— I cheat and tell myself to take it one day at a time, to live in the moment.
But I also need Ryan to help Luc find me, if that makes any kind of sense. Because if Ryan and I are together, Luc will finally have some clue as to where upon the surface of this floating, teeming world I am. He had said so himself in my dream. Find the mortal boy, return with him to Paradise and then we’ll be together again.
But I can’t ever tell Ryan any of this. Because maybe then he wouldn’t want to help me any more, and I can’t risk it. If Ryan loves me, really loves me — and not just because I once helped save his twin sister’s life — then I don’t know what that would do to him, telling him he’s got competition from a guy who was created to be peerless and immortal. Who needs to hear that?
He’s been hurt enough for one lifetime.
I need to find him quickly. To apologise. To explain. To confess.
That he just may be my skeleton key, my wild card, my circuit breaker. My way out of this hot, damn mess.
CHAPTER 2
The girl with the two-coloured eyes crosses her arms, trying to catch and hold my gaze in the looking glass. ‘You bloody well didn’t, did you?’ she snarls suddenly. ‘Did you?’
My eyes fly to hers in the mirror and I wonder why she’s so angry.
‘You’ve held it together for six months and now you go and start using again?’ she yells. ‘I’m not interested in all the stupid excuses you always have ready — it just happened to be there; and how could I say no?
‘I warned you! You’re not going to talk me out of it this time, because I can’t do this any more! All the sneaking around for you, all the lying, when it’s obvious to everyone what’s wrong with you. You’re even more out of it than usual. I quit. Hear me? I’m quitting.’
She turns and paces towards the rumpled bed, while I try to work out what I’m supposed to have done.
‘Look at you!’ She turns on me accusingly. ‘You say you’re “clean” but I’ve never seen you so spaced out and paranoid. I don’t know how you got your hands on some, but after today — after those tedious, bloody fittings — we’re done, we’re through. You’re a junkie, Irina. You need to get proper help, before you lose your mind. Or your life. I didn’t sign up for this. I’m not prepared to walk in one day to find you dead on the floor.
‘Are you getting any of this?’ she says, sitting down on the edge of the bed, sounding defeated. ‘And don’t pretend your grasp of English has failed again, because I know you understand me perfectly.’
‘You … can’t … quit,’ I reply with difficulty, the first words I’ve said since ‘waking’ here. Even to me, Irina’s heavily accented voice sounds awkward, almost rusty, although the accent itself seems familiar.
‘Because I’m …’ I struggle to remember the word the English girl had thrown at me, ‘clean.’
I frown, still trying to make sense of the word’s meaning in the context of her accusations. What is it exactly that I’m supposed to have … used?
Her answering laugh is shaky. ‘Good try, but I’ve seen it all before, remember? The zombie eyes, the inability to conduct a logical conversation, the paranoid belief that something’s trying to eat its way out through your skin. You probably woke everyone on this floor with your screaming. You must be coming down like a lead balloon. I still don’t know how you managed it — I never let you out of my sight yesterday.’
Russian, my inner voice pipes up suddenly. Irina’s accent is Russian.
‘Hello?’ she snaps. ‘You’re doing it again — spacing out!’ She waves one hand in front of my face. ‘You don’t even remember me, do you?’ she says softly. ‘Gia? Gia Basso? Hired to make you look good? Hired because I speak enough Italian and French to give you an edge over all the other girls who’d plunge a dagger into your back and step into your shoes in a heartbeat given half the chance.’
‘I am not spacing out,’ I reply, a touch of anger creeping into Irina’s husky voice. ‘I’m thinking. There’s a difference.’
Gia snorts. ‘Where there’s smoke there’s always fire. I can’t believe you’d jeopardise your comeback like this! We’ve only been working towards this day for months. Honestly, you are your own worst enemy.’
I feel a surge of irrational fury that makes the fingers of my left hand involuntarily curl into talons. I have to stop myself lifting the judgmental little twerp off the ground by the lapels of her cherry-blossom-patterned kimono and giving her a hard shake. She doesn’t understand how far I’ve come just to get here; how I’ve started to do something that I’ve never been able to do before.
I’m beginning to learn. I’m beginning to accumulate knowledge; to make connections again, however random they may seem to you. Like how I seem to have an immediate geographical fix on where I am right now. And how I’m able to recognise Gia’s accent, even Irina’s. And how I’m walking and talking without feeling an ounce of physical distress. I could have been born in this body. It could be my body. From distal phalanges to metatarsals, from calcaneus to crown, it might almost have been mine, ab initio, from the very beginning. That gap that’s always been present, between thought and deed? It’s dissolving.
But most important of all is the fact that I can remember every second I spent as Lela Neill. She may be alive no longer, save in my memory, but I recall everything that happened when I was her. It’s proof that I’m growing stronger, that I’ve started to circumvent the strange blockages in my mind, those obstacles that the Eight have somehow placed there. In some unholy way, I’ve begun to regenerate. Or mutate. Or evolve. And the process is getting … faster.
I think that, like a machine, I used to be set to delete. That’s why I’ve never been able to remember anything more than impressions really, sixteen, thirty-two, even forty-eight lives out of context. But something’s changed. Some things are beginning to stick.
Or maybe, like acid, like flame, some kind of dangerous contaminant, I’m beginning to burn back through. And what’s more, no one has any idea of the extent to which I’m back. Only me.
No matter how high the Eight might try to build up that wall of thorns around me, from now on, Sleeping Beauty is awake. And she’s angry.
There’s no reason I can’t keep to the plan that I started when I was Lela Neill. The face, the body, even the specifics, may have changed, but there’s nothing to stop me just picking up where I left off. Around me, time always gets misplaced, you know? It runs too fast, runs too slow. I’ve always had a problem with chronology, with the order of things. But starting today, I’m taking control before the sucker gets away from me. I ran out of time when I was Lela, and it’s not going to happen again. As soon as I can get my bearings, figure out what Irina’s story is, work out where the exits are, I’m going to reconnect with Ryan Daley and bust my way out of here.
Gia looks startled when I growl in Irina’s heavy Russian accent, ‘You want to quit? Go ahead. I’m not going to stop you.’
I stalk past her, calling her bluff, and fling open the first door I see. It leads into a spacious walk-in wardrobe containing an ironing board, half a dozen heavy white terry towelling robes, blankets, towels, slippers and umbrellas, all embossed with a fancy, crested hotel logo. You could
