Despite half expecting shouts and alarms to go off as soon as she set foot on the gravel, the doors opened without a sound and Thea stepped through. The air was the kind of cold that woke a person up, but politely, without the bite of winter just yet. It was exactly what she needed. There were a few people sitting on the green so she skirted it and took the uphill path that would lead her to the coast.

Her first session at Sleep School had taught her there were two stages of sleep. The first half of the night was ruled more by NREM sleep where the muscles relaxed, but then in the second half, it switched to a dominance of REM sleep, which locked the muscles and allowed the brain to safely dream.

If she’d taken anything away from the lesson, it was that she was obviously not getting enough REM sleep. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know what a lack of it could do to a person – maybe she’d skip that lecture.

Thea’s thought process was interrupted. She hadn’t really ever done much rambling and she was discovering that, as it was the middle of October, the polite cold was actually becoming pretty sharp, especially as she hadn’t been issued with a coat and was only wearing her thin cult clothes. Worse than that, nature, at that moment, had turned into a stony path, which she wasn’t sure her stupid soft-soled moccasins could handle.

Thea had to stop. She was more out of breath than she was going to admit and, so far, she hadn’t seen any sign of a lighthouse. The moccasins were not going to make it, she could feel sharp little stones gouging into the butter-soft leather with every step and she wasn’t keen on destroying them on her first day. She resolved to ask for outdoor shoes.

The path, however, had taken her somewhat closer to the monastery. A small field of scratchy-looking plants separated her from its stone walls, mottled with moss and pockmarked like diseased skin. Nasty things had happened here, and walls remembered.

She gazed up at the empty glassless windows, the wind blowing her hair in her face, so she wasn’t sure later, when she thought about it, whether the slight movement at one shadowy aperture had been her own hair, or something within. It flicked across her vision with the speed of a snake’s tongue.

Her hair.

Probably.

Or a bird.

Though, for the briefest second, she could have sworn she saw the pale blob of a face.

Chapter 10

Rory’s beard, and the rest of him, was waiting for her at her health assessment the next day.

‘Hello, Miss Mackenzie. Tried to knee anyone in the balls lately?’