I nodded, trying to process the fact that Evie’s car was found burned in a forest.
28. Evie
POPPY AND I DIDN’T HEAR ANY more of the whispers behind the walls. Brother Sage came to investigate the sick room. But like us, he found nothing. I knew exactly what he was thinking. We were just two girls who were feeling spooked.
“There were voices,” Poppy insisted, obviously catching the paternalistic smile on Brother Sage’s face.
“I’ll sit with Kara, if you like,” he offered, bending to check her breathing.
“No, that’s okay,” said Poppy. “I’m sure you’ve got more important things to do. We’ll stay here.” She turned to me for affirmation.
I nodded.
“Very well,” he said. “But let us know the moment she wakes. We don’t anticipate any lasting effects from her mishap, but we’d still like to make certain.”
“She seemed to be having bad dreams before,” I said.
“Did she?” Brother Sage tugged the blanket up over Kara’s shoulders. “Hopefully they won’t continue. It must have been an unsettling experience.”
“Brother Sage?” Poppy widened her eyes.
“Yes?” he said.
“We’re all feeling a bit raw after what happened to Kara,” Poppy told him. “Could we have a little hint about what challenge three will be? Just to get a little better prepared mentally?”
I stifled a gasp. It was a bold thing to ask.
He chuckled under his breath. “I’m sure you don’t want to gain an unfair advantage.”
With that he exited the room.
Poppy gave me an innocent shrug. “Worth a shot.”
“Hey,” I whispered. “I thought I saw something when I was in the tank. Like, someone lighting a candle in the middle room of the monastery.”
“The middle room?”
“Yeah. The one that has to be in the dead centre. There are six hexagonal challenge rooms—so they have to surround a centre hexagon, right?”
“I guess?”
“Didn’t Brother Vito show you the map of this place?”
“No. Seems like he only does special things with you.” A hint of jealousy hung in her voice.
“It was on the first morning. I was lost.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, the walls of the tank are glass, right? And the tank I was in faced the centre room. I thought I saw a girl. But her hair was all over her face. And then . . . someone else quickly came and snuffed out the candle. She seemed scared.”
She eyed me quizzically. “You weren’t having raptures of the deep or something?”
“Only people who dive really deep in the ocean get that, don’t they?”
She wrinkled her brow. “You’re making me worry. You should have told Brother Sage. But you’d better be sure you saw something. I mean, we did just tell him we heard whispers in the walls.”
I bit down on my lip, starting to question myself. I had been at the start of oxygen deprivation at the time. And the image of the girl had been murky through the water.
“How are you going?” she asked me in a concerned tone. “You seemed pretty bent out of shape yesterday.”
“I’m fine. Talking to Brother Vito just brought up memories of Ben. He was my big brother. He died when he was nineteen. I was seventeen then.” I eased myself into the chair beside Poppy’s.
“Oh, rough.” She frowned sympathetically.
“Yeah. It was really rough. Still is.” I drew in a breath weighed with a sadness too deep to explain to Poppy. “Hey, how about you? How are you going? I should have checked. You know, especially after the way Greta left the island.”
“You don’t need to worry about me. The detox that the mentors sent me away on worked. But in some ways, that’s bad. Because I can’t shut things out the way I used to. I have to face everything.”
“I remember you told me your boyfriend died of an overdose recently. That must be so hard.”
She nodded, her eyes suddenly glistening. “Doug was a beautiful soul. A musician. He used to sing me songs he wrote. I was working at an art museum then. He’d pick me up from work at night, and we’d go to all the pub theatres around London. Sometimes, he acted in the plays the pubs put on. He was so talented.”
“How sad. Such a waste of a life . . .”
“Yes. Such a waste. God, Evie, I’m a curse. When I was sixteen, I had a boyfriend a lot like Doug. His name was Evan, and he went to the same school as me. I thought we’d get married one day. We snuck out one night to go to a rave party. He took some pills someone sold him. And that was it. He died in hospital three days later.”