She stops there, frozen. The hall is only dimly lit. But just in the moment of the door’s wide swing, she caught a shadow. Around the corner, now gone.

The stairwell is to her right. But the shadow disappeared in the opposite direction, the hall’s dead end. She blinks, listening. From here, she can just make out a low hum, a murmur. Voices.

Maeve lets the door close softly behind her and heads not toward the stairs but to where the hall turns and cuts off at an old changing room. She goes around the corner, careful, her feet soundless on the carpet.

Ahead, the murmur grows just slightly; a man’s voice, low and sure. She stops.

A thin spool of light spills from the changing-room door, open only an inch or two in the darkness. At the frame, there’s a figure crouched low. But it’s too small to be Dan, or even Justin. Someone quiet and compact, no bigger than Maeve herself.

Sadie.

The girl hovers there, something cradled in her arm. Something black.

Maeve stays frozen. The murmur grows stronger, and she realizes it’s not Sadie who is speaking; rather, Sadie is listening to whoever is in that room. Watching them.

More than one voice for sure, a man’s and a woman’s. Sadie reaches out and prods the door, the lightest touch, and it yawns another inch. Maeve can just make out Anna’s voice now, warm and low. There’s a bang and then a stifled laugh, and a figure cuts into the light. Tall, bare-shouldered, his cropped hair almost black against his skin.

Dan.

From inside, a hand slaps the door shut, and the hall is newly dark.

Sadie suddenly pushes up to stand and Maeve leaps away, back around the corner so as not to be seen. She turns and pretends to fuss with the door to the spa. Holding her breath.

A moment later, Sadie comes around the turn herself, head down. Seeing Maeve, she halts, and the two women stare at each other. Sadie’s face gaunt and young, defensive.

Maeve steps back. Maybe this is somehow not what it seems.

A fleeting moment of fear, or shock, passes through Sadie’s eyes—and then she recovers, glancing briskly over her shoulder before brushing past Maeve, as though on her way to finish some official task.

“The spa is closed at this time of night,” she says. Her voice is all business, a harsh whisper. As though it’s Maeve who should not be there in the dark.

Alone now, Maeve comes up the stairs, then takes a long, wary look down her own hall before leaving the stairwell. The corridor is lit by a few regularly spaced sconces. There is no one else around.