They lay, arms and legs wrapped around each other.

‘Wow,’ Trisha said. ‘That was intense.’

Michaela smiled against Trisha’s hair, which was tickling her nose, but she didn’t feel like moving. Not a single inch.

‘I want to do that again,’ Trisha said. ‘You hearing me?’

Michaela smile widened. ‘I’m hearing you,’ she said.

‘Yeah. I want to do that, and other things a whole bloody lot more times.’ Trisha shifted so she could look at Michaela. She shook her head slightly, looking serious. ‘What are we going to do, babe?’ she asked.

Michaela stopped smiling and just looked at her. ‘I don’t know.’

Trisha sighed and tucked her face into Michaela’s neck. ‘I don’t know either, fuck it all.’

Michaela closed her eyes and held Trisha tighter. What on earth were they going to do? ‘You can come back to New Zealand with me,’ she said before she even knew she was going to speak.

Trisha lifted her head and looked at her. ‘What about Caro?’ she asked.

‘Caro can come too.’

Trisha shook her head. ‘We can’t just go to the other side of the world.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why don’t you stay here?’

‘And do what?’

Trisha shrugged and rolled over on her back, letting go of Michaela.

‘We’ll work something out,’ Michaela told her.

‘Yeah, sure.’ Trisha got up and started looking for clothes.

Michaela pulled her back towards the bed and kissed her. ‘We will work something out,’ she repeated.

Trisha pulled away. ‘Fuck!’ she said. ‘Like fucking what? You won’t come here and I can’t go there, so we’re fucking stuck living a million fucking miles away from each other.’

Michaela looked at her, then bent to pick up her own clothes. ‘It’s not that I won’t come here, Trisha. I have a whole business to run back at home. I can’t just up and forget about that. I have ties there. What sort of ties do you have here?’

Trisha glared at her. ‘My sister? Remember her? I’m not leaving her here with a fucking mother who lost interest years ago. And I’m not fucking off on her while all this creepy shit’s going on that’s for bloody sure.’

Michaela tugged her jeans on. ‘She can come too! I’m not asking you to leave her here. Jesus Christ, Trisha, will you be reasonable for one minute?’

Trisha yanked at the buttons on her shirt. ‘Don’t tell me to be reasonable,’ she said, her voice suddenly low. ‘Don’t fucking patronise me, just because you’re the fucking big hot shot who thinks she can solve every fucking problem.’

Michaela gaped at her. Where did that come from? ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Trisha,’ she said. ‘What the hell are you talking about, Trisha?’

But Trisha just shook her head and stalked out of the room. Michaela heard voices in the living room, then a door slammed. A minute later Trisha’s Mustang started and screeched out of the driveway. 

Michaela sat back down on the bed. Well. That hadn’t ended up so well. She smoothed the sheet down, then got up and made the bed, moving on autopilot, wondering what Trisha was so upset about. She shook her head, nothing was ever easy, was it?

Out in the living area, Caro was still sitting at the table. She looked up and grimaced when she saw Michaela’s face.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘My sister can be a real bitch sometimes.’

Michaela shook her head and sat down at the table. ‘I’m in love with her,’ she said.

There was a moment’s quiet, in which Michaela could hear the mechanical hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

‘Huh,’ Caro said. ‘You’re in deep shit then, my friend.’

Michaela looked up and couldn’t help it, she started laughing. Caro stared at her, eyes wide, then began laughing too.

‘Ah fuck,’ Michaela said. ‘Deep shit is right.’ She looked around as if just seeing the room for the first time. She needed coffee, and she was hungry. ‘Any rolls left?’

Caro nodded and pushed the bag her way. Michaela took one and bit into it as she stood and went into the kitchen.

‘How did you sleep last night?’ she asked.

At the table Caro fiddled with her computer and shrugged.

Michaela looked at her as she got a clean mug out of the cupboard. ‘No, I’m serious,’ she said. ‘I want to know.’

Caro gave her a smile. ‘I kinda read the notes you made,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

Michaela leaned against the doorway, waiting for the water to boil. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’

Caro pulled the note pad over. ‘No one really has a clue, do they?’ she said. ‘The theories are pretty far out.’

‘Yeah. Everything from time travelling aliens to demons.’

Caro shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I believe in either. Though I don’t suppose there’s any reason that aliens shouldn’t have discovered time travel if they’re managing to zip around the universe anyway.’

Michaela smiled. She was beginning to like this girl.

Caro was still talking. ‘What do you think about this one? I’ve never really got the idea of archetypes. What are they?’

Michaela walked over and skimmed her notes again. ‘Yeah, that was one of my first thoughts when I realised we were talking about shadows,’ she said. ‘Archetypes are a Jungian idea.’ She looked at Caro to see if the girl was following. Caro shrugged. ‘Carl Jung. Initially Freud’s student but lots smarter, I reckon. Invented psycho-analysis.’ Michaela continued. ‘Archetypes are like human patterns of thought and behaviour that cross every racial and cultural divide. They’re simply common to the human condition. Jung was a big supporter of what he called the ‘collective unconscious’, a system of basic human thought and behaviour that reached deeper than anything we can pinpoint from our upbringing, or even temperament.’

Caro nodded again. ‘How come you know all this stuff?’ she asked.

Michaela shrugged and went to make her coffee. ‘It interests me,’ she said. ‘I do a lot of reading.’ She came back in and sat down. ‘The shadow archetype is one of the big ones,’ she said. ‘It’s like the darker side of us. The aspect of ourselves we cut off when we learn to interact with the world around us and become civilised.’ She paused, gathering her thoughts. ‘The shadow isn’t civilised. It’s all instinct and doesn’t differentiate between codes of behaviour or make moral judgements. It just is.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘And most of us cut it off from ourselves completely; we don’t accept we have this aspect to us, we turn away from it, but turning away from it doesn’t mean it’s still not there.’

Caro was chewing her lip. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I kinda get that. But do you think that’s what the shadow people are?’ she shrugged. ‘I hate the thought, that I’m just kind of projecting these things myself; that it’s because I haven’t done some sort of psychological bullshit work on myself that these things are staring at me from the corners of my room every night.’

She looked at Michaela. ‘And it doesn’t explain why there are more than one of them.’