My roommate sleepwalked in the middle of the night. When she woke up the next morning, we asked her what she had been dreaming about. She said she had dreamed of cutting open a watermelon, but it was not ripe yet. We all laughed.

Chapter 14

Reilly slowly turned back to me.

“Jessica and Madison don’t have the brains for this,” she said coldly. “So it was you, Emma. You figured it out.”

I nodded.

Her jaw clenched. “When?”

“The moment you tried to stop me from calling the police.”

That had been the first thing that felt wrong.

Reilly never hesitated when something was messed up. She was blunt, impulsive, and aggressively protective. If she had truly believed Madison was killing people in her sleep, there was no universe in which she would have told me to stay quiet and wait.

So I pretended to go along with her.

Then I started paying attention.

The more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Even if some sleepwalkers could do incredible things, Madison had never shown that kind of coordination while asleep. Wandering to the window was one thing. Scaling buildings, entering rooms through windows, committing two separate murders without waking up was something else entirely.

So I started reading. Medical journals. Case reports. Articles about sleep disorders and suggestion.

That was when I found something interesting.

Sleepwalking itself could not turn someone into a mastermind.

But under guidance from a trained hypnotist, a vulnerable sleepwalker could sometimes be nudged toward certain dream content or simple unconscious actions.

Not something as complex as murder.

But maybe enough to stage the illusion.

I looked at Reilly.

“And you were the one who kept steering us toward Madison. Every theory. Every coincidence. Every little push. It all came from you.”

Then I dug into her background.

Most of us already knew Reilly was not interested in guys. It was none of our business, and no one cared. But once I started looking, I found something else.

She knew the first victim.

Not casually. Closely.

They had been in the same queer student group off campus. They had gone to events together. People had seen them together often.

Until the girl started dating the computer science guy.

Jessica sucked in a sharp breath.

“So yes,” I said, “Madison once liked him. But she had already moved on. You hadn’t.”

Reilly said nothing.

“That’s when I knew I needed proof, not just suspicion. So Jessica and I went to Madison and told her everything. She was horrified, but she agreed to help.”