Chapter 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

A nnabelle’s head was filled with syrup, her thoughts sticky and hard to grasp in the thick, gloopy mess that coated her mind. But her instincts were working slightly better. And they were screaming that something was wrong.

Her limbs felt encased in lead, her body contorted into an almost fetal position. All she wanted was to sleep, to sink into that glorious marshmallow place where everything was fuzzy and soft and safe.

But that wasn’t right.

Now wasn’t the time to sleep. And this need to succumb wasn’t natural. In fact, it was frightening. And familiar. She’d felt this way before. She scrunched up her eyes and tried to recall when she’d felt like this. The medicine! She’d been sick. That had made her feel dopey, she remembered, but as soon as the thought rose to the foreground, it sank back beneath the syrupy thickness in her mind. Below that thought swam another. One buried far deeper. Of a time, long ago, when she’d been forced to sleep…

It was so hot.

The air was dense and hard to breathe. Annabelle wrestled for control of her body, trying to find a position that made breathing easier. But her limbs refused to move. All communication between her addled brain and the rest of her had been cut.

With Herculean effort, she managed to crack open her eyes. All she could see was darkness. Thick, inky, black darkness.

It made no sense.

A spike of panic assailed her before, just as quickly, she succumbed to the syrupy miasma that dulled her senses.

There were voices. Far, far away, in the back of her foggy mind, she heard voices.

“Noah?” She struggled, fought, clawed to get the word out of her mouth.

It barely made a sound.

Sleep was pulling her under again, and no matter how hard she fought, she knew it would win. The thick, dusty air made breathing laborious. Was she suffocating?

The thought disappeared again, drowning in syrup.

“Noah?” Her call was but a breath.

The voices grew more distant now. Swallowed by the darkness and smothered by the thick, hot air.

“Noah!” she mouthed, making no sound at all.

Then, the syrup swept upward in a wave and dragged her down into its depths.