Images of those moments in the hallway flood back, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek. “Ellis, when we were first triggered, when the first Random came, Anil said Emily’s name. I think he was seeing her. They… look like people sometimes.”
He looks at me sharply. “You didn’t mention that before.”
I didn’t want to tell him that the Random I saw was myself. “When he was running around the mall, Rory kept saying ‘he’ like he was seeing a specific person. And he said getting the skulls makes us relive our greatest online fails.”
“Why would Emily be Anil’s greatest fail?”
I think of how I felt seeing the Random that looked like child me. I hated myself for having been that girl, for forcing Ellis to play the game. And then I remember what Anil told me outside the cafeteria, leaning in close so his friends wouldn’t hear.
“Anil liked Emily, and I think she didn’t like him back, at least not that way. Then he gave her the Glare, and she jumped off that cliff. So to him, even if he didn’t mean to hurt her, that might seem like the worst thing he ever did online.”
Maybe the Randoms aren’t just faceless people who come after us, like whoever called me a freak and whoever asked if I killed Rory. Maybe sometimes they are us.
“The same thing could’ve happened to Caroline,” I say. “Even if she created the Glare, it could have latched on to her memories, her fears.”
Ellis is nodding. “One time when we had dinner together, after Caroline got out, my mom was bitching about online blowback she got for something, and Caroline said, ‘Randoms can only hurt you if you let them.’ The way she said it made us all shut up. Like she wanted it to be true.”
I want it to be true, too. But Rory believed in facing the Randoms head-on, and he’s dead. “If that’s what’s happening,” I say, “why hasn’t it been as bad with me? I mean—well, you saw what happened in physics. And there’ve been other things.” I could have killed Clint. “But with the others, it got bad faster. Anil said he got to level thirteen just last night.”
Ellis drives with his left hand, the right resting flat on the seat between us. “Maybe it’s like a virus—some people get really sick right away, and others hold out. Maybe all those years out in the desert gave you a stronger immune system.”
I don’t want Mom to be right, but it’s true that remembering the smell of earth helped me in the school hallway. “You said the desert missed me. At the beach party.”
Ellis blushes. “I was drunk.”
I cover his fingers lightly with mine, and we stay quiet like that for a while.
Bolinas is a secret.
“There’s no sign to tell you where to turn,” Ellis explains as we speed along Highway 1. “A couple of my surfer friends brought me once.”
We’ve been soaring along the edges of cliffs, the ocean winking on our left. Now we shoot into a tunnel of foliage that filters the sun: pampas grass, tangled vines, eucalyptus.
Light glints on a nearby lagoon. The beige bluffs echo it, and the whole landscape is dreamlike, veiled in gold.
This isn’t the kind of place you go to find someone who created a killer game. It’s the kind of place you go to spread a blanket and doze until your skin has soaked up the day’s warmth, and the reflection of sunset in your companion’s bruise-blue eyes makes you want to touch his cheek. Stop it right now, I tell myself. No distractions.
“We need a plan,” I say. “If Caroline is Clelia, she mentioned knowing who I am. Maybe she remembers me stealing her game. How much else does she know?”
Ellis scratches under the neck of his oversized T-shirt. “If she’s running the server, she could know which IP addresses are downloading the game. The server gets people’s phone numbers, too—that’s probably automated.”
So whoever’s running the server could be killing people without really thinking about it. “Do you think your sister wants to hurt anyone?”
Ellis’s lips tighten beneath his aviator shades. “Look, as far as we know, she’s never hurt anybody but herself.”
“So, Caroline creates the Glare, and she tests it on herself, and she’s the first victim of the Glare. But once she knows how it affects people, why does she set up the server?”
“Keep up the server. When you were six and getting those skull texts, she was in the psych ward, which means either that server worked without her for years, or someone’s helping her.”
“Maybe.” My voice comes out sharper than I intend. “In which case, she’ll have to tell us who’s helping her and where they are.”
“Or maybe the person running the server stole it from her, just like you stole the address.”
He brakes as we reach a ramshackle main drag: no stoplight, one gas station, two surf shops. Some buildings are nautical white, others naturally weathered; everything’s tangled in vines and hazed with diffuse light.
“Look, I know you’re thinking maybe I can’t be objective, because it’s my sister. And you’re right that I don’t feel ready for this. When Caroline went away, when my parents wouldn’t talk about her, I stopped being a brother. And now… I’m not sure I’m ready to see her. I’m not sure who I’ll be.”
“Let me do the talking, then.” The past few hours have stuck to me, a gritty residue under my clothes. My hip throbs where Mireya whacked it, and a certainty thumps under my breastbone: Caroline may be a victim, too, but if she’s running the Glare, she has to be stopped.
“Okay,” Ellis says. “But, Hedda?”
“What?”
His throat works. “You need to be careful. Anil was so scared the moment… the moment before. You didn’t see his face.”
The street dead-ends in a blaze of ocean and sky. Ellis consults a crumpled map in his lap, and I realize he’d normally be using his phone.
Mom would be so proud—now I’m keeping my new friends away from their devices, too. In her confused way, she intuited what I needed, but she understood so little.
Ellis backtracks, muttering to himself, until he finds a winding residential street that leads toward the coast. We’re back in the country now, and it’s rich-people country, despite the scraggly junipers and hedgerows overgrown with wildflowers. The tall gates and long drives, the distant glitters of giant windows, tell me the ocean can’t be far.
Caroline can’t afford this address. She should be skulking in a basement, her face washed in computer light. The closer we come, the less stable this travel-magazine landscape feels, as if we might slide off its edge into a nightmare.
Red-speckled trees. Lurid light of a storm. Square black tower.
I run my fingertips over the scars on my forearm. “If Caroline created the Glare, why couldn’t she win it?”
“Maybe there’s no way to win. No level fourteen.”
We’re skimming the edge of a tall bluff covered with silver grass as smooth as sand. A fortress of a house rears its head there, all wine-red wood and glass.
“If there’s no way to win, it’s not a game,” I say—then remember Dad’s movie quote. The only winning move is not to play.
Ellis guides the Prius to the road’s shoulder. “Here we are.”
We step out into a stiff breeze, chilly for late summer. Ellis pulls on a hooded Andean sweater.
“That’s 35,” he says, gesturing at the mansion that looms at the end of the gray spit of driveway. “Clelia lives in 35-B, which I’m guessing means a carriage house or guesthouse or stable.”
Fenceless, the estate would look abandoned if it weren’t for the neatly mowed paths. I scan the landscape, half expecting to see the black tower. “Across the road—there’s buildings back there.” Shingled rooftops protrude from a belt of evergreens.
“Good call,” Ellis says.
A dirt road winds among wind-frazzled juniper and rows of Lombardy poplars. We pass a kitchen garden, a cluster of berry bushes, and a luxurious henhouse full of Rhode Island Reds. They’re making an eternal fuss, the way hens do. I’m tempted to pause, but my nerves pull m
e after Ellis, who’s veered off the road.
He’s heading for the pines that hide the rooftops. My heart starts to natter like the hens as we wend our way among rough trunks. There’s something weird about this place, something wrong. The light is still golden, gloriously unreal, but no insects keen in the grass. The carpet of needles muffles our footsteps. Above our heads, boughs swish in the breeze.
Ellis stops. “Here.”
Where the pines end, a cabin rises from the silver grass. Weathered by decades of winds, it’s neat and compact, with five steps up to a door. The porch railing is made of driftwood, the uneven pieces jagged as human bones.
Dangling from a nail above the doorbell, a brass plaque announces in dainty script 35-B.
As we climb the steps, I feel like I’m stepping too fast off an up escalator. No turning back. I touch my tongue to my front teeth, forcing my throat to relax. The heavily curtained window offers no clues.
“Ready?” Ellis has removed the sunglasses, and his freckles stand out in stark relief.
I nod, and he moves his finger to the doorbell. The chime echoes faintly inside, but nothing stirs. He tries it again. Knocks—then draws in his breath. “Hey, I think it’s open.”
My breath catches. “Knock again.”
This time, when nothing happens, he doesn’t ask my permission to turn the knob and push the door open.
“Ellis—” I break off, realizing the cabin’s empty.
The place is like a studio apartment: kitchenette on one end, bed on the other, desk in the middle. On either end, the curtains have been thrown wide open, and watery light bounces off dark paneling, coffee mugs, and dozens of sheets of paper taped to the windowless back wall.
Before I can stop myself, I’ve crossed the rag rug for a closer look. Because, yes, I would recognize that particular shape anywhere.
The black tower.
Ellis bangs open a door, closet or bathroom. “Nobody’s here.”
“Look.” My voice sounds oddly reverent in the half-light.
Together we look. The sheets of paper are photocopies of old photographs, all seemingly depicting the same place.
A thick inland forest, mostly pine and spruce. A square black tower with bricked-up archways at the bottom. A more rudimentary log cabin than this one. Some photos show the cabin in the foreground and the tower in the distance, as if the two perch on neighboring hilltops.
In the deep silence, Ellis’s breath comes quick like mine. “It’s a real place.”
Some of the pictures aren’t photos, but cartoonlike still images from the Glare. Here’s the real tower, and here’s the game version of the tower, a little taller and more massive. Here’s the cabin in a hilltop grove, and here’s the game version of the same grove—but the cabin has been erased. Here’s a maple, and here’s a maple with a rune glimmering on its trunk.
Ellis jams his hands in his pockets, as if he’s bracing himself. “You’re right. She built the game.”
Find the server. I tear my eyes away from the pictures. “Ellis… shouldn’t there be computers?”
The desk holds a pile of paperback fantasy novels, some notebooks, and—I see as I draw closer—a mug with black residue at the bottom. Dust comes away when I run my finger over the maple veneer, until it reaches a clean rectangle. “Is that big enough for a server?”
Ellis bends to peer at the dustless place. “Looks like a laptop.”
Behind us, a whoosh and scrape. I wheel, tottering back a step.
“Can I help you?”
A woman stands on the doorstep, over sixty, with a mop of steel-gray hair, strong features, and twilight-blue eyes. She wears jeans and a hoodie and holds a broom in one hand, a dust rag in the other.
Ellis speaks first, too fast: “We’re family of Clelia Rosenbaum—well, I am. We didn’t mean to barge in, but the door was open.”
The woman’s head juts to the side, reminding me of a hawk getting a bead on its prey. “Did the sheriff’s department call you?”
We exchange glances, and fear slithers inside my chest. Has Clelia done something wrong? If we ask, then it’ll be clear the sheriff didn’t summon us.
“I’m her brother,” Ellis says. He crosses the room, face solemn, and pulls something out of his wallet. “This is the last picture I have of her.”
The woman leans her broom against the door and examines the photo. “Huh. I’m so sorry.” She looks up at him, her eyes liquid. “So very sorry. Are your parents coming, too?”
Ellis stares at her, his brows drawing down hard, as we both process her tone. “They… yeah. They’re making arrangements.”
I take hold of his arm, suddenly feeling formal as if we’re at a funeral. “They didn’t tell us much of anything.”
“Come around back,” the woman says. “Let’s talk in the garden. It always calms me down.”
“The garden” is a small oval of paving stones surrounded by herbs. I smell lavender, thyme, basil, rosemary, marjoram, sage—a winter’s worth of hearty stews.
Our host sits on a low stone bench, then rises and signals Ellis to sit instead. “Where are my manners? The smells are soothing, aren’t they? Bargain aromatherapy is how I think of it.”
I sit down stiffly beside Ellis, who stares straight ahead. “Very soothing.”
The woman turns away. When she pivots back to us, tears flow down her cheeks, but her voice is steady as a radio announcer’s. “Please excuse me, but it was very sudden, and I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up today. The sheriff told me it might take weeks to locate her family. I’m the one who found Clelia, you see, just this morning. On the beach. The paramedics say she was dead on impact.”
The woman’s name is Lazuli Leverett (“Marjorie by birth. Changed it in the Summer of Love and couldn’t be bothered to change it back”). She is sole owner of the estate (“since the divorce”) and insists on serving us tea on the terrace of the main house.
The tea reminds me of sitting in the kitchen with Erika, and I know I should call her. But I’ll probably be home all too soon.
“I wish we could have met under better circumstances,” Lazuli says, plunking gummy mugs before us. “The whole time I knew Clelia, I never saw her have visitors. But I could tell she wasn’t alone in the world.”
Below us, across an enormous yellowed lawn, the ocean thunders against the cliffs. The sun inclines west, drawing out Ellis’s freckles and the pink line of his lips, showing me the ghost of the shy boy he once was.
A glossiness comes and goes in his eyes, but he hasn’t cried, and he hasn’t spoken any more than necessary, letting me handle the small talk. He said he didn’t feel like a brother because Caroline had erased herself from his life, and I have a feeling he’s wishing he hadn’t expressed it that way.
But it’s not his fault. Dead is dead.
Lazuli is talking to fill the spaces, telling us how she first met “Clelia” working at a farm stand on Olema Bolinas Road. They compared theories of the afterlife and hit it off, and Lazuli offered Clelia a caretaker position, watching over the estate while the Leveretts traveled the world.
Clelia/Caroline moved into the tidy cabin behind the pines and thrived there, doing her job with immaculate efficiency—until last night or this morning. No one knows yet exactly when it happened.
“She said she was estranged from her family, and she wasn’t forthcoming about her personal life.” Lazuli props her sneakered feet on a redwood table, her gaze discreetly not resting on Ellis. “My ex and I didn’t ask questions—we appreciated Clelia’s hermit tendencies. Too many of our caretakers invited their friends up for wild parties while we were in Europe or India.”
“Her name wasn’t Clelia,” Ellis says sharply. He rotates his cup between his palms. “It was Caroline Westover.”
Lazuli Leverett inclines her head. “I’m sorry. We never knew. She asked us to pay her under the table, so I wasn’t surprised when the sheriff said her ID was a fake. But I didn’t expect them to find her family so soon.”<
br />
“The sheriff must be very efficient,” I lie, my mind working.
Lazuli has made it clear, in a polite and roundabout way, that Caroline jumped or slipped or fell off the cliff below the house. Whichever it is, all those photos on Caroline’s wall mean something.
Maybe she’s covering up for someone else. Maybe she didn’t want to face the consequences. But then why e-mail me at all?
“I wish I could simply give you her things,” Lazuli is saying, “but the sheriff’s office is in charge. They’ll need some kind of documentation.”
“My parents will handle all that.” There’s a set to Ellis’s jaw like something’s stuck in his throat, twisting his face in two directions. Like he’s still not sure he’s not dreaming all this. “There was a space on her desk. Did they already take her computers?”
“Just the one laptop, I believe. Clelia—Caroline—didn’t use computers any more than she had to. She refused to keep a cell phone, said she’d come out here to escape all that.”
My eyes lock on Ellis’s.
Why would Caroline fear the Glare’s alerts if she was running the server? Where is it?
There’s a question I have to ask, though I wish I didn’t have to do it in front of Ellis, and I know I won’t get a straight answer. “Ms. Leverett… well, I mean, I know the sheriff is doing an inquest, but what do you think? How did she seem?”
Lazuli gazes at me, calm as granite. “I think these cliffs can be treacherous in the dark. I don’t choose to speculate further.”
“But did she—I mean, do you think—”
“Can we see where it happened?” Ellis asks.
A path winds along the edge of the cliff through a scrim of stunted juniper. The fall is maybe sixty feet, the beach below all gray pebbles, waves foaming hungrily ten feet from the base.
“Here in this inlet,” Lazuli says. “After midnight, the sheriff thinks. Toward high tide, but apparently not high enough, because I found her when I came out for my usual walk in the morning.”
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