Chapter 8

• I didn’t have Lelia’s number. Or Lucilla’s. I asked around, but none of the other girls had it either. Odd. Stranger still was the scream I heard shrill, slicing through the thick, smoky air of the club like shattered glass. Heads had turned when it happened. I know they did. The sound was too sharp, too real, too loud to ignore.
• And yet, when I questioned them later, not a single soul remembered hearing a thing.
• That silence disturbed me more than the scream itself. It festered inside me, whispering doubts and possibilities too dark to voice aloud. I tried to tell myself I was imagining things. That maybe my mind already a graveyard of half-buried memories and instincts I never asked for was playing tricks again. I would have believed the lie, too, if only I could have spoken to Lelia. But she was gone. Unreachable.