PAULINE
My hand shot up to my mouth before the sound could get out.
I pressed my palm hard against my lips and held it there. My back was against the wall. My knees had gone soft but I would not let them buckle. I would not. I stood in that dark hallway and I stared at the space where she was and I said it out loud, quiet and steady, past my own fingers.
"You are not real."
The smile came back first. Before the rest of her. Just the smile, hanging there in the dark the way a dream lingers at the edges of your memory. Then the rest of Athena filled itself in around it, and she tilted her head at me with that same mocking expression.
Then she faded.
Just like that. Like smoke when a window opened. She was there and then she simply wasn't, and the hallway was just a hallway again, dark and quiet and smelling faintly of the lemon oil the cleaning staff used on the floors.
