You know what? I don’t care.
I don’t need Nico’s approval to do this job. Donny believes in me. DJ, Griffin, and Benji seem to like me, so if Nico wants to glare at me like I personally offended him by daring to exist, he can knock himself out. I can’t let it get to me anymore.
I crash hard, sleeping through most of the day in a dreamless void that my body desperately needed. When I finally drag myself out of bed, Griffin is waiting to torture me with another treadmill session that I can barely stumble through on legs that are still sore from yesterday.
Donny doesn’t leave his apartment all day, so Nico schedules a team meeting for tomorrow morning to determine our next step in finding the Game Master. I crawl into bed just after ten with Bob curled against my ribs, and for the first time since I got here, I don’t lock the door or wedge a chair under the knob.
I might actually be useful to this team. The thought pushes back against the empty feeling that’s been living inside me for seven years. I was able to do something that theycouldn’t.
Bob sighs, his little body relaxing completely against mine. I run my hand over his back, counting his breaths until they even out into sleep.
But I can’t follow him there. I slept all day, and when I’m this far from sleep, closing my eyes only brings me to my old house, to Stanley Daniels. I try counting backward from one hundred. I try picturing jumping sheep.
There’s this weird pressure building at the edge of my consciousness, like someone’s pushing their thumbs against my temples from the inside. I wash down two tabs of Ibuprofen with some water. All the stress from the past few days could have me coming down with something.
I need to fall asleep.
I’m almost there when I hear a whisper so small I nearly mistake it for the house settling:
“… Eden…”
I sit up so fast all the blood rushes from my head, and I immediately turn on the lamp. The room is empty.
“Hello?”
“… how interesting…”
Bob’s still curled against my side, undisturbed. If there were someone in my room, he’d be losing his mind right now. Which means…
The voice is inside my head.
“Eden… Pretty Eden… Will you come say hello?”
Every hair on my body stands up. The voice is soft and smooth like honey, but there’s something sharp underneath it.
I should wake someone up. Get Griffin or DJ to tell me why I’m hearing a voice inside my head.
My legs swing over the side of the bed before I fully decide to move. The floor is freezing against my bare feet, but I’m already taking a step toward the door. I reach for Bob, thinking I should at least bring him with me, but my hand doesn’t change direction. It stays at my side while my feet carry me forward.
“That’s it,”the voice encourages.“Come downstairs and say hello.”
I don’t want to go downstairs. I want to turn around and grab Bob and bang on Griffin’s door until he wakes up and tells me what to do.
What would the cure to a voice inside my head be? Salt water up the nose?
My hand turns the doorknob, and I step into the hallway, the old floorboards creaking under my weight. It’s like when I’m half-asleep and going to the kitchen for a snack, my body on autopilot. I’m not half-asleep right now. I’m wide awake, and my body is walking toward the stairs.
I throw myself toward Griffin’s door, but my arm stops before I can knock.
My hand hovers inches from the wood, trembling with the effort of trying to close that final gap, but I can’t make myself touch it. There might as well be an invisible wall between my hand and that handle, and every time I push against it, something pushes back harder.
“Why disturb him?”the voice croons, wrapping around my thoughts like cold silk.“Come talk to me instead.”
The compulsion slides through me, and my hand drops back to my side. My feet carry me past Griffin’s door, past any chance of help, toward the stairs.
The living room is bathed in moonlight when I reach the bottom of the stairs, silver light streaming through the windows and painting everything in shades of gray. My heart is pounding so loudly I’m sure it will wake the whole house, but nobody comes. The house stays silent except for the sound of my bare feet on the old hardwood and the whisper of my own breathing.
“This way.”
