Imani suspected that both were somewhere in the kitchen, but she couldn’t give either to him. She pushed the wheel left with all her might. “Please come.”

Metal pins slammed into place, unlocking the door. Imani pulled it toward her. Her arms vibrated from the weight of it. The phone fell from her ear. She leaned back, employing all her strength to retract the wall of an entrance.

It cracked open. She moved to the fissure and pushed the door back, peering inside. The space beyond was pitch-black, the kind of darkness that seemed to make objects magically disappear. “Hello, Tonya? Are you in there? It’s Imani.”

A scratching, shuffling noise answered. For a moment, Imani was tempted to shut the door. Maybe she’d gone crazy from grief and isolation. Perhaps all that was really inside Coffre were starving, cannibalistic rats.

“Hello?” Imani screamed again.

A strange form stumbled toward the doorway. She could just make it out in the slight shift of darkness. Imani stepped back.

The woman who emerged was severely dehydrated and malnourished. Her skin was taut against her bones, like the plastic of a drum against steel. Her blond hair lay oily and tangled against her shoulders. Imani had never known her to look like this. Still, she’d know her best friend anywhere.

“Melissa,” she shouted.

Her friend limped from the room. She started to fall forward, exhausted by the weight of the other woman leaning heavily against her side. Imani pulled both Tonya and Melissa into her arms. As she did, her side grew damp. She touched the spot and raised her hands to her face.

It was blood.

“I knew you’d come,” Melissa whispered. “I knew it.”

It was the last thing she said before collapsing into Imani’s chest.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

MELISSA

The nurse couldn’t find a vein. Dehydration caused them to constrict, she explained while jabbing the inner fold of Melissa’s arm. It was the second attempt in the right arm after failing to insert the cannula between the bones on the back of her left hand. Melissa could only nod in response. The days of silence and darkness had rendered the outside world intolerable. Everything was too loud. Too bright. Her senses needed time to adjust.

She wouldn’t receive any respite, though. Through the door to her private room, Melissa could see two people hovering. Though they wore hospital masks, Melissa pegged them as cops. Her circumstances and the dour looks that she’d seen imitated on too many Law & Order episodes seemed to confirm it. They were watching the nurse’s attempts to fit the needle beneath her flaky, near-translucent skin, waiting for her to take in the liquid required for her brain to function.