I blink at an apricot-coloured ceiling, at the dusky yellow shadows clustering in its corners. The sickness is gone. No pounding migraine, no hot flushes, no double vision, just the lethargy of recovery and a very dry mouth. I flex every aching muscle in my body one after the other and feel the heavy duvet shifting against my flannel pyjamas. I manage to turn my head on the pillow and spy a full glass of water on the bedside table. For a long while I can’t do any more than stare through the clear liquid. A roman blind warps in the glass, sunshine spilling around its edges, soft and gold, not green. Beyond the blind I hear water trickling into a pool. Trees rustle. Birds sing. Somewhere, not far from this room, a little girl giggles.
The room is clean and dry and tastes of fresh lemon with a bitter alkaline finish – the clean sheets perfume of New York’s closed economy. I take a deep breath, and another, ridding myself of every vestige of the dressing room’s sick air. Here, beneath the gentle weight of the duvet, the world is cosy and warm and comforting, and I huddle in my lemon nest, listening to the birds.
The tall one carried me into the back of an armoured truck, strapped me in with a seatbelt. I must have dozed off, because next thing I knew I was being carried up to a door and my carrier, noticing I was awake, set me down right as a woman in a woollen skirt opened the door. I toppled into her arms. She took me in, ran me a bath, dressed me in my own pyjamas, tucked me into bed.
I waited until she had closed the door and her muffled footsteps had receded down the hall before struggling out from under the duvet and crawling to the open wardrobe where, yes, thank God, there were all three of my suitcases in a row, and I dragged out the black one, opened it up, and found my bag of pill bottles still safe and sound underneath my gym gear. In my desperation I didn’t question it, too busy dry swallowing six at once, stuffing the bag of bottles back under my leggings, and crawling into bed. I was out a minute later. I’ve never taken more than three at once before but, hey, desperate times, and I wanted Shade to stop whispering in my ear more than I wanted to avoid an inquisition about my drug habit.
The forty-eight hours of uninterrupted sleep seems to have done me good. The fire no longer roars and Maman is nowhere to be seen. I might be mad but at least it’s not distracting. My mind is free to think things like where am I? and who’s going to ask about the meds first? and will they debrief me? and is Dad here? and that was F.L.A.R.E. who saved me and I get stuck on the last one.
Dad has mentioned F.L.A.R.E. before – some vigilante group who wear different coloured body-armour and help the Marines against the rebels and were integral in taking down Shade last year. With codenames like Feint, Leech, Ace, Rider, and Ebony, and fact that Rider is known to be Kyle Rhode, the heir to D&R moonlighting as a superhero, I had to stifle a laugh every time he brought them up. It was too absurd.
I am not laughing now. My heart starts to pound. The birdsong seems very far away.
“Help is coming.” That’s what Carter, Shade’s subordinate, said, and sure enough help came in the form of F.L.A.R.E., the vigilante group allied to the Marines and partly responsible for Shade’s incarceration. Why them? How did Carter contact them? Does he know them personally? Does Shade? What am I trying to say? That Shade might have contacted them while in prison and, I don’t know, blackmailed them into working for him, or maybe he got to them as soon as he escaped from prison, or maybe they were always on his team and the whole arrest was last year was part of an elaborate scheme? That maybe they got Shade into the party? That Maman is dead because of them . . .
No. Stop. This is ridiculous. It would have been far easier for Carter to have Shade’s people, like those girls who acted as servers, start a rumour about where I was being held and F.L.A.R.E. were simply quicker in investigating it, that’s all. Carter was probably acting on his own - he made no secret of his dislike of me being held there. Get a grip, Lys.
But if Carter was acting on his own in sending me away, then Shade might want me back . . . And whether or not F.L.A.R.E. are on his side, he’s already proven how easily he can get to me.
The bitter alkaline finish of NYC’s lemon laundry powder is suddenly overpowering. I push the duvet away and sit up, head spinning, nauseous again, feeling more trapped than ever in this lovely, golden room, and though I cannot hear him whispering in my ear, I remember it all too well.
Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of this?
Dear God, let that fever kill him.