by Frankie Rose
My bag was on the floor by the bed when I woke, and thankfully I could see perfectly in the illuminated room. My body ached like I had been hit by a train, though, and when I rolled off the mattress and dragged myself to the duffel in order to find my medication, I felt like I was seconds away from passing out again. I took the pills dry and waited there, the edge of the bed digging into my back, hoping the pain in my head would ease off soon. It was half an hour before I felt well enough to stand.
My vision lurched, and I reached out to steady myself against the wall, but the feeling quickly passed. The room slowed to a subtle tilt. I found myself looking down at a scuffed plastic chair, pulled up a little distance from the bed. It hadn’t been there before. I would have remembered, and there was a coiled twist of paper on top of the book beside my bed, too. Someone had definitely been in here with me. So it had been real, then. Daniel really had found me and carried me back to my room.
The hangar was well-lit and easy to find, but my nerves were still frayed by the time I reached the entrance. How had I managed to get so lost in between here and my room? Where had Daniel found me? I could have been back out by the hatch for all I knew.
Agatha sat at her computer typing away, and Daniel was at the far end of the hangar, sitting on the ground beside the dismantled engine with a guitar laid across his lap. He didn’t look up when Agatha called out, “Well, good morning. Or should I say evening?” but he definitely reacted, his shoulders stiffening.
“Yeah, good evening,” I said to Agatha, still watching him. He was restringing the guitar. His fingers worked quickly, threading a long, golden length into the instrument and twisting it. His hair fell down into his face, a black shield hiding his eyes.
“How did you sleep?”
“Huh?” Agatha had risen from her chair and was standing behind me. “Sorry. I slept really badly actually. I had a—” I hesitated. I hadn’t discussed my episodes with Agatha. Were they something she would understand, or was the migraine excuse a safer bet? Though, if anyone was going to believe that I saw things, it would definitely be Agatha.
“You had a what?” she asked.
“I see things sometimes. Things that aren’t really there. Do you think it could have something to do with, well, with all this?” There was no way I was saying my father. Everything Agatha had said last night was still difficult to believe, and besides, I would never call the man who had been absent my whole life by that title. He was a stranger named Elliot.
Agatha’s brow was creased. “I don’t know. What do you mean, you see things? Like ghosts?”
“No, not ghosts,” I said. “More like things happening to people that shouldn’t be. Like them being shot, or maybe part of them looking like they shouldn’t. Sometimes they’re on fire.”
From Agatha’s expression, this was entirely unexpected. “Wow. That’s not something I’ve ever heard of before.”
The blood drained from my face. Agatha had that high, odd note in her voice that people usually got when I tried telling them about my hallucinations. Maybe telling her had been a bad idea.
Agatha pulled herself straight and gave me a firm smile. “It sounds fascinating, though. Maybe it has something to do with the prophecy. I’d love to talk to you about it. You say you had one last night? What did you see?”
The memory of the blindness sent a shiver over my body. “I didn’t see anything.” I shot a glance over at Daniel. He was still, his back to us, completely frozen. Listening. I turned back to Agatha. “I thought I’d gone blind. I tried to make my way here to get my bag but I got lost somehow. Daniel found me and took me back to my room.”
“No, I didn’t.”
His voice behind me made me jump. Sneaky son of a… I spun to face him, confused. “What do you mean, you didn’t?”
“Nope,” he said. He wore an oversized, black long-sleeved shirt, which, combined with his dark charcoal hair and pale skin, made him look like a study in contrasts. All blacks and whites. Except for his eyes, of course, which were a burning green fire, fixed on mine. His body tensed and relaxed in waves as he stared me down.
“But you did,” I said. “You carried me back to my bed.”
“I’ve often been told girls dream of me stealing into their rooms at night.” His lips curled in a haughty way, and he flashed me a wink, ignoring the horrified expression on my face.
“Daniel, I know it was you. I smelled…”
“You smelled what?” His expression wavered, his immodesty gone in a flash.
“I smelled you.” I felt ridiculous as soon as I had said it. My cheeks and neck flushed scarlet. Even the backs of my hands blossomed with a blotchy, embarrassed rash.
Daniel let out a hard, amused laugh. “You did, did you? And what do I smell like?”
“Like arrogance and self-adoration,” I snapped. “I can smell it a mile off. Why bother saying you didn’t help me when it could only have been you?” And why are you lying?
He gave a casual shrug. “Because I really didn’t. Like I said, maybe you were having some sort of blissed-out dream.”
“No.” My voice hardened. “If anything it was a nightmare.”
A curious, flat look passed over his face. “Dreams. Nightmares. They’re two sides of the same coin down here, Miss Hope. One can easily turn into the other in the flash of an eye.”
His words caught me off guard. That was exactly how it had felt last night—that I was trapped in some horrendous, never-ending nightmare, which had changed the instant he picked me up off the cold ground. I had felt warm and secure and safe. Right now I just felt rather stupid.
“Leave her be, Daniel,” Agatha cut in. “You said you see things that aren’t really there, Farley?”
“Yeah. Hallucinations.”
“Well maybe you hallucinated that Daniel came and carried you back to your room. Maybe it wasn’t a dream or reality. The human mind is a powerful thing. It can trick you into believing almost anything.”
Yeah, I thought, but it didn’t trick me into imagining the chair he left in my room, or that twisted up piece of paper. “Yeah, you could be right,” I said, instead. Daniel clearly didn’t want me thinking he’d helped me. Fine. He could have his own way, if only he would stop giving me that lazy, churlish look.
“I still think she was fantasizing about me,” he said, throwing himself down onto the computer chair nearby and pulling the guitar up into his lap. He pinned me with his eyes, the great sea-green depths of them, and plucked out a melody I faintly recognized.
“You’re impossible,” Agatha sighed. She continued speaking, but I wasn’t listening. I was staring at Daniel the way he was staring at me, daring me to be embarrassed or look away. I didn’t. If he wanted to lie about what he’d done last night, that was his business, but I wasn’t about to let him make me feel like a fool for remembering it.
“Farley? Come and tell me more about these hallucinations,” Agatha said, drawing me to her desk by the hand. Daniel gave me a little wave as I was pulled away, and I felt like dashing back over and slapping him upside the head. There was no point, though. He would only enjoy having provoked the reaction. Instead, I went and sat with Agatha, feeling a little stupid as I explained the intricacies of my hallucinations to her. I started with how and when they had begun, and all that had happened in between. The smell. The taste.
By the time I was done, I was tired again, and I excused myself to head back to my room. I clearly wasn’t recovered yet. Sleep was the only real cure. My mood was still agitated, though, and on the way back I paused, contemplating rushing back and grabbing hold of Daniel. Dragging him back to the room and showing him the evidence of his presence would wipe the smile off his face. A good thing I was able to control that urge, because when I threw back the door to my room nothing was out of place. The bed had been made, and not only that but the chair and the paper were gone.
CHAPTER NINE
Look with Your Eyes,
and Not with Your hands
