I just can’t help myself. I need to know. “Any idea where Elena went? After she quit?”
Trey’s face goes smooth and blank, erasing the guilt and desire. “No idea, sorry. I’m not really clued in on the day-to-day stuff. That’s Viv’s job. Ask her.”
He nods at me stiffly and slinks out of my room, glancing once over his shoulder.
I slam the door shut behind him, fuming. Not only did he try to hit on me when I’m half-dressed, he passed the buck entirely when it came to the sudden departure of one of his employees. What a snake.
The smell of salt rises, clogging my nostrils, so strong and so sudden I nearly choke on it. Breath, somehow cold and damp at the same time, puffs against the base of my neck, spreading goose bumps across my skin.
She’s behind me, I think, heart pounding.And when I turn around, she’ll be there.
The exhales on my nape come faster now, sending ricocheting shivers across my spine. The closed door warps, bulges, expanding outward as salt coats my tongue. The room is a pinhole I am trapped in, pressurizing around me.
My throat is numb, frozen from the outside in. I can almost feel lips, wet, peeling with sloughing skin, hovering centimeters away from my neck.
I can’t take it anymore. I spin around, stumbling, and then pause.
No one is there. The room is empty.
When I glance back, the door appears normal. The salty aroma has lessened, and I notice I’m standing under the AC vent.
“Idiot,” I mutter, placing a hand against my thumping chest. “It’s just the air-conditioning.”
What kind of hallucinations include olfactory elements, though? Maybe I have a fucking brain tumor. I swear I’ve read books that have that as the twist. That’d be the cherry on top of this whole thing. Idea stolen, best friend dead, brain tumor causing creepy visions on a murder boat.
I sigh, pulling fingers through my hair. I’m being paranoid again. Everything is heightened. My senses, my emotions. And I think, deep down, part of mewantsElena’s ghost to be real. To have evidence of a ghost is evidence of life after death, right? If I knew that Sage wasn’t doomed to eternal nothingness, if I could imagine her spirit roaming the world, getting to do all the things she wanted to do when she was alive, that was a lot easier than accepting she was gone forever.
“Come back,” I whisper to the empty room. “Elena? Let me see you again if you’re really there.”
But my cabin remains free of dripping, drowned influencers.
Wait.Influencers.
I still have Elena’s phone! I know I shouldn’t touch it again since it’s evidence, but it’s the only thing I have to go on. There could be something useful in her messages.
Scurrying over to the end table, I wrench open the drawer and tap the screen, waking her phone up, making sure I don’t touch the phone case or the fingerprint on the back. I still don’t have her passcode, but all of Elena’s final notifications came through before the hurricane cut off service. I can only scroll through the most recent banners, social media likes and comments begging her to come back online, but there’s one text nestled among the TikTok and Instagram notifications. From none other than Carl Mumford:
Trey said you went to work with Josiah in Seychelles?? I didn’t get a goodbye kiss?
“Liar,” I spit, pulling back from the phone. I’m not sure if I’m referring to Carl or Trey or both of them. Both, I decide. Both is good.
Carl was clearly also messing around with Elena, and Trey either lied to Carl or just lied to my face right now. Either way, he wasn’t being truthful about what he knew about Elena’s disappearance.
I straighten, shutting the phone back in the drawer. I want to confront Trey. Shake him until he gives me answers. But, of course, that would be dangerous. And stupid.
A fishy, low-tide odor rises in the room. I imagine an unseen entity standing over my shoulder, splashing water and wet sand from her mouth.
Direct questioning isn’t working. So maybe it’s time for someindirectinvestigation. Starting with finding out where Trey’s sleeping.
I roll my shoulders down my back, jutting my chin out. The oceanic smell intensifies, despite no evidence of anything in my room that would cause it.
My heart, already broken from Sage, now feels covered in silt and calcified salt. Hard. Buried. I’m trapped here, yes, but that doesn’t mean I have no power.
If I can figure out what happened to Elena, maybe this haunting will stop.
* * *
I’m not afraid of running into Trey in the hallway. And I’m back in my loungewear, so at least I won’t be half-naked if I do see him again. When I told him off after he touched my face, he had done what I had expected—put his tail between his legs and fled, acting like I misread the situation and mortally offended him. That way, he got to be the victim.
