Number One Fan

Praise for the novels of Meg Elison

“Number One Fan is a tense ride from the start as we’re introduced to one of the most deeply unsettling villains I’ve encountered in a long time. It’s about fighting for who and what you are when it would be easier to simply give up and be someone else’s idea of you. It’s about pain and resilience and redemption. In short, it’s terrific.”

—Richard Kadrey, New York Times bestselling author of Sandman Slim

“A tense, creepy, and deeply spooky thriller that locks you down and wrings you out in the best way possible. I had other things to do today, but I couldn’t put this down—so those things didn’t get done. All Meg’s fault. I hope she’s happy, drat her.”

—Cherie Priest, author of The Toll

NUMBER ONE FAN

Meg Elison

harpercollins.com.au/hq

MEG ELISON is an author and feminist essayist. Her debut, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award. She is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon and Otherwise Awards finalist. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley.

Dedicated to TNC: as we are, as we were, as we will be.

We were the best thing I ever had, and you all got the best out of me.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

August 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

September 3

Chapter 8

September 12

Chapter 9

December 10

Chapter 10

April 21

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

September 4

Chapter 14

October 30

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

March 14

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

December 16

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgments

1

The car rolled into view, the lit decals on the dashboard letting Eli know that her driver was typical: working for all the rideshare services at once.

Gotta hustle, she thought as she quickened her pace away from the airfield. She hoped he hadn’t been waiting long.

“Elizabeth?” He seemed bored, not even bothering to turn around.

“That’s right. I go by Eli, though.”

“Sure,” he said, tapping his phone.

She settled in, her satchel beside her. “Thank you.”

The car was air-conditioned against the cushion of heat that pressed against its tinted windows, and as they headed toward the freeway, she finally began to relax. She was grateful the driver didn’t seem to want to talk. She was tired of talking from the event, and her throat was dry and sore.

“There is a cold drink there in the cup holder. Down in the door.” His voice was low, a raspy baritone.

“Oh, cool, thanks.” Eli reached down and felt the blessed condensation on a plastic bottle. She pulled up a blue Gatorade and wrenched it open, suddenly very thirsty. She drank half of it in huge gulps, disliking the weird, salty taste of the electrolyte mixture, but unable to stop herself. It felt good, after hours of talking and the dry air of the flight. She breathed deep and drank again, coming close to finishing it off.

Must be the heat, she thought. That and the two miniature bottles of Jack Daniel’s she’d had to calm her nerves on the plane.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket in an unfamiliar cadence and she slid it out to check.

Her notification from the rideshare app blared.

Brenda has canceled the ride for reason: no-show. You have been charged a cancellation fee of $5.

Eli frowned at her phone. Had she summoned two cars by accident?

She unlocked it with her facial scan and checked. The app showed only one ride: a black Prius driven by Brenda, which had arrived five minutes ago and canceled four minutes after that.

It wasn’t a busy day at the airfield. It certainly wasn’t curbside pickup like at SFO, but it was still possible that she had gotten in the wrong car.

But he had known her name.

She leaned forward to get the driver’s attention. “Hey, just clarifying—you’ve got my info, right? I just got a cancellation from another driver, and I’m worried that I got someone else’s ride.”

The driver tapped his phone and his eyes darted between it, the rearview mirror and the road. “Elizabeth Grey. Headed to the Sailing Stones, right?”

The phone displayed a highlighted blue route along the freeway. It was a map program, rather than the rideshare’s software, but Eli had seen drivers toggle between those before. She glanced up at the rearview mirror, but his eyes were on the road and he had put on a pair of dark glasses.

“Right,” she said. “Huh. Wonder what happened.”

Eli settled back into her seat. She stared out the window and thought of home, of the deep gray fog rolling down over the hillsides and the wind coming in, salty from the Bay. She was homesick. Even in the same state, the air felt wrong on her skin. Los Angeles had been an endless parade of palm trees against a blameless sky, and the tacos were so good she could barely stop shoveling them in, but the traffic had left her feeling exhausted upon every arrival.

And then there was the way that people looked you over in Los Angeles, deciding whether you were famous or fuckable or useful in some other way before sliding on to the next thing. Her audiences had been lively and engaging but draining, and after each of her events, she’d wanted nothing but some dinner, a hot bath and sleep. Maybe a couple fingers of bourbon over ice.

Traveling always left her wrung out and unmoored. It didn’t help that the sun was so all-encompassing outside the car it could have been anywhere, anytime of day, the hot, white light blinding. She couldn’t look at a surface other than the black asphalt without squinting. Living in San Francisco gave her what she had thought was a passing acquaintance with the sun, but the glare as the 10 freeway led out into Kern County and the high desert landscape was just too much.

How are people here not dog-tired all the time? Doesn’t the heat suck all the life out of them? How do they ever leave the house? Christ, it’s March. Imagine later in the year. I gotta get some sunglasses.

She set the phone beside her on the seat to avoid pawing it in and out of her jeans. She belatedly buckled her seat belt as they picked up speed. Out the window, the freeway was sliding past, one unfamiliar mile blending into the next.

The driver turned his radio on. It annoyed her at first that he had not asked, but then she reminded herself that he probably spent the whole day in his car. She wasn’t talking; he was probably both lonely and bored. Let him have his Oingo Boingo.

He changed lanes to get into the faster flow of traffic and the motion of it made her feel a trifle ill. This heat had produced all kinds of new feelings. She ignored it, drinking the last swallow of the Gatorade.

She looked around for a polite place to deposit the bottle. The motion of her head made her dizziness worse and she tried to blink it away. “Do you have a spot for trash?” she asked him. As the words slid out of her mouth, she realized she was slurring like she was very, very drunk. She was horrified to realize she was drooling, too.

Eli tried to get ahold of herself. She pushed with her palms and worked to sit up straight, but found that she could not. Her head felt far too heavy for the wet noodle of her neck to have ever supported. Her abs were slack and her spine was a worm. She sagged against the seat; the seat belt the only thing keeping her from sliding to the floor.

“Whass going on?” The words seemed to take a long time to reach her ears.

Oh shit, I’m having a stroke. An old classmate of Eli’s had had a freak stroke event a week shy of her thirtieth birthday. Frantically, she tried to recall the diagnostic that the woman had posted on Facebook right after. She couldn’t speak clearly. She couldn’t lift her arms at all. Her hand flopped uselessly in the direction of her phone.

“Ooogoada tachme to ahspital,” she slurred at him in molasses-thick nightmare slowness. “Shumding wruuuuunnnnng.”

“Relax,” he said clearly, his voice less deep than before. “You are fine.”

With her last spasm of strength, Eli pulled at the door handle, intending to tumble out of the car. The child safety lock held her in place.

I’m not fine, she thought with her last clear and lucid moment. As her eyes fell closed like heavy curtains, she finally registered that they were going the wrong way. The steely spike of panic that stabbed at her heart was almost enough to counteract the soporific effect of whatever was wrong with her, but not quite. Fighting, terrified, she slipped out of consciousness.

2

A rumbling sound. Flashes of bright light. A thin jet of icy air. A roll of nausea, then another.

Eli Grey had brief moments of something approaching being awake, but she couldn’t make sense of what was happening. She was on a plane—or was it just the memory of a plane? No, she was in a car. She was very hot, and when she could force her eyes open, dust motes swirled past her face into a blurry field of vision. She groaned and went back out.

When she came to again, she was in a bed and under covers. It was not her bed, and the covers did not feel like that industrial foam-plastic stuff she knew from hotels. Deep breaths brought more strange smells: cleaning fluid, ant bait, an unfamiliar soap. She thought hard.

Did I hook up with someone after a reading? Did I get hammered last night? What’s the last thing I can remember?

But all she remembered was the tiny plane that had flown her across the Southern California desert, and the creases in her hands when she had let go of her death grip on the Naugahyde seats.

Deep breath. Figure it out. You’re okay. You’re alone, for now. Deep breath.

Eli remembered fidgeting in the cramped airplane seat. She had badly wanted another drink. When she thought about the series being almost done, about the eighth book coming out, there was a small panic somewhere inside her. The success of her book series had brought her financial security: a little house and a little money, her debts paid off. When this series ended one day, she knew what she wanted to write next. There was a little thrill in her belly when she wondered whether people would like it as well as the Millicent Michaelson books or not. Her other books out of the series had done well, but not blockbusters.

The craft had bumped and bounced to a stop, and she breathed a long, shaky sigh of relief. They began to taxi around the small airport and she knew her drinking window had closed.

Airport personnel scurried out to roll one of those old-fashioned staircases to the tiny plane’s door, and Eli emerged, blinded by the sun and taking the heat of the Mojave to the face like the first volley of a pillow fight in hell. Blinking and pulling her sunglasses down, she turned her phone back on.

She tweeted:

Back on solid ground and it feels so good! Thank you, Los Angeles!

She attached a selfie in the big gray headphones, with the tiny plane evident in the background. Eli wrote in the caption about her private plane experience; not glamorous like a G6, no flight attendants to bring drinks and no luxurious seating. But it had been only her and the pilot, unable to speak over the roar of the engines. She had also gotten a shot of the city she had taken in the air, added it to the gallery post. Immediately, likes and retweets began to roll in. She muted the notifications and pocketed her phone. She thought about texting her assistant, Joe, who was going to check in with her at SeaTac tomorrow, but decided it could wait. The kid deserved a day off.

On the ground, the pilot had found her and wanted to shake her hand. Eli adjusted her satchel to hang between her shoulders and shook back.

“Thank you for the safe flight. I was pretty nervous about such a small plane.”

“No trouble. I make that run all the time,” the man said through his gingery beard. “I was wondering, though, if you’d sign my wife’s book for her. She’s just crazy about that Millicent.”

Eli grinned broadly. “Sure, I will, of course. Do you have it handy? I’ve got a copy in my satchel—”

“No, no, it’s here in my car. If you’ll just wait a second.” He jogged off, holding up both hands. “Back in one minute.”

“No problem,” she called to him. She pulled her phone back out and began to look at her odds of getting a car back to her hotel. Small towns in California had fewer options than San Francisco, which seemed to dream up a new, disruptive transportation solution every two weeks. She checked her favorite rideshare app and was surprised to see a handful of drivers active and nearby. She put in her location and the address of her hotel, and saw that she had correctly guessed it was going to be a while before her ride showed up. She stowed her phone again and spied the pilot jogging back to her.

“Here we go!” He was holding a first-edition paperback copy of The City under the City, her debut novel. She knew it was the first edition on sight, because she had been published the first time by a tiny press with no design budget, and the cover was homely and humble. It gave her a funny twinge in her heart to see it.

“I haven’t seen one of these at a signing in about five years,” she said, smiling and taking the book from him.

“My wife has been a fan of yours since back then,” he said, grinning back. “She used to tell all her friends, her book club ladies, you know, that you were gonna be the next big thing. She says she saw it right away. She wanted me to make sure you knew that she was loyal from the very beginning.”

Eli opened the front cover, noticing how worn this copy of City was. “I can see this one has been well-loved. Are you sure I can’t get her a new copy? I could have it sent to you.”

“No, no. This one is her treasure. She says it’s her proof that she’s your biggest fan. She’d be here herself, but we just had a baby and she’s still lying in. Stitches, you know.”

Eli nodded, bracing the book gently against her belly and uncapping her good fountain pen, a Montblanc she had picked out to celebrate hitting the bestseller list. “Should I just autograph this, or make it out to her personally?”

“Oh, she’d just die. Please make it out to Adeline, and say something nice. Or clever. Or both, I guess.” He was grinning and Eli could not help but grin back.