Chapter Seventeen

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" Layla."

Something cool touches my cheeks and involuntarily, I shudder awake. Through heavy lidded eyes, I barely make out a figure standing a few feet away from the bed. In the grogginess of sleep, the figure divides into two blurry structures, wavering slightly before me. I shut my eyes against them.

I'm lying on the bed, my legs caught in a battle with the sheets, tangled impossibly together. My head is lolling to a side of the pillow and I'm vaguely aware of a thin stream of spittle that'd trickled down and dried up by the side of my mouth.

I'm bone-tired. My metacarpals, phalanges, carpals, joints –everything– aches. I stopped writing sometime after midnight, when creatures of the night are said to crawl about openly, when souls of the damned wander about seeking retribution. Also, when I felt a presence around my desk and later in the very words I was putting down.

If fear had ignited the need to go to bed, fatigue had fanned the flame.