“They will.”
“How?”
Edie saw her opening. She channeled the gravity her father always presented important information to patients with.
“By saying what you want. Don’t ask for anything, just say exactly what you want.”
“I want Apricot and Daisy back. The real ones, not whatever was in that basement. And I want off this island.”
Edie shook her head. “I don’t think you can just tell me for something this big. You have to tell someone else, like you’re spreading a rumor.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure, but that’s all James has been doing, and that’s what happened when I made the Temple of Silence up. I told one person and it was suddenly real.”
Cassidy picked up her fork again but hesitated.
“What makes you so sure that it will work? It feels like it’s all just so random, and we have no control over what happens to us. Like with my tattoo …”
“Hey,” Edie said.
Cassidy met her eyes and Edie put her hand out again. Cassidy laced her fingers into Edie’s, warm and slightly damp.
“Look, I know it feels like we’re at the mercy of James’ bullshit, but we’re not. He tried to get rid of us and we survived. We can beat him at his own game. We just have to play like we don’t believe we’ve already lost.”
Cassidy gave Edie’s fingers a hard squeeze as her face twisted in despair. She nodded and Edie saw all her conflicting emotions at once.
“Okay. Then tell me how to play.”
EdieawokewithCassidy’sarm draped across her waist. She sat up and the arm fell with a heavy thud to the mattress, but Cassidy did not stir. Last night after dinner, they agreed that they needed to stay together so that James couldn’t have any opportunities to permanently separate them. Edie pitched the idea of sleeping in shifts, but Cassidy talked her out of it.
Light glowed around the blinds, but Edie didn’t know what time it was. Her cellphone was still dead on the other side of the villa. Cassidy’s phone lay face down on the mattress beside her with its charge cable trailing off the bed. She wanted to keep tabs on James and the changes happening in the world at large and had turned hers back on. Edie knew that the phones themselves no longer posed a threat, but she still didn’t feel comfortable turning hers on. Maybe she never would again.
Edie shook Cassidy awake. “Time to get ready.”
Cassidy’s face tightened and she grumbled. “For what?”
Edie’s heartbeat quickened. Had Cassidy forgotten the plan? “For the meet and greet.”
“Ugh. I’m so tired,” Cassidy said, throwing an arm over her eyes. “I slept like shit and kept having dreams we were back in the tunnel.”
A slow exhale escaped Edie’s lips. Cassidy hadn’t forgotten, although she wished that both of them could be spared the memories of that tunnel. She’d had the same nightmares but decided not to say so. Today they needed to be careful with their words.
“Well, thankfully today is about being in the sunshine and doing what we do best. First the meet and greet, then judging the friend contest, hosting a movie viewing …”
“Schmoozing,” Cassidy sighed.
“The most important schmoozing you’ll ever do, though,” Edie said, ripping the sheets back. “Come on, get up.”
The pier at the south end of the island near the stage had only a few groups around it in the cool morning breeze. One group sat with their feet dangling into the water while they drank iced coffee and smoothies. A tan guy in a muscle shirt ran around on the surf-hardened sand doing what appeared to be different exercises while another man filmed him.
Edie chose a bar near this pier for the meet and greet. The slow morning crowd was a far cry from the bustling activity she’d seen here when the hard partiers finally woke up. She approached the bartender popping a bottle of champagne behind the bar and let them know she and Cassidy were ready. The bubbling liquid spilled over the tan man’s face as his expression went blank, just like the man in the restaurant the night before when Edie asked about a music video. With a start, he returned to himself.
“Yes! Sorry, Ms. Lee, we’re running a little behind this morning, but I’ll let them know you’re here and we’ll get your table set up right away.”
He placed the bottle on the bar top and wiped off his hand with a cloth as he walked around to the back of the building.
“That pause they do is so fucking creepy,” Cassidy said with a shiver. She and Edie stood outside the bar in the shade and waited for Edie’s rumor to manifest. Within minutes, four men whom Edie found indistinguishable from each other appeared in crew cuts and Island Xperience shirts. They set up a folding table and two chairs beneath the awning of the bar and then set half a dozen cardboard boxes off to one side.
