“I don’t know,” Lucy finally said. “I think I feel him all the time.”
She wasn’t sure if Mila had anything else to say to that. Lucy thought she heard her mumble something, after a long period of silence. But by then, Lucy was already nearly asleep.
Lucy was awake, but she didn’t want to be. It was still dark behind her eyelids, she miraculously didn’t need to pee that badly, and she was tired enough that the creaky extra-long twin felt deliriously comfortable underneath her. She could be asleep again in moments, if she let herself. If she opened her eyes, she risked breaking the spell.
She allowed herself the small luxury of shifting on the pillow.
Both of her arms went along with her, with no resistance.
She lurched upright. She wasn’t only untied—the restraints were gone altogether. “Mila,” she said, her tongue thick. “Why did you—”
But when she turned to the corner where Mila had been the night before, she found it empty. The same was true for the little table near the kitchenette, and the shitty overstuffed armchair by the window. It was dark in the dorm: The only lights came from outside, through the blinds, from the lampposts and the blue glow of the emergency phone a few feet away.
And Mila wasn’t there.
Lucy’s feet shook a little as she swung them around to the floor. Maybe she was dreaming again. Her body didn’t hurt the way it had when she’d crawled into bed that night. She didn’t hear the sounds of footsteps in the room next door, or voices and muffled music in the hallways. But if it was a dream, it was a vivid one. The room wasn’t fuzzy the way the forest had been in Athena’s guided meditation. The details weren’t flattened. It didn’t feel as if she’d gone anywhere. It was just that everything was quiet, and she was alone.
A shadow passed across the blinds. For a moment, the blue emergency phone light had been occluded. Blocked by something with shoulders, a torso, a head.
She peeled two of the blinds apart, but barely. Just enough to look.
The light from the phone was visible. The shape of it wasn’t. There was a viscous fog rolling into the quad courtyard, in thick, tangible coils. It moved like dry ice, blanketing as it spread. If she opened the window and reached down to the ground, she could scoop it up in handfuls.
But as quiet as it was, the night outside didn’t feel watchful. Not watchful like she’d tried to describe to Mila in those moments before she fell asleep.
“Nope.” Lucy shook her head as she released the blinds. The back-and-forth swish of her hair felt uncomfortably real against her chin. “Not tonight.” It had to be a dream. The alternative was that Mila was gone, and something was moving outside. She slid back under the covers and yanked them up to her chin. She wasn’t here. Or rather, she was in another version of “here,” a real one, still tied to the bed under Mila’s watchful eye. Maybe she just needed to be still long enough to let this dream end.
She waited for exhaustion to overcome her. But she was still wide awake when she heard the sound.
Click-click.
She sprang out of bed. The dorm had grown darker. Like a hole punched in the world.
But darkness was nothing to Lucy anymore. So, when she heard theclick-clicka second time, she saw exactly where it came from. She saw the slow, gentle turn of the doorknob leading to the hall.
It turned without resistance. It was unlocked.
Lucy’s ankles nearly buckled as she scrambled to the other side of the room. She didn’t have far to go. Just a few feet. But by the time she reached the door, it was already slightly wedged open.
She hit it with all her weight. She’d surprised whoever was coming—she felt the opposing force falter, then redouble. But her shaking hands had found their target, and she pressed the lock shut with her thumb, hard. She grabbed for the deadbolt next. Her fingers, slick with sweat, nearly fumbled it. The door rattled again, hard, as she snapped it closed. But it held. It bowed a little with the force of another push, maybe a shoulder driven into the wood. And then it wasn’t pushed again.
“Who’s there?” Lucy’s voice was so guttural that it startled her.
She staggered back, and for a moment, no one answered her. Until someone called out, “A bit of a pathetic showing. Sorry to say.”
Lucy’s chest heaved as she struggled to catch her breath. That…was a very strange thing for someone to say after trying to break in. And it didn’t quite sound like the vague impression of Vanya in her mind. It didn’t sound likeHold still. But she knew the voice, nonetheless.
She raised herself onto her tiptoes to look through the peep hole.
Laurentius of Rome, the reference librarian, stared balefully back at her.
“Are you going to open the door?” he said. “Or are we going to talk like this?”
Another night, Lucy might have thought better of opening Mila’s door to nature’s perfect predator, even one she had conditionally decided to trust. But in her adrenaline-fueled anger, she would have opened the door to anyone. She would have let Dracula himself through if it gave her a better vantage point to yell at him.
“What the fuck,” she rasped, as she wrenched the door open, “are youdoinghere?”
“Watching you lie in bed and wait to die, apparently.” Laurentius moved into the room, delicately sidestepping her. “What was that pace? If I hadn’t turned that knob one fraction at a time, you never would have kept me out.”
