Before I know what’s happening, I’ve bounded past him, rounding the corner to see my friends crowded around her bed. My first clue should be the conflicted looks on some of their faces. The way some of them wrap their arms around themselves.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
She sits up. Her hair is greasy, matted a little from so many days lying in one position. But who cares? To see life in her warm, brown eyes again. In the rosy hue of her lips and dotting her cheeks.
She’s beautiful.Only she could make ‘recovered coma patient’ look beautiful.
“Fulton?”
My heart stutters. In the silence that follows, we all hear it.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
Kaye
Visions—impressions, really—pass beneath the veil of my eyelids.
Faces. So many faces.
Fire licking up dank walls on a dark, acrimonious night.
A man in a white mask.
A needle pressing into someone’s eye.
What does any of it mean?
There are starched sheets under my fingertips. The air feels chilled, the sweet, musky smell of old books and mildew dances across my senses.
I should open my eyes, but would it really be so bad to fall back under that thick, leaden blanket of black? To rest, at least a little while longer.
Warm, gentle fingers press at my temples, jolting me into action. Awake.
There are faces crowding around me, bent together. They’re familiar, somehow. I know… but I can’t remember. Their eyes are all closed, and I study them in mute fascination, trying and failing to place the connection. It tickles at the corners of my mind just out of reach. Each of their fingers has a hold on some part of me: curled around my hand, the curve of my ankle, the base of my neck. The dip of my temples.
A shiver bolts across my collarbone at a twinge toward the front of my head, like the snap of a rubber band, and I realize it came from them. Prickling and poking in the corners of my mind. Whatever happened, they were the source, and I know without a doubt that I want them to stop.
“Who are you?” The words leave a bitter taste on my tongue, but they pull away almost in unison, as if I had burned them.
“Thank God!” the one who had been touching my temple says. His red curls fall into kind, cerulean eyes. A smile crinkles the corners of his eyes and lights his face with a warmth that could counteract the coldest winter morning. “How do you feel, Kaye?”
Kaye. That feels right.
You and Kitty need one another.
Katerina Grace?
Call me Kaye.
I shake my head and the voices go silent. A headache pounds at the base of my skull as I start to sit up. Several hands reach out to help ease me into position. I knock them all away.
“Who are you?” I repeat.
“You’d better get Fulton.”
My eyes lock on a face that I would describe as beautiful rather than handsome. Fine featured. Eyes darkened with a thick fringe of lashes so black they could be mistaken for coal. His gray eyes shine out of them. I don’t like how much he sees.
“You’re safe, Kaye,” he promises. “Things feel a little strange right now, but we’re here to help you.”
