The milky morning light washed over Alice’s bare face as we spoke, and I couldn’t deny that she was beautiful.
I could’ve been imagining it, but it seemed like some of the tension had leached out of her features. Her shoulders sloped downwards, relaxed instead of hunched around her ears, and there was no double knot between her brows. She talked about her favourite philosophers with the kind of easy yet unsettling charisma I’d come to associate with Professor Sanderson. She was like a cult leader – except her curves were far more intoxicating than Sanderson’s sharp masculine lines, the black silk of her pyjamas clinging to her hips and waist.
Something unfamiliar curled in my lower belly, and my throat felt dry all of a sudden.
Oh.
This is what people meant. This is what they meant when they talked about attraction.
Seeing her all lit up like this, bright and funny with her gladiator accent, I couldn’t imagine her murdering anyone in cold blood. And yet wasn’t that what was so often said of notorious killers? That nobody believed they could do such a thing?
Besides, this was the girl who’d punched someone in the face on her first night here. The same girl who made my stomach cramp with nerves whenever she drew near. Although now I wondered . . .wasit nerves that made my stomach flutter? Or was it something entirely more terrifying?
But there wassomethingsinister there, behind those kohl- smudged eyes. I knew it.
And yet . . . if someone had been watching me closely these past few weeks, wouldn’t they say the same? The sleepwalking, the manic clawing at the tower, the ruby in my throat and the nameless dread.
Maybe Alice was falling victim to the same darkness I was.
Long after I got off the phone with my dad, the ruby in my throat still pulsed red hot; a metronomic reminder that something, someone, had well and truly sunk their claws in. I knew in my bones that I couldn’t leave Carvell even if I wanted to.
So I had to stay. I had to solve this; all of it. Because it was all part of the same snarled knot. And it was what I had come here to do.
I decided to use Alice’s unprecedented openness to ask a few probing questions. Something to reveal whether or not she felt the supernatural pulse too. Clicking the lens cap back on to my camera – feeling a little embarrassed that Alice had caught me snooping through her stuff – I laid it down on my desk and climbed on to my bunk.
‘Alice . . .’ I started, and she looked up, her eyes a deep lake blue. Wondering how to broach this, I settled for honesty. ‘I haven’t been feeling like myself since I got here. Especially not the last couple of weeks.’ My hand went automatically to the ruby in my throat, and her gaze followed.
‘In what way?’ she asked, a chiming note of curiosity in her voice.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Just . . . darker, somehow. Gloomier. It’s hard to put a word to it.’
Something passed across her face, and I felt the slightest nibble on the line I’d cast, the feeling that I was about to coax a similar admission out of her, until the moment died and she just said, ‘You don’t seem the type to get depressed.’
It would have been easy to give up, but I pushed on. ‘I mean, first of all, depression can affect anyone. My mum was the happiest person I knew until she wasn’t. Second of all, it’s not that. I think it’s something to do with the North Tower. Living in its shadow.’ A heavy beat, in which her body went extremely still, waiting to see where I was going with this. ‘That’s why I submitted the dorm transfer request. It sounds mad, I know. But I’m starting to think the tower is driving me insane. That’s where I keep sleepwalking to.’
Alice gave a small, seemingly involuntarily smile at the thought that she wasn’t to blame for the request, then fought it back down.
She adjusted herself on her bed, propping her head up on her elbow so she was staring up at the North Tower too. It was backlit by the watery sun, the side facing us drenched in shadow. Police tape weaved in and out of the glassless Gothic arches, flapping in the wind.
‘It is . . . ominous, isn’t it?’ she murmured. ‘As a presence. But I can’t tell if that’s just because we all know what happened there. What’sstillhappening there.’ She ran a hand through her hair, and it stuck up in stark red clumps. ‘Have you ever sleepwalked before?’
I shook my head. ‘Sleeptalked, yes. Loquaciously. Dad used to threaten to stuff his dirty socks in my mouth if I didn’t shut up.’ A pang of guilt as I remembered how I’d left things on the phone with him. ‘But I’ve never sleepwalked, no.’
She shrugged, but it wasn’t as casual as it should’ve been. ‘Maybe it’s just the stress of being here. The academic pressure, making new friends. That kind of thing can exacerbate sleep problems, can’t it?’
Yes, I thought,but that doesn’t explain the ruby in my throat.
I didn’t want to tell her about that. Not yet. I didn’t know why I felt the need to keep it close to my chest. It made me feel oddly ashamed; tainted, ordirtysomehow. I remembered how its roots felt as they closed around my windpipe while I was on the phone to my dad, how I knew in that moment that it could kill me if it wanted to.
Fear shot up my arms and legs in hot stripes as I thought of the police carrying Poppy away in a body bag. Her poor family.
I didn’t want to die. I really, really didn’t.
‘Are you scared?’ Alice asked, and I realised she’d been watching me think. My face had always betrayed me like that, displaying my innermost turmoil like a slideshow at a museum.
‘Yeah,’ I admitted. ‘Are you?’
She looked up at the North Tower once again, and I studied her face for any flicker of guilt. Her skin was creamy white, like marble, and almost as emotionless.
‘I’m going to get some sleep,’ she said finally, leaving my question hanging unanswered between us.