"Help, Kay. You've got to help."
"Priyanka!"
Kay looked greedily at her friend. She was back! So beautiful, so smart. Priyanka. "I've missed you so much."
Priyanka smiled for an instant. "Yes, I know. I know everything."
"If you know everything, then help me, Priyanka. Help me stop this craziness. I watched Mike Hammer die."
"I died, too, Kay."
"God, I know. Killed. No way were you drunk behind the wheel."
Her face was sad, her skin ashen instead of that beautiful bronze color. "No, I wasn't drunk. Is that what they're saying? But I am dead."
Grief shot through Kay all over again, as piercing as the first time she'd heard Priyanka was dead. "But you're here now. Stay. Stay with me," she begged. "Let's work this out together. I need you, Priyanka. I can't do this alone."
Priyanka looked down then back up. Kay gasped. There were holes where Priyanka's eyes had been. No longer that warm chocolate brown, full of amusement and life and intelligence. Now there was nothing. Emptiness.
"Can't help you, Kay." Her voice was low, barely a whisper. Priyanka turned and started walking away. A freezing cold wind blew up out of nowhere and her long dark hair whirled around her head.
No! Kay couldn't let her go! She missed her, needed her. Priyanka knew how to tease out the mystery from the thousands and thousands of files. Ahead of Priyanka were endless doorways, fading into infinity. Door after door after door …
Priyanka was walking through them, one after the other, becoming smaller and smaller.
Kay ran after her, but her feet weren't working. She couldn't move, her body simply wouldn't work. She struggled but it was useless, it was as if she were tied down, encased in something hard and unyielding.
Priyanka was barely a dot on the horizon, walking through the doors stretching into infinity.
Kay leaned forward, trying to move her feet. She put everything into her scream, but it came out soundless. She couldn't move, couldn't speak!
Priyanka was at the edge of infinity. She turned and spoke softly, her voice directly in Kay's ear, though she was so far away.
"So many dead, Kay. Such a horrible death, though you were spared. You know why. The dead will tell you why. The dead will become crisper."
"What?"
"Crisper, they will become crisper." And the voice disappeared and the faint dot on the horizon that was Priyanka winked out.
The wind was freezing, the cold bitterness of a world where Priyanka was gone.
"Crisper!" Suddenly Priyanka was screaming, right in her ear, anger and fear in the voice. She gave a howl that Kay felt down to her toes.
Kay bolted up in bed, heart pounding, the sound of a scream echoing in the room. Nick held her tightly with one arm, the other holding a heavy black gun, which he pointed where his eyes looked.
She was sweating, heart pounding. Nick's muscles were rigid, tight.
He relented first, relaxing, putting the gun down on the night table. She hadn't even known it was there.
"Sorry," she whispered through a tight voice. "Nightmare."
"That's okay, honey," Nick said, kissing the top of her head. "You scared the shit out of me, though. Must have been a hell of a nightmare."
She eased up against the headboard. A bottle of water and a glass had been placed on her side of the bed, which she thought was better than a gun. She poured herself a glass with shaking hands. Nick's steady hand cupped hers as she brought the glass to her lips and drank deeply.
"It was." She leaned into him, into that strong body, steady as a rock. The nightmare had chilled her but his body heat was starting to warm her back up. "Not so much a nightmare, just sad and cold. Priyanka leaving."
That was it. Priyanka's spirit had left the world. It was as if she'd been hanging around, maybe trying to help Kay, but now her time was up. Priyanka had walked through that endless corridor of endless doors and had departed this earth. Kay shivered, feeling bereft all over again. With hindsight, she realized she'd still somehow felt Priyanka, guiding her, helping her, but now-now there was only emptiness.
She was gone. Forever.
"She's gone." Nick echoed her thoughts. His voice was so low, she perceived the words through the vibration in his chest rather than from his lips.
"Yeah," she whispered, throat tight. "I know." The words hurt.
Words. She remembered the fun times with Priyanka, who had been a chatterbox when she relaxed. All business at work, such a complex and fascinating woman outside of work. How odd that her last word to Kay had been crisper.