I crouched beside her, pressed up against the cupboard under the sink. I pushed hair away from her face. Her skin was warm, I noticed with relief. I couldn’t manage the courage required to touch her neck and feel for a pulse, so instead, I put a finger under her nose, waiting for wisps of air.

Then, as if by miracle, her eyelids flew open. Her hand reached out and grabbed the flesh around my waist with a force that startled me. “Elle,” she said and then louder, moaning, “Elle!”

She’d returned from the dead with a terrifying vengeance and my name on her lips. I scrambled up, her nails leaving red marks on my hip bones, and backed away.

Her breathing was shallow and raspy, and after her eyes opened, they wouldn’t close again, though she was still completely motionless in every other way.

Her mouth opened and closed slowly, but she wasn’t forming words, just vague soft sounds, like a baby. I was confused and terrified. Had she been out alone? I ran upstairs to find my phone, and typed out first James’s, and then Carlow’s number, one after the other, but I was too disoriented to call either.

I ran back down the stairs. She hadn’t moved. “Lonnie,” I said, bending over her again. “I’m going to call 911,” I said. “Okay?”

She said something that sounded at first like nonsense, but I leaned closer and she tried again. “So confused,” she said. And then, “So cold.”

“Lonnie,” I said, touching her face, slapping her a little. “Where were you? Did you take something?”

“No,” she said, but I didn’t know which question she was answering. Slowly, she blinked her bloodshot eyes. “So cold,” she repeated.

I ran up the stairs again and brought a pillow and throw from the couch. I wished I could move her. I tried, briefly, but even her head was heavy with dead weight. I struggled to push the pillow underneath—her face plopped onto the velvet fabric with a startling thud.

“Okay,” I said, tucking the blanket around her. “Okay. You’re going to be fine.”

I felt self-conscious, as I said it, like she could tell I had no idea what was going to happen to her.