AN: This is a spin-off fic to 4 Doctors, 9 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong? and will not make the remotest sense if you haven't read that or its predecessor, 2 million words total or so. If you try to read this without reading that, it will be so weird and nonsensical you'll probably be angry, asking questions like, "Why is this minor character from one episode sharing a house with a character from Torchwood who died in Series 4? Why is she shooting lightning? Why do they keep mentioning that Clara is a vampire? Why is Clara's surname Ravenwood?" So I would generally not bother unless you're crazy into the paranormal and blondes.
The Submerged Spectre
-Part One-
Every morning was cold. Each day, Esther Drummond woke up and felt like there was ice crawling on her toes and her face, and after ten minutes of lying, frozen, under her sheets, she would venture out of them to go about her daily routine. She'd always been a routine and schedule kind of girl. She was the sort of person who would devise a detailed itinerary for a night out and would commonly end up distraught when people didn't abide by it because really, she was only trying to help. After that had happened twice, people took the hint and stopped inviting her out on trips anywhere, but she still found solace in day-to-day routines.
So, at half past eight, she dragged herself out of bed and hauled on her dressing gown and slippers. Then she would open the curtains and go to the bathroom and brush her teeth. She would be downstairs making breakfast by quarter to nine, and eating breakfast by nine at the latest, except on Sundays where she would let herself do all of these identical things an hour later. By half past nine, she took a cup of coffee back upstairs and sat at her computer doing her internet-trawling day job for Adam Mitchell. Every hour she made herself more coffee. At twelve on the dot she left to make herself lunch. By one she returned and tried to continue until three, with regular breaks of course, because staring at a computer for that long wasn't exactly healthy. By three, she had a snack and then she let herself choose whether to do two more hours of work (though it wasn't really the most arduous work) or go hang around in the living room with Sally Sparrow. Shamefully, she usually picked the latter, and usually felt like she was cheating Adam Mitchell out of his money, even if he was a multimillionaire. By half past six she was making dinner, and at ten-thirty she showered and went to bed, usually with a drink. Rinse and repeat.
Sally Sparrow thought this was weird, thought it was odd that Esther gave herself these strict rules, didn't quite understand why she enjoyed the sameness of being in bed with all of the lights off by half past eleven in the evening. Esther was just thankful to have a bed, to be able to make the rules for herself instead of having them dictated to her by a clandestine military organisation. Boy, was it a great bed, too. She spent a lot of money on soft furnishings because of the hell the last four years of her life had been, and Esther had a lot of blankets and pillows.
Sally did not go to bed at the same time any night, Esther observed. Sometimes she would get herself away by midnight, but that was only if she'd had a particularly rough few nights of sleeping a handful of hours from any time between five AM and nine AM. Sometimes, Esther would be frying herself bacon for breakfast and Sally would drearily walk into the kitchen to get herself a glass of water before lugging her walking-corpse to bed. Then she'd sleep not nearly for long enough and collapse on the couch to watch paranormal documentaries for hours at a time. If she awoke late enough, Esther would be able to snatch the TV for the majority of the evening to play video games or, god forbid, watch the news. Sally Sparrow never watched the news because she claimed the media lied about anything and everything. While the honesty of certain news outlets was not something Esther was generally willing to entertain, she doubted that every story was falsified.
On top of that, she was phenomenally messy, while Esther was irritatingly clean. Esther liked the washing up to be dried instead of just left damp and soapy on the draining board; Esther liked the cutlery drawer to be organised instead of haphazard with spoons mixing with forks and knives all over the shop; Esther ironed and folded her clothes and Sally just dumped them in a crumpled pile in her attic bedroom. It bothered Esther, but Sally maintained that because it didn't bother her she wouldn't do anything to change her unruly habits. Cleaning was the only thing they ever seemed to argue about, and whenever they did argue nothing was achieved.
On the morning of January 16th, an overcast Saturday, Esther did everything that she would usually do. She opened the curtains to the bleak countryside where everything was too grey and too green but comfortingly samey, and groggily meandered into the bathroom to brush her teeth, finding it empty as usual. Indeed, her day continued the same as every other day, the only variety in the food she consumed and the niche websites she browsed, until she was eating lunch in the chilly kitchen and Sally Sparrow managed to haul herself into the land of the living, finally. To Esther's great surprise, she was dressed like she was going out somewhere. Esther rarely felt the need to get dressed into actual clothes – outside-clothes – and was puzzled by this.
In fact, the very first thing she said was, "Going somewhere?" Normally, she would have said 'good morning' or 'good afternoon', but from twelve to one she didn't think it was either the morning or the afternoon, and she didn't much fancy saying 'good luncheon', or 'good noon' to Sally. So she resolved to be rude.
"Hopefully," Sally said, holding her coat. She draped it over the back of one of their four, mismatched chairs. One of the chairs had a leg that was shorter than the other and wobbled dreadfully. They called this chair Clara's Chair because it was the chair they made Clara Ravenwood sit in when she ever came over, which was more frequent than one might think. Esther liked the variety of company that Clara and her girlfriend (who was there just as often as Clara, and was much less morose) brought, because things could easily get very strange if she had to listen to Sally talk about conspiracies and the supernatural for days on end with no respite.
"Where? You never go anywhere. Except to the store – are you going to the store? We're almost out of eggs," Esther informed.
"Well that's because of the egg crisis," Sally told her matter-of-factly. Esther had heard her mention the 'egg crisis' dozens of times. They were no egg crisis, how could there be an egg crisis on a planet with more chickens than people? Billions of chickens? For some reason, Sally Sparrow had convinced herself the media was covering up a global shortage of eggs. "And besides, there's not exactly a lot to do around here – where do you want me to go apart from the shop? And aren't you supposed to be working right now?"
"It's my lunch break," Esther said, "Clearly," she held up the sandwich she was part way through eating to show Sally. Sally had boiled the kettle, but wasn't making any move to pour herself tea or coffee. "Seriously, where are you going?"
"Can I borrow your car?" Sally asked, and Esther was taken aback.
"Um, no? You're not insured," Esther said, "Why do you want my car?"
"Well, there was this rich Victorian bloke called Whitaker Wright. He was totally a criminal, and he ended up getting convicted for fraud and then taking cyanide and killing himself," Sally Sparrow began, which Esther thought was completely irrelevant and she couldn't understand why she was being told about a some suicidal guy who'd probably been dead for a hundred and fifty years, "He had this massive estate, though, it's called Witley Park now, and it has a huge mansion and three artificial lakes." Sally paused and waited for Esther to say something, but Esther had taken another bite of her ham sandwich and had her mouthful. She just shrugged and looked at Sally expectantly, hoping she would continue and somehow this would be an explanation as to why she wanted Esther's car. Sally sighed, seeming annoyed that Esther wasn't telepathic and didn't know the finer points of British crime history, and took out her phone to show Esther a picture.
"What is that?" Esther squinted at it.
"It's an underwater ballroom," Sally said with an undisguisable note of excitement. To Esther, it just looked like an empty dome with a concrete floor, funny yellow ripples above.
"So what?"
"So what? So cool, abandoned buildings are, like, totally my thing. This is exactly the sort of place I take photos of, creepy old hovels," Sally explained. Wow, Esther thought sarcastically, if only there were some way to capture the elation she felt at the prospect of spending time in a 'creepy old hovel.' Sally, she thought, really ought to go become a travel agent.
"But there are already photos of it, I'm looking at a photo of it right now," Esther said, nodding at the phone screen. Sally stared at her like she was missing the point completely and then stuck her phone back in the pocket of her jeans, as though Esther in her unappreciation of derelict squats was unworthy to look at it. Esther thought, shouldn't she find new things to take pictures of? Things people had never seen before? Besides, didn't scenery offer way more opportunities for photography than abandoned old buildings? Abandoned old buildings barely changed, they just decayed. With the minute amount of cleaning Sally ever did, Esther often wondered if she was trying to make their house into an abandoned old building.
"Do you not even want me to attempt to pay my rent?" Sally asked her, annoyed.
"Well it just, it just seems like a very limited landscape," Esther told her, "I mean, how different can all the photos of the underwater ballroom really be? It's not like the time of day will affect it an awful lot."
"Up until a few weeks ago, I was planning on taking photos of the creepy, haunted cottage on the hill," Sally quipped at her, "But you know, it turns out that cottage isn't particularly creepy or haunted." She still did not pour herself a drink with the kettle she had just boiled.
"Depends on your definitions of 'creepy' and 'haunted', doesn't it? She is a vampire," Esther pointed out to Sally, "So, you go to the underwater room then. Have fun."
"Do you want to come?" Sally asked her, just as Esther took another bite of her sandwich, "I mean, since you won't let me drive your car."
"Hang on, you mean, you want me to drive you to the weird, underwater thingy?" Esther asked her incredulously with her mouth full. Sally just looked at her hopefully and Esther swallowed before resuming, "I have things to do! I could clean the bathroom if you weren't here."
"I don't see how me being here means you can't clean the bathroom," Sally argued.
"Because every time I try to clean the bathroom you start saying you need the toilet and you apparently just can't hold in a pee, or something," Esther said, "Sometimes I worry you're incontinent." Sally stared at her with shock and offence. "What!? Well, I do worry! You should probably see a doctor! They are free in this country."
"I am not seeing a doctor about my bladder, Esther, my bladder is fine!" Sally protested, going a little red.
"I'm just concerned, is all."
"Are you gonna drive me or not?"
"Now?"
"Yes."
"Right now? In the middle of the day?"
"Yes!"
"Well… well how far is this… ballroom?" she asked.
"Oh, it's so not that far, at all. It's really close, to be honest," Sally said, smiling, and Esther narrowed her eyes, "It's in Godalming."
"Where's Godalming?"
"Surrey."
"Where's Surrey?"
"Just southwest of London."
"London!? Even I know that's, like, a four hour drive! Six hours with all the rest stops we'll need to hit up because of you and your weak bladder," Esther retorted, irked by Sally Sparrow's presumptuousness.
"I'll pay for the petrol. It must be, what? Forty quid?" Sally said when Esther refused to immediately accept. There was no way in hell Esther was driving Sally to the other side of the country just so she could take pictures of some old guy's waterlogged greenhouse.
"You don't have that much money. And you seriously want me to drive you? Why don't you have a car, anyway?"
"Because congestion charge always made it pointless buying a car in London, and I used to just walk to the shop until you showed up with your Mini," Sally said, as though Esther having a car somehow meant she had a duty to society to drive people anywhere and everywhere they requested, "I'll pay for the petrol."
"You will not pay for gas, you don't even pay your rent, I've paid your rent the last two weeks," Esther said.
"I'll make a mint off of these pictures. Trust me, Esther," Sally assured her. Esther did not trust her, Esther thought she was just a leeching moocher but she had dimples so she could get away with it, and Esther also didn't think a single penny she ever let Sally Sparrow 'borrow' would ever be paid back to her. Nor did she understand what it meant to 'make a mint.' "I'll split the money with you." Esther felt like saying, but there won't be any money, will there? "Four hours is, like, a day trip in America."
"Oh, sure, when you actually travel, but before the Miracle I'd only left D.C. once, and it was just to go to Boston. Virginia to Massachusetts is, like, not even an eight hour drive," Esther said offhandedly.
"What? Going to Surrey is nothing then. You know, you could always just insure me to drive your car."
"And that would be another bill you won't pay," Esther said, giving up on her sandwich and dropping the crust down onto the plate.
"You might want to finish that, we have a long drive ahead of us."
"Oh no, we do not."
"Why not? You haven't been anywhere except to the supermarket for over a month."
"I like a quiet life! Risk-free!"
"It's Surrey it's not a war zone, how dangerous do you think it is?" Sally asked her pointedly.
"Why can't you make Clara drive you? Clara has a car. I'm sure she'd love to spend prolonged time with you in an enclosed space," Esther said, and Sally scowled at her.
"I am not spending an entire day of my life on my own with Clara. She might bite me."
"She won't bite you," Esther said, shaking her head a little.
"How would you know? Apparently I smell delicious."
"You're talking to somebody who knows how many times a week you shower – I don't believe that for a second," Esther said snidely.
"Drive me."
"No!"
"Please? It'll be, like, a bonding experience. Like a couples retreat, only, without the couples part. Team-building. C'mon. I'll pay for the petrol," Sally continued to say she would pay for gas, but the more she said it the more Esther was sure she was full of it, "Do you really have anything better to do?"
"Yeah, anything that isn't team building," Esther said, "And work."
"I'll let you clean the bathroom. I'll let you clean the entire house, and you can go catalogue everything that's in the spare room. Make a list, or something. I know how much you like making lists," Sally said. Darn, Esther thought – lists were her weak point. So was cleaning. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad? And, she really hadn't had a chance to drive the Mini Cooper anywhere at all since it was returned to her, except to the supermarket a few times, just to check she hadn't forgotten how to work a car.
"Can you not set off early tomorrow? It'll be dark when we get there, and dark all the way back."
"You mean you'll drive me?"
"Maybe. Tomorrow. When it's not dark. It'll be dark before five o'clock."
"It being dark is the point," Sally told her firmly, "I'll pay for the-"
"Oh. My. God. Fine. Fine. I will be your darned driver," Esther said, annoyed, standing up to go and put her plate in the sink where she would force Sally Sparrow to wash it later as penance for this stupid field trip, picking the crust off it and now deciding she would eat it, after all, "But you will pay me back for gas."
"Obviously, I just told you I would. Seriously, I'll make a fortune. We'll make a fortune."
"I highly doubt that," Esther grumbled, "Now stop shadowing me, I'm going to get dressed." And now, Esther realised drearily as she trudged up the stairs, she was no longer just Sally Sparrow's unpaid, live-in housekeeper, nor was she merely her rent money loan shark; she had most likely just become her chauffeur, as well. And boy was she sure this position wasn't going to do anything except impede her for the foreseeable future. Awesome.
The drive down to Godalming was not up there on the list of Esther Drummond's Most Fun Experiences, not at all. For a start, they didn't get there until half past five, and it was pitch black as she was directed by Sally Sparrow to pull into what looked like somebody's private driveway and park up there. It took so long because, as Esther had joked about, they really did have to stop twice so that Sally could go to the toilet. Maybe that wasn't so bad because it meant Esther could buy herself coffee, but she would still have rather stayed at home. Most likely, their dinner was going to consist of stopping at the same places on the way back, one of which had a Burger King. Admittedly, she was kind of looking forward to that.
Well, alright, in truth it wasn't so bad, it was just time consuming and inconvenient. It wasn't like she regarded Sally as bad company, she wasn't, she could just get a little intense about governmental lies and conspiracies sometimes and her presence needed to be diluted with that of others. Of course, if Esther was a more social person, this might not be an issue, but it was because she was not. Sally hadn't talked about any of that spooky stuff for the whole ride down, though, and for that Esther was nothing but grateful.
"Are you sure this place is, like, open?" Esther asked, staring around. Ahead of them was a building that looked like a house sitting on the right side of a large, black gate. On the left of the gate was a wooden door and then a clean, white sign reading Witley Park. The Mini's lights flashed when Esther locked it and in the light of them she caught Sally giving her a puzzled look. "What?"
"Strictly speaking, this is private property," Sally told her.
"It's WHAT!?" Esther exclaimed, and Sally hushed her, "Private property!? What do you mean 'private property'!?" she hissed angrily, seeing in the twilight Sally getting a flashlight out of her coat pocket. Sally didn't answer and focused more on the flashlight, which barely worked and glowed dimly orange. She hit it on the palm of her hand a few times and it brightened momentarily and then went out.
"Bloody thing…"
"Would you answer me!?"
"I don't even think I have spare batteries…" Sally complained.
"Oh my god, are we trespassing?" Esther asked.
Sally looked at her like she'd only just noticed Esther was even there, and said, "Not yet we're not."
"Holy sh… you can't just break and enter! It's illegal, we will be arrested! I'm supposed to be keeping a low profile, not committing crimes!" Esther continued to protest furiously. Of course she had driven for five hours just to be arrested in Surrey. Sally was ignoring her and searching her pockets, until Esther shouted her name quite loudly and heard the echo in the night.
"Shh!" Sally ordered, "We're not breaking and entering! We're just entering! Unless you're clumsier than you seem. It's fine, just climb over the gate."
"Climb over the gate!?"
"Or wait in the car! It's not like I usually take people with me when I take photos. They get in the way of my shots," Sally said, and Esther stared at her.
"You have made me drive you to the middle of nowhere for five hours so I can wait in the car for you to break into somebody's fancy garden, take some grainy photos, and then drive all the way back home!?" Esther demanded. Suddenly she was thinking that she should have taken her chances and moved in with Clara Ravenwood instead, even if Clara was a bloodsucking vampire. Esther was painted into a corner – even if she did just sit in the car, something could happen to Sally, and she'd probably still end up being an accessory to a crime. Who knew what the result would be if the cops tried to process her? Likewise, though, she didn't want to break in herself.
"I've never been caught trespassing, it'll be fine. It's statistically unlikely that something will go wrong," Sally assured her.
"That is not how statistics work, Sally! There are… variables! Circumstances!"
"Are you staying here or coming with me?" Sally questioned. The flashlight was utterly broken and Sally had no batteries, and that meant that most likely she would end up in danger. She would probably trip, hurt herself, drown in the lake, anything could happen. That would leave Esther a sitting duck for the accusations of the authorities and disgruntled, rich homeowners, her injured housemate slowly dying of pneumonia in the middle of an unknown forest. She couldn't exactly drive back home and leave Sally Sparrow to her moronic fate, either, wandering aimlessly around in the dark. So did she even have a choice? Of course, she could just sit and wait in the car and hope for the best, but she wasn't that sort of person. No, Esther Drummond was painfully nice and painfully helpful, and after a month of living with her it had become a well-established fact that Sally Sparrow was an idiot. Esther didn't want her own neglect to be the reason Sally ended up dead in a mossy ditch out in Surrey.
"You know what? Fine. You win," Esther gave up. Again. Throughout most of her life she'd always been told she ought to be more assertive, this moment was no exception. She pulled off one of her thin gloves and snatched the flashlight from Sally. Who needed batteries when you had a walking, talking lightning bolt? There was a faint, blue glow through her veins and her skin as she charged the flashlight up, currents of light sucked from her hand into the metal device, until it lit up brightly. To be safe, she passed the flashlight into her still-gloved, non-conductive hand until giving it back to Sally. Sally jumped and nearly dropped it. "What's wrong?"
"Got an electric shock."
"I can't say I'm surprised. It's what you deserve, anyway," Esther remarked. Sally ignored that comment – she had a very irksome case of selective hearing. Generally she would act like Esther wasn't even in the room if she said something Sally didn't like.
"Come on, then," Sally finally said, taking the flashlight and heading towards the imposing metal gates of Witley Park. Esther was convinced that they would be spotted and arrested immediately, so she found herself lurking close by the car for a few more seconds until Sally called, "Coming?" Struggling to get her glove back on Esther begrudgingly followed Sally.
"This won't end well," Esther told her.
"Oh, get over yourself," Sally said, "You're really uptight, has anyone ever told you?"
"I'm not uptight!" Esther argued, watching Sally climb over the gate first of all to see how she could manage it herself. Clearly, Sally was well practiced at the art of breaking into places, because she had a certain finesse about her trespassing, and she was doing it all with a heavy-duty flashlight in one of her fists. Esther had never really climbed over a gate before. "I'm just sensible, okay? And safe."
"So safe you got shot and died?" Sally remarked, dropping down the other side of the gate lightly. Esther scowled at her and got a polite smile in return, "C'mon, climb over. It's not that hard." A lie if she ever heard one, Esther knew about thirty seconds later. It was hard, boy was it hard, because unless she was experiencing a massive adrenaline rush she didn't have the best upper-body strength. And she was short, which didn't help her efforts. "Put your back into it," Sally commented. Esther told her to shut up. For a split second after that, Sally laughed, and that was when Esther fell off and landed awkwardly on the frozen ground.
"Ow."
"Oh my god, are you alright?" Sally immediately tried to help her up, which was more than Esther had come to expect from her. Esther was then more worried about accidentally electrocuting her, but her only exposed skin was on her face, and Sally wasn't really trying to touch her face. That would be weird.
"That wouldn't have happened if you were sensible."
"You mean if you were sensible," Sally said, "You followed me. You didn't have to. Could've stayed in the car and listened to the radio. You're okay, though?"
"Yeah. I'm okay," Esther assured her.
"Good, because it would be easier if you didn't break your leg or something while we're trespassing," Sally told her, still smiling. She was one of those adrenaline junkies, or something. Esther didn't understand them, she could be perfectly content to sit in a warm room all day playing video games, she didn't need to go risking her neck for kicks. "Suppose you are clumsier than you seem."
"Lead the way to this stupid ballroom," Esther muttered, brushing dirt off of herself.
"Well, I'm not strictly speaking sure where it is," Sally said, looking around, panning the light of the torch over their surroundings. A driveway and an awful lot of dead trees was all Esther could see. Some murky darkness, probably with a fancy English mansion lurking out of sight, lingered at the edge of their field of vision, "We'll just find the lake. How hard can it be to find a lake?"
"Didn't breaking into places get you into trouble with those aliens before?" Esther questioned a minute later, hovering as close to Sally and the light as she dared. She could probably make her own light if she wanted, but didn't trust her electricity not to latch onto the nearest conductive thing. Maybe she would be lucky and it would find a tree to zap, or maybe it would discover the juicier, more charged target on her left. Not worth the risk of accidentally murdering Sally, she decided. Things were scarcely worth the risk of accidental murder, though.
"I totally saved the world that day," Sally argued, "Like you've never broken in somewhere and got in trouble." Esther faltered, because while she had not had to climb over any fences, she had infiltrated the San Pedro Overflow Camp way back when. And how had that ended, she asked herself? Well, it had ended with her nearly choking a man to death.
"That's Torchwood for you," she said unhappily. Usually, she tried to refrain from answering Sally's questions about her time in Torchwood. She would answer in general terms rather than personal ones, would say what caused it, the bigger picture. Her own experiences she did not discuss. "I don't like it out here."
"It's just some trees, Esther. You're not scared, are you?"
"It's not that, I don't like being away from the central grid. This place is remote. I like power lines."
"When you suck up electricity, do you, you know, taste it?" Sally inquired.
"Taste it? No. It's like waking up refreshed from a good night's sleep, just a really fast good night's sleep. Not that you'd know what that's like, I doubt you've ever felt refreshed from sleeping in your whole life," Esther said. Sally didn't enjoy Esther prying into her life like that, though. It was the bladder thing all over again.
"Do you always mollycoddle people like this?" Sally questioned.
"I worry, is that a crime?" Esther retorted sharply, which confused Sally somewhat. She'd been joking, trying to make light conversation, and had clearly not expected Esther to react so negatively to a harmless question about her being oddly overprotective. Maybe she would explain herself later, when they weren't in the back end of beyond looking for a lake and she was warm and maybe had a mug of hot chocolate. Again she thought of the Burger King meal which awaited her on the drive back. Esther spied something. "Hey, that looks like a lake over there, right?"
"I don't know, is it wet?"
"I'm looking for you, on your behalf," Esther argued with Sally's sarcasm, which never went well in her experience. The most sarcastic people always tended to be the most opinionated, too. Nevertheless, she looked where Esther pointed, through the black trees, and the torch beam rippled across a body of water. They headed towards it, though Esther didn't like being close to water any more than she liked being disconnected from the national grid.
The forest abruptly ended and gave way to the huge lake, whose waters were so bleak and muddy Esther wondered if anything was even alive inside. Leeches, perhaps, or something just as parasitic and grim. Around the entire lake ran a grey, stone wall, not even a foot high, which was good for Esther because it made it harder for her to accidentally wade in puddles. If she and Sally were to step in a puddle at the same time they might as well sign a suicide pact. On a nice, summer's day, it might be a nice view, a good place for a picnic, leaning against the trees with the crisp water spreading out ahead, all of that rural scenery people romanticised so much. But it was the middle of January and they were half an hour past sunset, civil twilight was ended so they were just in the dark, committing a crime.
"I sure as hell don't see any ballroom."
"Did you miss the part where I said it was underwater?" Sally countered, then she pointed, "Do you see that statue?" Esther squinted for a second until she could semi see a shadow.
"I guess?"
"The statue is built on top of it."
"Oh," Esther said, staring at it. Then she heard Sally begin to walk off, and she followed on, having nothing else to do. If the scenery were visible and a little less creepy, she might have stayed to look at it, but there was little point that evening. "What's this entrance, then? How did you get in?"
"There's a tunnel," Sally said.
"A hidden one? Don't tell me we have to find a hidden tunnel?"
"It's got a massive, wooden door, I saw in photos. Can't miss it," Sally assured her. Again, Esther wondered why in the world Sally was taking more photos when the photos already existed. Creative types were so strange sometimes.
"You really should have brought Clara. I'm sure she would appreciate all of this more."
"I told you, I'm not spending time in a confined space with her," Sally repeated herself, "You know what vampires are like about water, anyway. She was just saying the other week that she can't take baths anymore, she's as bad as you. What is it with the undead and not bathing?"
"You're a hypocrite. And I shower every day, you know. Showering is better for the environment and the water bill."
"Well not showering is even better for the environment and the water bill. Maybe I'll start standing out in the rain to wash. I'll erect an outhouse in the garden and take the roof off – nature's own shower," Sally said.
"Outhouses aren't natural. And god, I didn't think it was possible for you to become even more of a freeloader, but you really will do anything to avoid paying for things, won't you?" Esther jibed.
"Ah-ha," Sally changed the subject away from her bad habits and personality flaws, and the flashlight was illuminating a heavy, oak door set into a mud embankment that rose up like a small fell a little way away from the icy lake, "That's the way in."
"And what're you gonna do if it's locked?" Esther questioned.
"It doesn't even have a lock, look. I figure the front gates are designed to keep people out. Besides, there's not anything down there worth protecting," Sally shrugged, walking straight up to it. Then she tripped over on something and swore. Initially, Esther figured it was only a tree root or something else inconsequential, until Sally stooped down to examine what had caused her to stumble and the light found something out of place.
"Is that a shoe?" Esther frowned. Sally picked it up – it was a shoe. A white sneaker. Well, not white anymore, it was coated in mud, but once it had been white.
"It's a girl's trainer," Sally said, holding it up in front of her, "Weird."
"I've never understood how people lose shoes, and just one of them," Esther said, watching Sally put it back down in the dirt. There wasn't much else they could do with it.
"Quicksand. Sucks it up one place and spits it out another," Sally told her.
"Not how quicksand works."
"Maybe she was running from something," Sally said, and Esther stared at her flatly, but she was amusing herself now, "And lost her shoe escaping. A monster out here in the woods." She held the flashlight under her chin like kids did when they told ghost stories, but Esther wasn't particularly scared or impressed.
"Sure thing, Spooky Sally," Esther said, and Sally's smile – which had looked thoroughly twisted in the light coming from underneath her face – vanished.
"Hanging out in the woods at night is pretty spooky as well you know, Esther," Sally said, going to try and heave open the door.
"You made me come here!"
"Potato-potahto," Sally shrugged, and Esther gave up, muttering to herself, "Nobody says 'potahto,'" and helped her drag the door open. It was heavy and hinged and took the pair of them a minute or two to get it wide enough to squeeze in. Esther wasn't convinced it even opened all the way. If this was a place meant for the upper class friends of a rich gentleman, it wasn't the most dignified of entrances. What if it was raining? They would traipse about in the dirty grounds and haul open this massive door? Then they'd have to go through sinister tunnels, sinister tunnels which Esther now saw. Well, tunnel. But she supposed there would be more.
"This looks… safe…" Esther said pitifully, crossing her arms tightly around herself.
"It's fine, come on," Sally said, going ahead anyway. In her life she had always followed other people, and it didn't seem her afterlife was lining up to be any different. "On the topic of Clara, though, she might not have even been able to climb over the gate."
"Why?"
"Well, she has to be invited in, doesn't she? You remember two weeks ago when it was raining and she had to stay stood outside for five minutes before either of us realised," Sally said, "Not that she needed to come in, she was only round to borrow sugar."
"You could never be arrested for illegally trespassing if you were a vampire. There could be CCTV, you know."
"In a forest? Not likely. And besides, you would know, wouldn't you?" Sally pointed out. Annoyingly enough, that was true. Esther would know. But she was distracted from that argument by the fact they went through the snaking tunnel, which followed the same course as the artificial embankment the door was pressed into and curved, and it ended above a winding, spiral staircase. It was built into a circular column of a room and above, when Sally shone the light, was a strange roof that bore a grid pattern.
"This is creeeepy," Esther half-sang, peering around.
"That's the poooint," Sally mimicked her, heading down the metal stairs without a care in the world. In the darkness, all Esther could see was dirty old walls and grime. Maybe the surfaces around them had once been white, porcelain or something, but they were cracked and marred with age and damp filth. Esther wouldn't be surprised to see mould, but she wasn't too good at separating mould from mud in the poor lighting.
"Clara would never get in the way of your photos, would she?" Esther said, "You know, because she has no image? Unless that meant she'd be less likely to come with you; probably reminds her of everything she's lost."
"So does walking past a window," Sally commented. At the foot of the short spiral staircase was a largish room, over twice the size of their sitting room, and then nearby was a straight hallway in a very odd shape. It was a bit like an egg, but an egg with a pointy top and a slightly flattened bottom to make a level surface to walk on. So not really so much like an egg, but Esther couldn't think of anything else to liken it to. A sunflower seed with one tip cut off? It was weird, was what it was, and had the same dirty white texture as everything else did. To Esther's relief, there weren't any puddles or leaks.
"It would be cool if this was in the sea. You know, there's this video game where this rich objectivist builds a whole city underwater. Actually, Adam Mitchell told me there's an alternate universe where that place is real."
"Sounds like a golden photo opportunity."
"You wouldn't be saying that if you ever played the darn thing…" Esther mumbled. Last thing she wanted was Sally Sparrow getting ideas in her head about paying a visit to Rapture.
If Esther were to be truthful and speak in terms of scenery only, she would much rather have been down in Rapture. In its fictional heyday, and even in its nightmarish end state, it was a damn sight grander than this underwater ballroom. 'Underwater ballroom,' she thought, was being generous. Despite seeing photographs earlier, she had still been expecting something more reminiscent of a fish tank, or like the dome from The Simpsons Movie, a sleek bowl of glass with no markings in it at all. That was not what she got, however. It was a dome, sure, and in the daytime when you could see the light dappling the green surface of the lake it was probably very enchanting, but its charm was lost by the grid pattern of the windows. The panes of glass themselves were maybe a foot by a foot each, and set into white reinforcements. Even if the day above was bright, sunny and cloudless, she still doubted that anything much would be visible inthe limited, dreary view. Along with that major anti-climax, it was also freezing. The bottom of a lake in January felt to Esther like the arctic circle.
"H-holy cow, it is cold down here," she shivered, crossing her arms tightly.
"Nah, it's fine," Sally said absently, taking her camera out of the large pockets of her coat.
"I can see my breath. And your breath, too."
"Just stay out of the way of the camera and we'll be out of here in no time at all," she said.
"Maybe I should have stayed in the car…" Esther sighed. She wandered over to lean on the wall by the entrance, behind Sally and out of way. Then she went about doing what she usually did when she was bored and away from greater civilisation – played with her powers. Not that her sliding off her left glove and conjuring up tiny lightning bolts in the palm of her hand went unnoticed for long. The thing was, it was incredibly dark in that ballroom, no moonlight seeping through the heavy waters, and only Sally's torch for light. So the bright blue glow of the electricity crackling down Esther's hand, floating above her skin but following a vague, zigzagging pattern of her shimmering veins, captivated Sally Sparrow almost immediately.
For a split second, the room had been dancing with sapphire shadows. As soon as Esther caught Sally staring at her, though, she clenched her fist and the light vanished. It seemed much darker by comparison then, even with the flashlight.
"No! Don't stop," Sally pleaded, "That's so cool." She shone the flashlight in Esther's face, and Esther flinched.
"Get that outta here," she said, squinting.
"Sorry."
"It's dangerous," Esther told her.
"Do it again!" she asked, like a child who had just seen a magic trick. She was beaming, too.
"No!"
"Oh, go on. Please. I'll do the washing up for a week."
"No you won't," Esther said. More empty promises, like the gas money, the rent money, all the money Esther had ever leant her. Now she was moving on to household chores – if Sally couldn't be bothered doing her own chores, she definitely wasn't going to start doing Esther's, even if Esther did show off for her.
"You know, these photos aren't all that great because the lighting is awful."
"Serves you right for coming at night, then, doesn't it?" Esther remarked, "Should have set off early."
"I didn't really think about the fact it would be so dark."
"You should have. You can't even see the water outside. What would be cool would be if you had lights at the bottom of the lake," Esther told her, "That would probably get you some unique photos."
"I know – go back outside and electrify the water," she said, like she had had an epiphany. A terrible epiphany, Esther thought.
"Because that totally wouldn't attract attention of the people whose property were breaking into, or anything, would it?" she said sardonically.
"Put on a lightshow."
"What? No way."
"Yes way! It would make the photos totally original. Nobody else has the Lightning Girl, do they?" Sally tried to coax her. She really, really did not like the fact she was repeatedly bending to the wishes of Sally Sparrow; paying her way, driving her around, sneaking onto private property, Esther was proud of none of them. She kept finding herself painted into a corner, though, seemingly with little choice. While she didn't want to reduce herself to a sideshow attraction, the mysterious, blue illuminations of her lightning abilities really would make for some interesting shots. Her only real reason not to use her powers – since there was nobody else around and making pretty lights was practically risk-free – was stubbornness. She didn't want to keep giving in, but she also didn't want to be annoyed to death by Sally (and she already knew from experience that Sally was pretty darn good at being annoying when she really put her mind to it.)
"God, alright," she relented, making noises of the utmost frustratioin as she took off her other glove, too. Sally stared in awe as she made her arms into a circuit, her hands glowing, electricity zipping through the air between her hands. The shadows of the underwater ballroom danced as the light flickered and crackled, and there was a noise akin to sparks to go along with it. "Are you gonna take your photos, then?"
"Oh, right. Yep. I'll do that," Sally had grown distracted, but lifted her camera back up and turned away from Esther, who amused herself with the electricity not unlike somebody playing catch with themselves, tossing a baseball back and forth absentmindedly. "Does that not hurt? Does it, like, drain you?"
"No, all the electricity comes back to me. If you pushed me into the lake – now that would drain me. Kill me straight away. Don't push me in the lake," Esther said.
"Well that's just ruined my plans for the rest of the evening – how'd you know I was planning to push you into the lake?" she joked.
"Very funny."
"I don't make a habit of attempted murder, you're more than safe, Esther."
"Not killing me is the least you can do after everything I've helped you with today. This is a really one-sided relationship we have going on, you know."
"Ooh, 'relationship', I wouldn't've thought that was a word I'd ever hear come out of your mouth."
"As long as you keep things platonic."
"I'll try my best," Sally assured her sarcastically.
"I'm being serious, you know. All you do is take, take, take."
"And in return you get my charming company! I think it's a great deal. These photos are gonna be good, by the way."
"Your 'charming' company?" Esther questioned wryly.
Sally turned back to face her and raised an eyebrow, "Are you saying I'm not charming?"
"You must be plenty charming if you keep coaxing me into wandering around creepy…"
It was pale and smooth with the same milky sheen as a pearl, and when she saw it and its soft, human-esque features pressing against the mottled glass of the ballroom, she lost her sentence completely. Bulbous, fishy eyes set into an opalescent face seemed to stare right at Esther, but she saw it for only a moment before she made a noise of fear, jumped, and lost her lightning. Sparks of it shot to the floor and burned the ground and Sally jumped as well. Then it was too dark to see much.
"What? What happened?" Sally asked her urgently, fumbling to pick up the flashlight from the ground. Esther didn't say anything, she tried to get her bearings and lifted up one hand. The bright blue light returned to her fingertips, crackling and buzzing, but it illuminated no face in the glass panel this time. "Esther? Esther, are you alright?" She hardly heard Sally's words until she hit her in the shoulder.
"Ow!" Esther protested.
"What was that?" Sally asked her. Now what to say? This was Sally Sparrow she was with, Spooky Sally Sparrow, who consumed paranormal documentaries like an alcoholic consumed booze.
"I don't… I don't know, I…" she fumbled, her eyes fixed rigidly on that one pane of glass. She grabbed the flashlight out of Sally's hands, the bulb intensifying at her charged touch, and shone it straight at the glass. It didn't do a lot of good, though, just reflected dimly back into the room.
"Did you see something?" Sally puzzled, following Esther's gaze. Her first thought was that it had been a trick of the mind, a terrified, uneasy mind, but how could that be true when she had neither been terrified nor uneasy? Cold, yes. Anxious about them being caught, yes. But scared? Scared of anything… anything… weird? She didn't have those sorts of phobias – what sort of subconscious would conjure up something like that? To what purpose She was deathly afraid of moths, but she didn't see any of those flapping about in the iridescent cove. "Esther?" Sally asked again, softly, with a note of worry Esther was surprised to realise was genuine. She finally looked away from the glass to see Sally's concerned eyes, but she looked back at the glass again quickly. What if it reappeared? Whatever 'it' was?
"I don't know," she said again.
"You must have seen something, you're pretty spooked," Sally said. Esther didn't comment on the irony of Spooky Sally saying she was the one who was spooked.
"I don't know what I saw."
"What did it look like?" she enticed. And here was the dilemma; Sally would, without a doubt, believe anything Esther told her she had seen. She would believe it, endorse it, help it along as it festered in her doubts and her imagination, and as comforting as Sally's blind faith in the existence of anything remotely supernatural was, it also struck Esther as a little dangerous.
"A face," Esther finally answered honestly, "Like, I don't know, a person. Outside."
"Outside? In the lake, you mean?"
"Yeah, in the lake." Sally approached the pane of glass where Esther had been shining the flashlight. "Well don't go over there! It might not be… safe. Or something."
"Whatever it is, it's outside."
"We should leave," Esther said, and Sally ignored her and reached up as though to touch the glass, "Sally, did you hear me? We should leave. Now. Seriously." Sally clenched her fist before she touched the window and did not, in the end. Good, Esther thought. "There's something weird about this place."
"Weird how?" Sally asked her quickly.
"I don't know, can't you feel it? I have goosebumps, and I'm cold, and… and can we just leave? Please? You got your photos. You got loads. I want to go home."
"Yeah. Yeah, sure," Sally stepped away from the wall, but she now appeared to be thinking about something that was keeping her from focusing entirely on the present, "Home. We can stop at that Burger King you said you wanted on the way back." Again, Esther found herself legitimately surprised that Sally had listened to her and remembered something she had said. Maybe she wasn't as self-centred as Esther initially thought? Still, she was grateful to be allowed to leave. She would have left and gone back to the car on her own, had she not been suddenly very wary about venturing the grounds of Witley Park alone…
Headlights guiding invisible cars along the freeway drifted brightly in the darkness. Out of the window of the service station they were stopped at, Esther could see little else aside from these mechanical fireflies. The night was too cloudy to make out much of the moon, and the bright interior meant mainly she was looking back at her own harrowed reflection. The Esther in the glass didn't look like she was having a good day, but as she stared straight into her own translucent eyes she saw mirrored the memory of that pearly, bloated face.
Sally Sparrow kicked her in the shin underneath their table.
"What was that for!?"
"I was talking to you!" Sally defended her actions, "You're being weird, I'm worried."
"Well maybe you shouldn't kick me! That's totally gonna bruise!" Esther protested, lifting up her feet and sitting cross-legged on her chair so that Sally would have to go to more effort if she wanted to attack her again. Her eyes drifted back towards the window.
"Esther."
"What?"
"I'm trying to talk to you," Sally reiterated.
"About what?"
"About what you saw."
"Trick of the light."
"Was it, though?" Sally asked seriously, with some concern, "You've been talking about this junk food all day, and you've barely touched it, come on. Talk to me." That was true, she had a whole tray of food in front of her. Sally had been picking at Esther's fries for the best part of ten minutes now, she noticed. She'd only had two bites of her burger, she was very tired and not all that hungry.
"I've drunk my milkshake," Esther said defensively, "That's enough for me."
"You ought to eat something proper."
"Says you."
"Hey, I know from my experience of making terrible life choices exactly what terrible life choices I should stop other people from making. So, eat something," Sally said. Her concern was touching.
"I didn't know you cared."
"Of course I care, you keep paying my rent for me," she joked, "But, really."
"It wasn't anything, I imagined it."
"If you really believed that, you wouldn't be so scared," Sally said seriously. A surprisingly accurate observation. Just that morning, Esther thought she had everything about Sally Sparrow figured out, she was just one of those conspiracy nuts, a selfish conspiracy nut at that, but if she was really so single-minded and selfish, she wouldn't be so bothered about Esther.
"Whatever you want me to say, I'm not going to," Esther continued with her closemindedness, "Why don't you talk about it, if you're so desperate, huh?"
"You know when you have a lot of ideas, and you can't really formulate them coherently?"
"I guess."
"Well… well look, a face? In a lake? Looking in? A human face? There's three things it could be: a mermaid, a dead body, or a ghost," Sally told her. There it was, 'ghost', the word Esther knew she'd been dying to get out in the open for the last two hours they'd been driving (it was just past seven o'clock and they were in the thick of the winter night already.)
"Ghosts? Ghosts do not exist."
"Oh, come on, Esther," Sally whispered, leaning across the table towards her, "You stopped the Miracle. Everybody on Earth just stopped dying. And you were brought back to life and you've travelled through time with aliens, why do you draw the line at ghosts? They exist. You can prove it."
"If you could prove ghosts existed, everybody would know about them, Sally."
"It's not my fault that 'everybody' is too blind to notice. Ten years ago, they used to say that people who claimed to see spaceships were crazy, as well. For christ's sake, we do live ten minutes away from a vampire," Sally told her. She sounded like a lunatic, but everything she said was, Esther hated to admit, a very good point. There was just something in her that didn't want to give Sally Sparrow the satisfaction of being right about something, especially something so… spooky. But if she accepted what Sally believed, she didn't think she would be the recipient of any obnoxious I-told-you-sos.
"So is that place… is it haunted?"
"Not to my knowledge," Sally told her, "People die all the time, though." Esther stayed quiet. "What, exactly, was it? This face, what did it look like? Boy, girl? Young, old?"
"It was just for a second. But it looked… dead. Kind of swollen. I don't really know, I don't want to talk about it, Sally," she said quietly, sighing. She didn't like the idea of the dead roaming the Earth, even if, technically, she was dead and roaming the Earth. She was just much more palpable than your average phantom, and she was doing her roaming in a Mini Cooper rather than some in-between limbo realm. "What do you mean, you can 'prove it'?"
"I mean that it's scientifically proven that spirits exist, they still walk through the land of the living."
"Scientifically proven by whom?"
"The smartest girl in the universe, who do you think? Your fiancée." Esther couldn't even muster the motivation to cast Sally a disapproving look, she just sighed and slouched a little, debated trying to take another bite of her burger, but it was probably cold by now. She supposed they had best be off soon.
"I might cross the bridge over the freeway to get coffee before we leave," Esther changed the subject. There was a Costa on the other side of the road, and it was enticing her now she was oddly exhausted.
"It's a motorway, I think you'll find," Sally corrected her.
"Whatever it is, I want coffee."
"Do you want to leave now, then? Because I need the toilet."
"Of course you need the toilet…" Esther grumbled, but she uncrossed her legs and stood up, stumbling a little because her feet had been going numb from trying to keep her shins out of the range of Sally's boots. "Go to the bathroom, then I'll get coffee. Do you want anything?"
"I mean, if you're offering," Sally began, "Then I'll have hot chocolate."
"Then would you…" Esther yawned mid-sentence and trailed off, but it was quite an impressive yawn and her eyes were marred with tired when she stopped and resumed talking, "Would you clear these trays?"
"Uh, sure… are you alright? You seem tired. Really tired."
"I'll be fine," Esther assured her.
"I could always drive."
"Not a chance," Esther said, walking off, "I'll just meet you back at the car in ten minutes, okay?" She left Sally in the Burger King about the same time a rowdy family of five came in with the three kids begging for candy and to play on the racing games in the arcade. She saw this as a narrow escape.
In the harsh, clinical lights of the rest stop, with food and people and electricity and Sally for pleasant company, most of the lingering feeling of fear she'd dragged out of Witley Park with her had dissipated. As she climbed the stairs into the chilly, enclosed bridge over what Sally called a motorway, however, that feeling came back. The goosebumps returned, as did an odd sensation on her head like when you rubbed a balloon on your hair and it became riddled with static. She crossed her arms tightly around herself and hunched over a little, picking up her pace as she crossed, alone, watching the cars glide along below on what she still thought of as the wrong side of the road.
At least she returned to civilisation relatively quickly, and there was quite the conglomeration of people in the coffee shop. They were teenagers off a coach on some school trip, just arrived. Were banned by their teachers from crossing over the bridge. She had to wait a good few minutes to order, and yawned a couple more times in the process. She heard a few unwanted comments from these sixteen year old Brits about the US election, too, but she tried to ignore them. It didn't matter to her anymore - the last time she checked, dead girls weren't eligible to vote, and she lived on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean now.
Honestly, she felt like she might pass out. Within ten minutes she was carrying her coffee, the most caffeinated drink she could spy on the menu, and Sally's hot chocolate back through the empty bridge. She was even more uneasy this time than the first time, but those feelings she suspected were exacerbated by the dread of crossing again she'd built up in her mind waiting in line for drinks. She would have pushed in, but she'd learnt the hard way that people in the United Kingdom weren't the most fond of queue-bargers. That fateful day in Sainsbury's, people had looked at her as though she was a murderer.
Halfway through the short journey she stopped and kind of staggered back as she was hit abruptly with another yawn. She didn't understand why she was so tired, but found herself leaning against the glass with her eyes closed, lids sickeningly heavy. What she wouldn't give just to go to sleep right then, even though she'd not even been awake for twelve hours yet. Driving never usually exhausted her so much.
Before she could succumb to her groggy brain she got a grip of herself, noticed the cold winter air again, and opened her eyes. And Esther nearly screamed. She most definitely made some kind of noise, one of sheer terror, a great fear about level with the time Captain Jack Harkness had pushed her out of a building into a fountain to escape from a suicide bomber, because there it was. The face. And more. It was reflected right there in the dark glass, like the thing was standing next to her, a short, youngish figure. Those same swollen eyes, bloated flesh, sagging clothes. It was white as the moon, it nearly glowed, and it met her eyes, standing directly next to her, sopping wet.
Immediately she looked to her left, trying to find it, a tangible person to grab and to question, anything to prove she wasn't insane. She backed away towards the side of the rest stop with the Burger King and the car, but there was nothing. In the glass, all she saw was the cars again. The tunnel was empty. But she had felt it, and she was terrified. It felt like she had been doused with icy water all over, numbing her skin, but if she had been she would be dead. At the very least, she would be convulsing and conducting lightning a large deal. She was dry, and she was alone.
She nearly ran out of there, panting, still carrying their drinks. Most likely she looked like a madwoman as she sprinted out of the services towards the blue car and a waiting Sally Sparrow. Sally was looking at her phone, but nearly dropped it on the ground when she saw Esther coming towards her in the state she was in.
"Are you alright?" Sally asked. Her breath clouded in the freezing outdoors. Esther found she couldn't speak. "Esther? Holy… what happened? … Give me those." She took the drinks right out of Esther's hands and sat them on the car roof instead.
"I saw it," Esther told her, meeting her gaze.
"The face?" She nodded. "Where? In there?"
"Yes, in there, in the bridge, I saw its reflection in the window, like it was next to me. Like… like she was next to me. I think." Sally drank in every word she said. "If… if that's a ghost, then… but why is it here? I don't…" She closed her eyes for a brief second. It felt like a brief second, anyway, but when she opened her eyes it was because she banged on something hard and somebody shook her.
"Careful there," Sally cautioned, holding her shoulders to steady her.
"What?"
"Did you just fall asleep? On your feet?" Sally asked. In response, Esther yawned. "I think you should give me the car keys and let me drive."
"No!"
"Jesus, Esther, you're scared out of your mind and you just fell asleep! If you fall asleep for just a second at the wheel, we could crash. You're in a state, I'm not letting you drive. I do have my driver's license on me, you know," Sally told her.
"You're not on the insurance."
"And you think if we both die in a car accident the insurance will make much of a difference?" Sally pointed out, "I'm either driving this car home, or we're staying in the Premier Inn over there. And I once got food poisoning from a Premier Inn, so I'd rather not." It didn't take much more than a threat of a car crash to make Esther surrender her keys, the old Pacman ghost keychain hanging off them. How bittersweet the token from her sister suddenly looked. "Thank you." Sally then opened the right-side door and was confused for a second.
"The car's American, remember?" Esther reminded her, picking the drinks back up and waiting for Sally to move.
"Right. Yep. Other side. Got you now," she said. Esther wondered if handing the car keys over was a bad idea, until she nearly nodded off again. How she was managing to nearly fall asleep on a January evening when she might as well be in an igloo, in a loud, public place, she didn't know. It didn't seem to be a normal sort of tired, and it seemed to be growing worse.
The coffee did not help. She was hell-bent on staying awake to monitor Sally's driving, which was not nearly so bad as she assumed once they got going, so she sat with her coffee held between her cold hands trying to remain conscious, but it barely worked. For a few minutes, she thought the caffeine was taking effect, that she would stay up until they got back to home, but it wasn't meant to be. In spite of the mystery she was suddenly entangled in, Esther Drummond could not force herself to stay awake. By nodding off after just fifteen minutes in the car she had involuntarily placed in Sally Sparrow more trust than she ever had before, hoping she would get them home with neither of them dying.
