The Writing Retreat(64)

“I see that.” Did I sense a hint of satisfaction in Wren’s voice? That I hadn’t been right?

“Where were you again?” Wren asked. “When this was all going on.”

“I was at the other end of the basement.”

“Doing what?”

“Nothing.” I tried to calm my snappish tone. “I was wandering around hallucinating. I thought I was in a forest.”

“Okay.” Wren was pointing her light at the ground; her face in shadow. “And then?”

“What do you mean? That was it.” Why was she questioning me like this, like I was suddenly a suspect in Zoe’s disappearance?

“You said you fell asleep down here. When did you go back upstairs?”

“I don’t remember.” I felt a pinprick of fear.

“I know you.” Wren’s voice was barely above a whisper. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

We were silent in a sudden standoff.

“Okay.” I felt a burst of defiance. “I had sex with a demon, and then I passed out, and then I woke up in my bed. I don’t remember coming back upstairs.”

Her breath whooshed out. “Demon? What are you talking about?”

“It was just a hallucination. Like I said.”

“So you were really out of it,” she said.

“Of course I was.” I bristled. “We were all out of it.”

“True, but only one of us was down here with Poppy—I mean Zoe—when she went missing.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. “I could’ve gone up before that happened. Either way, it’s not like I had anything to do with it. It’s not my fault she went outside.” My cheeks burned.

“Well… I don’t know. We can do really messed-up shit when we’re wasted.”

I glared at her. “Why don’t you just say it?”

“Say what?” She had the audacity to sound confused.

“That—according to you—I’m an unstable psychopath.”

She scoffed. “Alex—”

“Just stop. I know you told Roza you wanted to take out a restraining order against me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re really going to deny it to me? That you said that?”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t have the energy to argue with you, okay?” She laughed, humorless. “Jesus Christ. We’ve been looking for a body, Alex. But again, we have to talk about you. How I’ve been so mean to you. How I’ve wronged you. It never ends.”

“That’s not true,” I cried. “If you want to talk about acting like a victim—”

“I don’t. That’s actually the last thing I want to talk about.” She raised her flashlight and I threw up my hands to shield my eyes. “I’m going upstairs.” She stalked past me.

I listened to her make her way to the stairs, then run up the steps. I leaned my forehead against the cool concrete blocks, taking deep breaths, trying to quell the rage. And as quickly as it had surged, it ebbed away. In its place was desolation, a dark well with no bottom.

Just twenty-four hours before, everything had been running along so smoothly. It hadn’t been easy, scrambling to write a novel in close quarters with Wren. But everything made sense. The game was so straightforward.

And now… I didn’t know what to believe. Could it really be true that Zoe was a frozen corpse, hidden somewhere under the snow? Could a fox or squirrel be running over her at this very minute?

I lifted my head. Stop. I couldn’t think about—

Something clicked and popped out of the wall.

For a second I was stunned. Then I shone my phone on it and touched it. The cinder block I’d been leaning my forehead against had sprung loose. Not the entire block—just the front of it, opening on a hinge.

I touched the hinged covering: the side facing me was formed of the cement material, but it was only about an inch thick. A false front. The other side was smooth and felt like metal.

I opened it wider.

Beyond the false front the wall was metal. A security code keypad sat in the middle of the square. I pressed a few of the tiny plastic numbers. They lit up in yellow. Then a tiny bulb on the upper corner of the keypad flashed red.

I started to close the false front, and it swung shut as if magnetic. For a second I panicked: What if it locked? But when I pressed against it, what looked like one of hundreds of cinder blocks comprising the wall, it sprang open again.

I leaned my phone against the cinder block column to mark it. With a burst of energy, I pushed the boxes farther back so that I had a clear view of this area of the wall. I turned off the phone’s light, stepped back, and let my eyes adjust to the darkness.

At first, there was nothing. But then, slowly, they began to appear. They were hard to see, like stars in the night sky that disappear if you look at them directly. But by letting my vision blur, the lines came into focus.

There was light filtering in from the other side of the wall.

The keypad was in the middle of what looked like the outline of a door.

Wonder burst in my chest. A door meant that there was something behind it, some room we hadn’t yet seen. Maybe the reason I hadn’t noticed Zoe the night before was because she’d already found her way into this hidden chamber.