Lost Without You

~32~

The following morning I woke up to Lia and Lucas' hushed conversation reaching me from the kitchen. I was still lying on the sofa in the sitting room, and from the bone-deep tiredness I felt as soon as I tried to move I knew that I couldn't have slept much longer than a couple of hours.

With difficulty I tried to recall what I had seen during my short sleep. It wasn't really a dream this time, it was more of a nightmarish hallucination of Vlad looking for me in a long, dark and empty corridor. I could not see him but I could hear his voice calling my name clearly. I tried to call back so he could find me but couldn't, and every time I thought that he was finally close to me and reached out for him, my hands hit a damp stone wall...

My eyes filled with tears at the awful memory making me feel alone and desolate. I wiped them away quickly with the soft blanket covering me from head to toe, before calling to Lia and Lucas, "You can stop whispering, I'm up!"

They were at my side in a heartbeat.

"Lucas said that you've been calling someone in your sleep," Lia announced, sitting down next to me and pressing her hand against my forehead, checking for fever. "Honestly, you can't go on like this. You look desperate and depressed, and you never sleep enough... Why don't you call in sick today and rest, let me take you to bed..."

"No, Lia. I'm good." I said, knowing that I wouldn't be able to fall asleep now anyway. "I'm going to work and then we're meeting my mum..." I looked at Lucas.

"Yes, but she's right, you could do with a day off..." Lucas agreed with Lia.

I sat up, shaking my head. "My day off is tomorrow. Anne is off today, and if I don't turn up, Mr. Turner will call her. That's not fair."

"Ok then, come have breakfast with us before you get ready. It's still early." Lia resigned.

Lucas reminded me over breakfast to write down everything that I had seen at night in my notebook, insisting that however unimportant it might look to me, his uncle might see it differently.

So I added my new nightmare to my previous scribbles as soon as I reached my room, then got ready for work quickly.

When Lucas picked me up in the book shop in the afternoon, I was so tired that I could hardly speak or even concentrate on his words, and when he told me to take a nap before going out with Mum, I did not protest.

"Uncle called me while you were sleeping." Lucas said as he helped me into my coat once we were ready to go out in the evening. "He's extremely curious about your dreams. Get ready for his interrogation." He grinned, locking the door behind us.

I rolled my eyes at him, "Your uncle... Why does he think the dreams are so important?"

"Well, he will be back tomorrow night and I'm sure he'll tell us all about his new theory soon. He's quite excited about it." Lucas explained as we descended the stairs.

"Are you really sure you don't want me to drive?" He added once we stepped outside, into the cold darkness of the wintery evening.

I shook my head no. "It only takes ten minutes by bus and the stop is so close to Luigi's... There's really no point." I said, taking a step in the direction of the station and slipping on the ice-covered pavement.

It must have rained while I slept, the streets were full of small, frozen puddles, glittering in the light of the streetlamps and the passing cars.

"I ask you one last time, are you sure? It's parked just around the corner." Lucas said, lacing his arm through mine and steadying me before I could fall.

"Absolutely. Come on, let's go or we will be late."

"I have never met a girl more stubborn than you, Samara." Lucas announced, chuckling.