“No comment, then?”

  “Excuse me, I have a class to teach.” Lockley wrenched the door open, and let it slam behind her. A few loose pages scuttled against the steps before the breeze wafted them across the quad, like so many letter-size tumbleweeds. Tamar fished her phone out of her pocket. No comment, she texted the rest of the Anchorites.

  Edie was, of course, the first to respond. All systems are go.

  Good, Tamar said. I’m going to breakfast, if anyone wants to join me.

  She didn’t expect anyone would but couldn’t face returning to her empty apartment just yet. She wanted to celebrate, to congratulate herself on cracking the case and quitting her job and the first crisp, cold day of the rest of her life. She started walking back to Azalea Street, wondering what might satisfy her appetite.

  When her phone buzzed again, it wasn’t the Anchorites chat. Just Hannah, just her.

  How about breakfast in bed?

  7:00 AMTuck

  Tuck jerked awake when something heavy landed on his stomach. He clawed the sleeping bag away from his face, trapped in darkness until he finally freed his head and his arms and realized his beanie had slipped down over his eyes. He pushed it up, shoved the alien mass off his lap. Thinking, unavoidably, of the rats, the rat, the rat who had crawled up his leg and into his hands and died there. The rat he would probably have nightmares about for the next two years, never mind the last few miserable hours.

  That rat. He’d never had a rodent phobia before, but he was pretty sure he had one now.

  Milky autumn sunlight dappled the floorboards through the colored glass. He rubbed his eyes until the room around him solidified, a thin veil of mist still blurring the world outside. The heavy thing in his lap was not a rat, he hoped. It was warm, oblong, slightly squishy, wrapped in tinfoil.

  “Chill out, Churchmouse. It’s a breakfast burrito, not a bomb.”

  Tuck squinted up at Theo, manspreading on the desk like anything less than a yard between his knees would be too close for comfort. Tuck shook his head. Still having a bad dream, maybe. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Dude, what are you doing in here?”

  “Sleeping,” Tuck said. “Or I was. Finally. After being up all night with Edie.”

  Theo tossed a wad of napkins at him, held out a Styrofoam cup that smelled like coffee. Good coffee. Not instant. Tuck hated the way his mouth started to water immediately. He hadn’t eaten anything but stale M&M’s for dinner last night. He couldn’t afford to refuse a free burrito, even if it came from Theo.

  “Tamar tracked Lockley down,” Theo told him, blowing on the second cup of coffee he’d brought for himself. “Declined to comment, of course.”

  “You couldn’t have texted me that?” Tuck asked, grudgingly peeling foil off the top of the burrito. It warmed his fingers, and he simply held it in his swollen hands for a moment or two before tearing off a corner with his teeth.

  “Been texting you for hours, bud,” Theo said. “The whole group has.”

  “Phone’s probably dead. Not a lot of outlets around here.”

  “Well, there are about to be a lot of outlets around here.”

  “What?” Tuck said, through bacon, egg, and what might have been mac and cheese. He could barely recognize the four food groups anymore. Or were there five? His last hot meal had been a hot dog from the 7-Eleven that tasted like it had been turning under the lamps for a month.

  “News, Friar, news outlets. Edie’s going to post her article posthaste. How long do you think it’ll take for this place to be crawling with people? Not just media. Cops. Rubberneckers. Hazmat, maybe.” He slurped his coffee. Raised his eyebrows.

  “Okay, so I’ll make myself scarce for a couple of days.”

  “And go where?” Theo folded his arms, pecs and biceps bulging under his sweatshirt. Still, the night had taken a toll on him, too. His perpetual five o’clock shadow was denser, darker, flecked with silver. Deep eyes dimmer, even the one that wasn’t black tender and swollen, almost like he’d been crying.

  “Dunno,” Tuck said, and swallowed too much at once. “I’ll figure something out.” But it would be harder, more dangerous, as temperatures plummeted. Maybe it was time to pack his things and go south, like a migratory bird. But—as Theo had so gently inquired—to where? To what? He was an embarrassment to his family, and he’d rather be homeless than go crawling back to them anyway. Finding asylum at the Anchorite had conveniently deferred those dilemmas. Which was—he could at least admit to himself, if not to Theo—partly why he was so reluctant to leave. The world had no room for him, no use. It was easier to simply disappear.

  “C’mon, you can’t come back to this bolt-hole,” Theo said. No grin for once, no trace of irony. “You can’t live here forever.”

  Tuck stubbornly chewed, stubbornly swallowed. Closed up the tinfoil again, knowing he might need the rest of the burrito to stop his stomach snarling later. “I dunno,” he said again, considering the problem of food if he decided to start hiking south. His mycological curiosity had started with foraging. He could live off the land with not much but his wits and his notebook for—well, a while, anyway. “I was doing just fine until you invited yourself in.”

  “Yeah, and who invited you?” Theo asked. “Saint Anthony?” He’d found Tuck’s notebook on the desk and opened it without asking. Flipped through the first few pages, pausing on a colorful sketch of some turkey tail mushrooms, growing in their whimsical spirals.

  “Your concern is touching,” Tuck said, “but I’m fine. Really.” He struggled to extract himself from the sleeping bag. Not thrilled to be standing there with his pale matchstick legs growing goose bumps in the chilly morning air while Theo was sitting there looking like a lump of grizzly bear. “I don’t hate it here,” he said, and tugged the notebook back. “I’m never bored.”

  “But you can go fuck around with moss or whatever it is you do anytime you feel like walking to a wooded area,” Theo said, scowling now, like he was taking Tuck’s stupidity personally. “You don’t have to go native, dude.”

  “Then where do I go?” Tuck stowed his notebook on the bookshelf and reached for last night’s jeans, still hanging over the back of the desk chair. Knees stained black with soil. He sighed. Clean clothes, like hot food and good coffee, were creature comforts long since given up for lost. “I appreciate the heads-up, but if I wanted help, I’d ask for it.” He wasn’t a charity case just yet. For all his failings, Tuck was resourceful. Mother Earth provided, if you knew where to look.

  “Would you, though?” Theo said sourly. Unaccustomed to having his chivalrous advances so decisively rebuffed.

  Tuck pretended to consider the question while he looked around the room, taking inventory of what he had to pack up or stash where nobody would be likely to find it in the likely event that someone like Edie, with more curiosity than sense, ignored the DANGER signs. “From you?” he said finally. “No.” Wondering, once again, if outright rudeness was the only way to discourage people who seemed so determined to meddle. Why couldn’t they have sent Hannah? He’d found himself thinking wistfully of her cold-blooded apathy over the last seven hours.

  “Fine,” Theo said. “What if I’m asking you for help?”

  Tuck almost laughed. Yeah, right. “With what?”

  Theo shrugged, big shoulders bobbing up and back down again. “My best bartender just quit,” he said. “Guess I never should have slept with her.”

  “She never should have slept with you.”

  “Yeah, she seemed to think so, too. Might try to change her mind, now th—” He realized he was thinking out loud. Tuck’s turn to raise his eyebrows. “Never mind,” Theo said. “Point is, I’m shorthanded and you’re homeless. Maybe we can work out a”—he gestured toward the notebook—“what do you call it? A symbiotic arrangement.”

  Tuck was naturally suspicious, disinclined to believe him. But Theo’s usual swagger and bluster had simmered down, tempered by stress or fatigue or—incredible as it seemed—a trace of genuine heartbreak. Tuck glanced out the window. The screech owls had gone silent, but the rest of the world was waking up. Half a mile east, the campus bell tower gave a few lugubrious booms. Seven o’clock. “Well, don’t tell me how,” he said, reaching for his coffee again with greater urgency. Wherever he went, he had no desire to be hanging around the Anchorite once the story broke.

  “I know it’s not your dream job, but you can pull a pint,” Theo told him. “You can learn to mix a drink. Shit, I bet Noah would let you do the mushrooms if you really need some fungus to get fired up about.”

  “And live where? Last time I checked, not a lot of bartenders were making enough to make rent around here.”

  “I’ve got a spare room. It’s not much, but it’s better than this.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Like a heart attack, Tuck.”

  He couldn’t remember the last time Theo had called him Tuck—not Friar, not Churchmouse, just Tuck. They stared at each other, disheveled and exhausted, each clutching their coffee in quiet desperation. It hadn’t occurred to Tuck until just then that, despite his bustling bar, despite his animal magnetism, despite being such an obvious extrovert, maybe Theo kept coming back to the Anchorite because he was, in some bewildering way, lonely. Tuck cleared his throat.

  “Did you make that burrito or pick it up somewhere?”

  “Made it.” Theo cleared his throat, too, avoiding Tuck’s eyes, looking out the window at nothing. “Make burritos most mornings, with whatever’s left over from last night.”

  “It’s good,” Tuck told him. “Thanks.”

  “Sure.”

  “Be better with mushrooms.”

  Theo looked back his way. “Maybe you can tell me if the ones growing behind my water heater are safe to eat.”

  “Hope so,” Tuck told him. “Because I don’t know anything about cocktails.”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers,” Theo said. “You’re hired.” He slid off the desk, clapped Tuck on the shoulder so hard he thought he heard a floorboard crack beneath him. “Pack your shit, Churchmouse. You got a lot to learn by five o’clock.”

  Tuck checked his cheap watch. Consoled himself with a gulp of coffee and said, “Oh good, I regret this already.”

  10:00 AMHannah

  Tamar’s apartment had a lot of windows, which made it look bigger than it was. One bedroom, about five hundred square feet if Hannah had to guess, a corner unit on the second floor of an old mill building. Original hardwood, reddish in the late-morning sunlight. Exposed brick on two sides. Charming, if you didn’t mind the mice in the walls or the cantankerous radiators or the pipe in the kitchen that was too hot to touch until it froze for the winter or hauling your laundry down four flights of stairs to a rank, frigid cellar, only to find that one of your two dozen neighbors had beaten you there. Old buildings were like that.

  Hannah liked old buildings. Lots to listen to at night, a never-ending game of “What’s that sound?” which gave her something to do in the rare dark hours she didn’t spend driving around looking for lost souls with a penny for the ferryman. So to speak. She’d never been to Tamar’s apartment during the day, wasn’t sure why she’d suggested it, except for a reckless euphoria she’d brought back from Bothell Forest, as if she’d left her anger there with Kinnan. Hannah didn’t take pride in much except making anybody dumb enough to fuck with her regret it. Preferably forever. No sign of her latest victim so far today, so far as she knew. Plenty left to worry about, but not now. Not yet.

  She’d slept, but not long—surprised she was even able to doze off in an unfamiliar bed. Her own posed challenge enough but was at least equipped with all the usual—and unusual—interventions. Valley of the Dolls. You could drug yourself unconscious when nothing else worked, and by now nothing else did. She’d tried every humidifier and white noise machine and meditation app invented, and still the most reliable way to achieve oblivion was vodka and Klonopin and raspy AM radio in a language she didn’t know. She couldn’t get a prescription for anything anymore, but uppers and downers were there for the taking in any college town. One of the reasons she’d never mustered the willpower to pack up and leave.

  When she woke, her eyes were glazed with dreams she didn’t remember, the water-spotted ceiling coming slowly into focus. Unsure, at first, where she was. Startled to feel someone breathing beside her until she turned her head and saw Tamar’s dark arm draped over a pillow in a graceful arc. Swimming through the linens. Hannah felt a little stupefied, by her and the sunlight. She had a soft spot for Tamar, mushy and tender as a bruise on an overripe peach. She hated liking people.

  She rolled over, thumbed through the notifications on her phone. A few updates from the Anchorites. Edie alerting the media. Kinnan hadn’t turned up and Tamar hadn’t asked. This many hours later, Hannah could honestly say she didn’t know where he was or care. She slid out from under the sheet and wandered into the living room.

  Unsurprisingly, Tamar had books. Lots of books. Not nearly enough bookshelves. Even the kitchen counters were crowded with cookbooks and magazines. Who even got glossy magazines in the mail anymore? Hannah flicked through a copy of Delayed Gratification, with an article about Tolkien and artificial intelligence dog-eared in one corner. She glanced toward the bedroom. Surely Tamar had bookmarks. Perhaps it was gauche to use them in magazines. She thumbed through a few more pages, waiting for coffee to brew in an old-fashioned percolator. Everybody else had a Keurig or a Nespresso or some other complicated contraption with a name like an Alpine lap dog. Looking around in the daylight, she realized Tamar didn’t have a TV. When would she watch it, between one desk jockey job and the other? But most people made time.

  Hannah brewed her coffee so black and so strong it had stripped her stomach lining like turpentine. Surely a contributing factor to her ectomorphic vanishing act. Turn her sideways, and she disappears! Every few months she got another ulcer and spent a few weeks drinking broth and vomiting blood until it healed just enough for her to start smoking and guzzling coffee again. She rolled her eyes, flipped a page in the magazine. But have you tried chamomile tea?

  She was, come to think of it, craving a cigarette. Probably time to make tracks. She didn’t want to be there when Tamar woke up. Tamar didn’t deserve that. Hannah wondered what the half-life of sleep was—how long it took before an hour of rest drained out of your body again. She’d only been up for thirty minutes and already the day was losing its luster. Sure, Kinnan might still be freezing his ass off somewhere in Bothell Forest, and the police might be digging up the Anchorite’s backyard, and Heather might be scrambling to empty her desk before the mob with the torches and pitchforks arrived, but so what? That didn’t change the prognosis. Hannah closed her eyes on the harsh, unwelcome sunshine. Rubbing her thumbs into her temples until they throbbed. Her memory of the night was mosaic, chimerical, distorted by that unparalleled intoxicant, retaliation. And what else? How could she know? Kinnan’s strangled words echoed in her head. Aggression. Hostility. Blindness. Had he really said cannibalism, or was that just a figment of her demented fever dreams? She shoved the thought aside. That was a rat. That was different.

  Hannah finished her coffee in three long swallows, left the magazine where she’d found it, and let herself into the bathroom. Wanting to wash her face, clear her head, rinse off the last ten hours. There was no counter space to speak of—only a shallow cabinet behind the mirror and whatever stowage could be had in the corners of the shower. She closed the door and pulled the cabinet open. Always interested to see what everybody else was taking, especially interested to see if there was anything worth taking with her when she left. Tamar, if she had any prescription medications, didn’t keep them in the bathroom. Instead, she had a few makeup brushes and eye shadow palettes, though Hannah couldn’t remember her ever wearing eye shadow, toothpaste and floss, a thermometer, and—aha—she knew she’d find something.

  There was a small jewelry box on the bottom shelf. Not finished in velvet, but one of the white paper ones with a cotton liner on the bottom so what was inside didn’t look so small, rolling around down there. Hannah popped the top off and was surprised again. Not pills or weed or even her old wedding ring, but a tiny blue eggshell, intact except for a hole in one end, like whatever was in there got one look at the world and decided not to come out. Oddly chastised by it—that delicate, innocent thing, boxed up like a secret—she put it back where she’d found it and closed the cabinet again.

  She leaned back from her own reflection, which felt too close, too sudden. This morning’s bedhead and last night’s hat hair fighting for dominance. Her face always looked thin, drawn, sharp—her pointed nose and chin almost ratlike in their way, or so her sister always told her. Ratface. Olive Oyl. Regan MacNeil. Her siblings picked the sweetest nicknames. But today her cheeks seemed softer. So did her mouth, her eyes, the slant of her brows. Everything a little bit … blurry.

  Hannah turned the taps on and cupped cool water into her face, hoping it would wake her up. She liked Tamar, but she hated liking people, so she wanted to be gone. She shut the faucet off and lifted her head to look for a towel. But there was her reflection again, more clearly. Maybe. She leaned closer, close enough that her breath smudged the glass.

  She froze there over the basin, water dripping from her chin. She tried to blink the blur away. Nothing happened. She raised one fingertip to the bridge of her nose and felt it—pale and scaly, but soft as warm candle wax.

  Sleep in her eyes.

  Acknowledgments

  The writing of this book happened in strange fits and starts between June and December of 2023. It was a rough year for me, when writing was perpetually forced to compete with other big, life-altering things—selling my house, finishing my PhD, putting my whole life in storage, and spending a lot of time in hospitals for my dog’s cancer treatment and my own recovery after shattering my left foot. Without the patience, support, and enthusiasm of my personal and professional networks I never would have survived the year, never mind writing two books at the same time. There were many long days and many sleepless nights; I was rarely at my best and often at my worst, and for some reason some people stuck with me anyway. This is as much their book as mine.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10