Page 66 of The Narrow

I shove myself upright, looking around wildly. “What...?” My head pounds.

“She was here,” Veronica says. “Oh my God, Eden, she washere.I saw her standing over you and then she kissed you and you started choking and I tried to get her off you, but when I touched her, she vanished, and you were drowning, and I didn’t know what to do, so I just started screaming your name, and...” She looks over her shoulder and calls out, “She’s okay!”

Del. I stagger to my feet and past Veronica, into the hall. The door at the bottom of the stairs is closed, but I can see Del through the window, standing right on the other side. She presses one hand against the glass when she sees me, letting out a cry of relief.

“She knew,” Veronica says. “She was yelling for me.”

Del’s eyes are wide, her pupils dilated until you can barely see the ring of her irises around them. “I saw her in the hall. She was coming toward me, but then she turned into your room.”

“You saw her,” I say raggedly. Relief floods through me. Not because I have doubted for even a moment that Maeve is real, but because this means that Veronica knows it, too.

Now she will have to believe me.

“Eden,” Del says. Her voice is clear, sharp-edged, despite the door between us. “Your face.”

I touch my fingers to my cheek. It’s tender. My lip bloodied. My arm is in agony once again. The vicious pain was a comfort for a few minutes, proof that I was alive enough to feel it, but now it’s too intense to bear.

“She hurt you bad,” Veronica breathes. She spreads her hand near my face. I flinch away from it, but she’s only measuring her hand against the marks on my cheek.

“She didn’t do this to me,” I say. I look down the hall. The inner door to the dressing room is cracked open. The cuff of my jeans has wedged it open, keeping it from latching shut. Ruth must have dropped them when she went to check for the pill in my pocket. The rain-soaked cuff is surrounded by a small slick of water, and bare wet footprints track down the hall toward my rooms.

That’s all it took. A few drops, carelessly allowed through the door.

“You need to get to a hospital,” Del says.

“I was fine the first time,” I protest. “I just need to rest.”

“The first time? The first time what?” Veronica asks.

“Her brother’s friend attacked her,” Del says. Betrayal blurs into guilt in my mind. I didn’t lie to her, but I hid the truth. She thinks it was Dylan. And wasn’t it? He was the one who whispered in Luke’s ear, who shattered all the progress he made. It wasn’t Luke’s fault, what happened. Not really. “He broke her arm, and I’m pretty sure gave her a concussion, based on how out of it she is, and when the ghost touches her, the injuries all come back.”

Veronica turns a wounded look on me. “Why didn’t you tell us? Wait—your arm isbroken? Why the hell didn’t you go to a doctor?”

“I can’t tell,” I say. I can’t look her in the face. “It would be bad for Luke.”

“FuckLuke,” Veronica says with a snarl. “We’re going to the hospital. And the police.”

“It won’t matter. I can’t say that Dylan did this. It’ll look like it just happened. There’s no way he could have caused these injuries. Even if I tell now, no one will believe me.”

“Whatever,” Veronica says. “You need to get that arm in a cast, and you need an MRI or whatever to make sure your head injury isn’t going to kill you in your sleep.”

“It didn’t—”

“Before. I know. But who the fuck knows what’s happening when your bones crack all over again?” Veronica asks. “We’ll say it was rainy and you fell. I tried to catch you by the arm and that’s why it’s bruised.”

“Your hand is way too small,” I say.

“Like they’re going to notice. Come on. I’m driving you to the hospital.”

“It’s still raining,” Del points out, and both of us fall silent.

“In the morning,” Veronica says at last. “We’ll go in the morning. And then I’m going to kill that ghost. I don’t care if she’s already dead.”

“No,” I say. I reach out, take Veronica’s hand. “She didn’t mean to do this to me, V. She’s looking for the girl she loves, that’s all. She didn’t just fall in the river. She was pushed—someone murdered her, and now she’s lost. We have to help her. Please.” I’m crying, hot tears trailing down my cheeks, banishing the cold of the river water.

Veronica puts her arms around me. “Hush. Okay. I’m sorry, Eden. We’ll help her. I promise we’ll help her. But first we have to help you.”

I nod against her shoulder, and she strokes my hair, whispering comfort into my ear. Behind her, Del presses a hand against the glass, as if she wishes she could reach through. Wishes she could touch me. But there’s river water on my skin. On my lips. One touch from me would kill her, and so she stands in silence, three feet and an infinity between us.

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