My heart thumps again. I’d just about convinced myself my eyes were playing tricks on me. But if Heather saw it, too . . . “Were they male or female?”

“I didn’t get a good look. I just ran and hid in here.”

I sniff the air. The smell is so faint I’m not sure if I’m imagining it. “Can you smell perfume?”

She sniffs. “No, why?”

“Curtis thinks Saskia might be the one who brought us here,” I say.

“No.” Heather shrinks back against the wall. “It can’t be.”

She’s gone so pale that for a moment I think she’s going to faint. I grip her arm. “Deep breaths.”

“But she’s . . .” She finds it hard to say. “Dead. Isn’t she?”

“Apparently.” I’m not at all sure anymore.

Heather falls into a stunned silence. I can’t tell if it’s ghosts in general that scare her or the notion of this one particular ghost.

“Anyway, Dale’s freaking,” I say. “You better go and tell them you’re alive.”

Her eyes dart either way down the corridor. “Will you come with me?”

“You’ll be faster without me.” I explain about my knee. “Go on. I’ll catch up when I can.”

Reluctantly she heads off.

My knee is on fire and I’m desperately thirsty. There’s a glass by the sink. I limp over to it, flinching as the door slams behind me. The glass doesn’t look too clean, so I run the cold tap and scoop water into my mouth with my hands. The water pressure in here is even worse than it is in my shower. Only a trickle comes out.

When I’ve drunk two handfuls, I lean against the wall, psyching myself up to limp back to my dorm.

As I turn to leave, someone crashes through the door.

A tiny scream bursts out of me.

Curtis grips my hips. “Hey, it’s me.”

I’m breathless. Shock, combined with the feel of his hands. “I found Heather.”

“Yeah,” he says. “I saw her just now.”

I haven’t pulled away and neither has he. Like me, he still wears his snowboard jacket, and the Velcro fastenings on our collars are close enough to snag together. I can smell his skin—sweat and sunscreen.

“How’s your knee?”

I smile. “Hurting.”

He smiles, too. “You had to do that, didn’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

His hands tighten on my hips and something inside me tightens, too.

“I’ve got a knee brace in my dorm,” he says. “But I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do, because now you can’t ride down. You make me so mad, Milla.”

He doesn’t seem it, though. Not anymore. There’s warmth in his expression, the most there’s been since we arrived here. And something else.

I walk him backward until he’s up against the tiles.

“Milla.”