I have to get inside! Charlie sat bolt upright with a ragged gasp, inhaling like she’d just escaped from drowning. The doors—the closet. She threw off the gray wool blanket and sheets, tangling herself in the process before she managed to get free. She was so hot she could barely stand it, and the wool had been scratching where it touched her chin. She felt strange, more alert: the world was in sharp focus, and it was jarring, as if she had been drifting in some kind of shadowy, half-conscious state for days. Everything hurts, she’d managed to whisper to John, but it had been somehow detached from her, there was some buffer between her body and her mind. Now, her mind clear, the buffer was gone, and she ached all over, a dull, constant pain that seemed to be everywhere at once. She leaned back against the wall. She had not woken to sleepy disorientation—she knew exactly where she was. She was in John’s apartment, behind the couch. She was behind the couch, because …

“Someone is impersonating me,” she said uncertainly, and the sound of her own voice was startling in the empty room.

She got to her knees, not quite trusting her legs, then steadied herself on the back of the couch, getting to her feet with effort. She straightened, and was instantly dizzy, her head swimming as her knees threatened to buckle under her. Charlie gripped the back of the couch determinedly, picking a point on the wall and staring at it, willing the room to stop spinning.