Page 26

I get up. It is standing in the doorway, between me and the hall. I go past it anyway. I do not wait. I am not dying next to Kit.

A glove hits my shoulder and slides off because I am running.

“Ivy.”

“I’m running. Thirty-six. It’s wearing a mask. I don’t know what it is.”

“Get to the lift. Do not hide. Do not go into a dark room.”

I can hear him moving. Keys. A door. He is coming and he is too far away.

The hall is long. Glass on both sides. In the glass I see the grey thing coming after me. Not a sprint. Like it does not need to hurry. I hit the lift button with my whole hand. I hit it again. The numbers do not move.

“It’s not coming,” I tell Rhys. “The lift is not coming.”

“Stairs. The service stairs. You know where they are.”

I do. I wish I did not have to.

I run. Thirty-seven is taped shut. I try the doors anyway. They do not open. Those few seconds cost me. When I look back, the mask is at the end of the glass. It is walking. The knife hangs at its side. It is not in a hurry.

The service door gives under my shoulder. The stairwell is concrete and echo and bad light. I go down. The heels were a mistake. I take them off on a landing and keep going barefoot. The floor is filthy on my skin, but I don’t care and I move like my life depends on it because it does.

“I’m on the stairs,” I say. I am breathing too hard. “I can hear it. Rhys, I can hear it.”

“Do not stop talking. I am in the car. Tell me you are moving.”

A door opens above me. Soft. Then steps that should be quiet, except nothing is quiet in a stairwell.

I skip a flight. I almost fall. I catch the rail and keep going.

My phone buzzes against my cheek. Another call. I jump so hard I almost drop it.

Unknown.

I do not take it. I stay on Rhys.

“Ivy?” Rhys calls through the line.

“I’m here.”

“What does it look like?”

“Grey. All of it. White face. I thought it was a Halloween thing. I thought someone was playing. I thought—” I stop because I can hear the steps getting closer.

I shove through a door onto another floor. I do not even read the number. Desks. A plant. A coat on a chair. I duck behind a divider and put my hand over my mouth.

He is not filling the line. When he talks, it is low.

“Are you hidden?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

A door sounds somewhere close.

“Do not answer me if you cannot.”

I do not answer.