had to escape. That time, I woke up in their kitchen, crouched on the counter and armed with two knives, with the husband shouting, ‘Put the weapons down, Lily!’ as the wife held up throw pillows like shields.

I dropped the knives and started shaking and crying.

Apparently I had escaped out of the window, jumped one storey down, and headed straight for the knives.

They had security camera footage and replayed the whole thing for the social worker.

‘I’m sorry,’ I remember crying. ‘Please give me another chance.’ The Loetzes weren’t as nice as the Millers, but I didn’t want to move again. It was the nicest bedroom I’d ever had, with a window seat and a desk and a reading lamp that you could turn on by touch. ‘I didn’t know what I was doing.’

There were a few more episodes, though not as dramatic as the first two. Thankfully, a shrink put me on benzodiazepines, and the sleepwalking stopped as suddenly as it had started. I haven’t sleepwalked since. Until last night.

I need to get my hands on some benzos.

‘Can I help you?’ says a friendly voice. I’m next in line at the front desk. I lower my voice, feeling self-conscious about my situation. And my appearance. The tiny polka-dot shorts and tank top are the opposite of ‘on-brand’.