Page 9 of Sleep No More
“Be careful. Don’t let him talk you into going someplace where you’ll be alone with him.”
“I’ve already been alone with him, Talia. If he wanted to murder me he could have done it this afternoon at the asylum. He’s very... fast.”
“Fast?”
“Excellent reflexes.”
“Oh, I see,” Talia said. “The athletic type.”
“Not exactly. More like a big cat. A really big, very hungry, and exhausted cat.”
“Never mind. The thing is, you can’t make any assumptions about his intentions. Text or call when you’re back in your hotel room. I want a full report. Meanwhile, don’t do anything dumb.”
“Hey, thanks for the terrific advice,” Pallas said. “I never would have thought of that on my own.Don’t do anything dumb. Yep, words to live by, all right. I’ll write them down as soon as we hang up so I don’t forget.”
“I’m serious, Pallas. We aren’t playing games here.”
“I know. I’ll be careful.”
“So, how’s the hotel room?” Talia asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, it’s fine.” Pallas looked around the room. “Just the usual. It’s not like anyone died in this room, at least not recently.”
“No major redecorating required?”
Pallas smiled at the tiny container of succulents sitting on the windowsill. “Nothing my travel plants can’t handle.”
“Good,” Talia said. “I’ll say goodbye for now, then. Just be careful with that writer—and remember, we’re in this together.”
“Until we get answers.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Pallas put herphone on the table.We’re in this together until we get answerswas more than a signature for the podcast as far as she and Talia and Amelia were concerned. For the three of them the words had become a way of renewing the vow they had made to each other in the days following their lost night at the Lucent Springs Hotel.
They had promised to stick together until they got answers because they had quickly discovered they were on their own. Some people, including law enforcement, had concluded they had spent the lost hours doing heavy drugs. Those who believed they were telling the truth assumed the amnesia had been caused by the trauma of the earthquake and fire and assured them their memories would return in time.
Back at the start, they hadn’t known what to believe themselves. Amnesia left a huge psychic black hole. But it had soon become apparent that whatever had happened to them in the ruins of the Lucent Springs Hotel had changed them in ways they were still trying to understand. They would not be able to rest until they got answers.They had been strangers before Lucent Springs. They did not even live in the same town. Pallas’s home was currently a cozy little apartment in Keeley Point, a boutique community on the coast a few miles south of Los Angeles. Talia was located in Seattle. Amelia lived near San Diego.
Night was falling fast. Pallas turned on a lamp and took another look at the drawing. Why snakes? To anyone else the image would appear fantastical or surreal, perhaps the product of a fevered brain. She knew there was meaning in the picture, but it wasn’t obvious what that meaning was. It was up to her to decode the message her other senses had sent her.
She had been a child when she had discovered it was easy to slide into a daydreamlike state and draw for hours on end. The ability had been as natural to her as breathing, and for a time she had assumed she was destined for a career as a serious artist. Her parents had discouraged her, and so had every art teacher she had met along the way. Something about being good but not good enough. The wordcompetenthad been used a lot. For her, everyone said, drawing would make a nice hobby but not a career.
In the tradition of countless generations of undiscovered and unacknowledged artists, she had forged ahead with her dreams right up until that day when she was seventeen and began to realize what she was attempting to do when she went into a drawing trance. She wasn’t compelled to create something new and insightful. She wasn’t looking to give others a fresh perspective or see the world in a different light. She wasn’t trying to enlighten anyone. She had no message to convey. She was attempting to fix something that she could not see but that she knew intuitively was wrong in a space. She was struggling to rebalance the feel of a room.
For some reason she was motivated to adjust whatever it was inthe atmosphere that disturbed her sense of harmony on a visceral level. Unfortunately, there was a great deal that was wrong, off-balance, and disturbing in the world, and she had a tendency to stumble into the hot spots. The experience always sent an unpleasant frisson across her nerves.
By the time she was in college it had become apparent that she was dealing with a low-level case of generalized anxiety that promised to make her life miserable. She had sought counseling. After a number of false starts, she had gotten lucky when, on a whim in her junior year, she had volunteered to participate in a psychological research study. When the results came back she had been advised to consult a professional career counselor named Gabriella Jones.
“Drawing the bad stuff won’t help much,” Gabriella Jones said. She tossed aside the folder that contained the results of the study and clasped her hands on her desk. “You’ll have to find a way to fix the underlying lack of harmony in a space, at least some of the time. If you don’t, the anxiety will only get worse. It could become crippling.”
“I don’t understand,” Pallas said, baffled. “How do I do fix bad energy?”
“I suggest a career in interior design.”
“You mean like be a decorator? I don’t think my parents would approve of that. Everyone in my family becomes a research scientist or a doctor or a professor.”
“You asked for my advice,” Gabriella Jones said. “I’m giving it to you. Go out and rebalance some of the negative energy in the places where people live, work, and play. Pretty sure that’s your calling. You will find it very satisfying.”