Author's Preface
The sliding door in the little dining room opened to a terrifying breezy balcony with a translucent glass overhang and a space enclosed in safety railing. More plants.
The kitchen had no food in it. The fridge was empty beyond bottled waters and some sugar-free energy drinks. There was nothing but spices, ceramics, and silverware in the cabinets. One of the cabinets was locked, a keyhole staring out from under the handle like a single blind eye.
Sevan’s hands slapped the marble counter, and he gave up trying to jump high enough to see the tops of the wall cabinets. Frustration bristling through his nerves, he aggressively spun one of the swivel stools—then carefully re-set it.
Where would this woman have hidden his phone? It didn’t look like she had taken it with her. Was it in the locked cabinet?
There was a small studio space with no windows that branched off the other side of the dining room. Plaques and achievements that meant nothing to Sevan were hung on the walls, along with photos of concert stages. Meika wasn’t in any of the photos, but they were surely his stages.
An acoustic guitar stood on a stand in the corner, and a keyboard took up one wall. There was an electric guitar hung on a mount on the wall, its shiny surface covered in sharpie signatures.
Sevan wandered down the hallway and peeked into the bathroom. There was a closet full of towels and bedsheets next down from the guest bedroom. The next room, where Farren had spent the night, was locked.
Meika’s room was not locked.
Sevan’s fingers brushed the broad green leaf of a tall plant as he surveyed the street view from Meika’s bedroom window. Cars like little bugs. People like toys. He lightly flicked one of the long, vertical blinds and watched it swing back and forth.
The room smelled faintly of sweet cologne. Nothing was out of place. The bed was made. Even the large faux fur rug that expanded out from under the bed looked like it had been fluffed since the night before.
The walk-in closet was well stocked. Sevan touched the sleeve of a leather jacket that still had its tags on it. He stopped in front of the built-in closet mirror, then glanced down at a floor scale in front of his feet. There was a wadded measuring tape on an upper shelf near a shoe box.
Sevan pinched a long hair off his T-shirt, then, grimacing, slowly raised it in the air in front of him. Dark on one end, then silvery white all the way down. Bizarre. He dropped the hair and watched it float downward until it vanished against the floor. How the hell did that even get on me?
He abruptly brushed both shoulders, then walked into Meika’s attached bathroom.
Two sinks, a luxurious counterspace, and a mirror the size of half the wall. The tub had a Jacuzzi and a rainfall showerhead. Spotless, like everything else. Some people just live like this, Sevan heard in his head. He posed for a moment in the mirror, with the glass-enclosed rainfall shower at his back.
There were some loose makeup articles on the sink counter, and a few jewelry pieces.
There was a medicine cabinet behind a side mirror, but nothing inside it but glass cologne bottles.
One of the drawers under the sink was partially out, and Sevan pulled it the rest of way open. A hair straightener and a curling iron. Hairspray. Other bottles and products.
Sevan checked another drawer. A tissue box, makeup wipes, face wipes, something else—
Sevan worked a wooden box out from its wedged position against the very back of the drawer. He opened the latch and flipped up the top.
Photos. A three-inch stack of them.
The photos were of a child. Eleven or twelve, shoulder-length hair and a bright smile. And for five seconds, Sevan thought they were of Meika as a kid. Then he flipped past the first few and saw the same child depicted in braids and a dress.
Is Meika trans? The thought crossed Sevan’s mind as he flipped another few photos. The kid had some remote, possible resemblance to Meika. Remote. Vaguely possible.
A sibling? A friend from childhood? Sevan’s mind flashed across his theorizations with Rick about Meika possibly knowing Lacey in a past life. Those odds were astronomical. This girl was not Lacey, despite also loosely matching Lacey’s general features. Not to mention, the photos didn’t have that old, lower quality look that Sevan remembered from his own childhood photos.
These pictures looked recent. And they documented the girl’s life in reverse chronological order. Sevan skipped to the back of the pile and found photos of a swaddled newborn in a crib. Then, of that same infant in the arms of a woman, a man standing at her shoulder. They both smiled down at the baby with parental love. Both white Caucasian.
Sevan suddenly wondered if the photos belonged to someone else entirely. They were in Meika’s bathroom, but maybe they weren’t his.
Does he have a lover? Sevan wondered. And with abruptly sharpening curiosity— And if he does, is it a man or a woman? Farren?
A bathroom was a weird place to keep photos, regardless of whose they were.
Sevan shut the box and closed the latch. He started to replace it. Then stopped and withdrew his hand. There was something else, very small, at the very back of the drawer where the box would’ve hidden it.
Sevan slowly drew out a small, carefully folded piece of paper towel.
There was something inside.
Sevan’s fingers quickly unfolded the edges of the paper towel, then began unwrapping the layered tissue. The item inside tumbled out before he could finish unraveling it.
A gut reaction struck Sevan the second he laid eyes on the object. He tossed the empty paper towel onto the counter beside the thing and took an automatic step back.
A razor blade. A blade that looked like it had been removed from a regular shaving razor. Wrapped in a paper towel.
Abruptly, Sevan pulled a wad of toilet paper off the roll on the wall and wrapped both the razor blade and its paper towel in the tissue. He dropped everything into the trash. He put the box of photos back in the drawer.
Maybe it was old. Maybe it belonged to the same person who owned the photos.
Or maybe it was Meika’s, and whatever was going on in this condo was exactly as dire as it appeared.
Something moved silently in the doorway, and Sevan’s eyes flinched upward to find the Maine Coon standing there, peering soundlessly back at him.