Page 15 of Thrall
“Uh,” Alicia said. “Yeah?”
“You’re sure about that,” Lucy said. “It couldn’t have been someone else?”
Alicia hesitated. But she sounded confident enough as she said, “No, I’m pretty sure it was you. I remember your hair. It was kind of glowy under the black light.”
“What is it?” Natalie said.
Lucy shook her head a little. She couldn’t be absolutely sure. Not when that night was so fuzzy. But when she closed her eyes, really tried to picture it, the man in the kitchen was already there when she walked in, standing at the far end by the sink. She didn’t remember anyone following her. She remembered himthere. “Natalie, is there another way into the kitchen?”
“Just the one,” Natalie said. “Why?”
“I’m not sure,” Lucy mumbled. It was hard to say how much of her own recollections she could trust, but this one felt particularly clear. “Alicia, did Luke tell you which cruise liner he worked for?”
“Like I said,” Alicia started, “I was pretty…” But Lucy could see the moment something shifted loose in Alicia’s mind. “Wait. Yes. Demeter Cruise Lines.”
“You’re sure?” Natalie asked.
“I’m a classics major,” Alicia said dryly.
Lucy nodded slowly, only half taking that in. Processing could come later. Right then, she was pretty sure she needed to be out of this café.
“Thank you for your help, Alicia,” she said mechanically. “Natalie—I think I’m gonna go.”
“You can come back to my dorm,” Natalie said quickly. “If you want company.”
Lucy did want company, actually. She hadn’t realized, until that moment, just how much she didn’t want to go back to that empty dorm. But practically, she knew she needed a second to breathe. “Thank you,” she said. “But I think I need to lie down.”
Natalie hugged her again as they all departed the table. And as Lucy made her way back into the stinging light of the afternoon, she imagined the pale corridor of Natalie’s kitchen one more time. As she’d come out from the dance floor the other night, it had looked like a little oasis in the dark. It had looked safe.
And by the sink—she blinked, and she could almost see it. The broad, straight back of the stranger. She closed her eyes. Tried to push her memory just a few steps farther. He had turned to her. He’d opened his mouth, told her something. This she was sure of.
But when she tried to imagine his face, she saw nothing.
Lucy’s phone buzzed in her purse as she made her heavy way back up the path to Quincey. Another text. Her phone hadn’t been this active since high school.
This time, though, it wasn’t Natalie, or even her mother. It was a string of numbers with a local area code.
Lucy, your bloodwork indicates a possible iron deficiency. We recommend a screening for anemia at your earliest convenience. I’ve included the number of a local clinic below.
She tucked her phone away again and fumbled with her ID card to swipe into the building. Anemia. That would be a nicer explanation than all the explanations that kept coming to mind. But it felt less like an answer and more like a marker on the road to the answer.
She shut the door behind her and blinked, hard. Even after all that sleep this morning, she was exhausted. But she still had work to do.
She checked her mail, found another handful of flyers for Pallas Radio—she faintly admired the hustle, but did have to wonder if this was why people didn’t seem to like them. The recycling bin was stuffed completely full, so she absently shoved them into her tote bag to throw away later.
The room was still empty when Lucy returned, and she glanced again at Whitney’s text. It was still the weekend—Whitney was probably still at her parents’, or maybe on the road. But she’d feel better if she knew exactly where Whitney was. She typed a response to Whitney’s last text.
When are you coming back?
When there was no immediate answer, she uneasily set her phone aside. Well. Maybe it was for the best, at least for a little while longer. According to Whitney, Lucy’s typing was “too forceful.”
Lucy booted up her computer and settled it on her lap. A Rollins PhD student named Luke, who had once worked at Demeter Cruise Lines. At least she had some specifics now.
For one brief, beautiful second, she thought it would be easy. The company was small enough: an Outer Banks–based liner that operated up and down the Carolinas, and the staff directory (complete with pictures) only listed about fifteen or so employees. But she didn’t see any pale-eyed guys with sandy-blond hair. Plenty of women in varying shades of bottle blond and middle-aged men with sun-weathered skin and craggy smiles, but only a handful of younger people in general. There wasaLuke, with dark hair and a grinning face. He looked the right age, at least, but—she found herself shaking her head. The silhouette was off.
She hit the back button, and her original search reloaded. It was only then that she caught the listing for the company on the sidebar, and the bolded subtitle.Permanently closed.
She flipped back to the website, an uneasy weightless feeling in the pit of her stomach. There was nothing in the cheery blue font or the endearingly janky graphic design that indicated anything was “permanently closed.” But Lucy noticed the social media feed a little down the page this time. The most recent post was time-stamped a little over three years prior.
