Marinell was busy - with what, Rai had no clue. The manager caught them melding into the lounge cushions by the heat of the fire, about half an hour after they had come in and hit the reception bell a few times to no response. He apologized without explaining, bolted from the room, came back with a tray of their usual tea and coffee, and bolted again.

The Business Center was cleared out. The lights were off and the cracked glass door had been removed. Nothing but an empty closet now.

After forgoing tea and helping himself to some of Rai’s coffee, Sao rolled himself out on one of the sofas in the sunbaked lounge. He opened a magazine and announced he’d stay awake until dinner. He was snoozing within minutes.

Limbs draped around him like a cat, paper on his lap, a blazing fireplace at his side; Rai might as well have been looking at a poster for an antique gentlemen’s club. Not the sleazy kind, but the exclusive hideaways for the aging and idle rich. Rai wasn’t sure places like that even existed anymore outside the movies - movies that themselves were dusty and dated. A gentlemen’s club would probably have curtains. Or would the members want the plebeians able to peek in, see what they were missing?

Sao seemed comfortable either way.

Rai figured it was only fair that he took some of the tea in return for Sao’s helping of coffee. But there was a strange taste to it, like cheap metal spoons. The morning’s coffee had been the same, that and the smashed bread Sao had been suckered into buying at the mall. Sniffing the cup, then further up, Rai found a frill of hardened blood around the wrists of his jacket. Chipping at it revealed a second, gooey layer that seeped into the cracks of the leather.

His own red cuff resting on his lap, Sao murmured in his sleep. It wasn’t just their sweaters that matched.

Rai picked a napkin off the tea tray and proceeded to make a mess.

“Sao.”

“Hm?” The gentleman in repose was not so easily moved.

Rai threw down the napkin. “Let’s take this opportunity to clear out the room, so we can check out and leave as soon as we’re done with Thomi. Your shirt’s still hanging in the bathroom, remember?”

“Honestly, I didn’t until you said that.” Sao rubbed his eyes. “What happened to your hand?”

“Reminder of Muka. Which was what reminded me about your shirt. Come on.”

—

“You should dab cold water on it.”

“I know,” Rai said.

As Rai blotted his sleeve with some toilet paper, Sao took a seat on the dusty bench under the window at the end of the hallway, shirt slung over his arm. Though he had soaked it for hours, the brown stain had not only sunk into the fabric but spread. “Shall we tell Thomi about Rose?”

“Might as well. When authorities come poking around, she can’t say we lied to her. If it leads to more trouble in town - let the ‘authority’ handle that.”

“And Cherry?”

“Definitely for someone else to handle.” Rai pulled the door closed behind him, locked it and inspected the tarnished key, trying to remember the last time he saw something like it outside a cartoon. Not to mention the keyhole so big you could see a through it. Retro chunkiness was going the way of gentlemen’s clubs. Maybe Guy or Marinell had a spare; it would make a better souvenir than the bloodstains and sweaters.

“I do wonder how she’ll take the news. Although, something tells me it won’t faze her. Cherry seems like the sort of person who decides on her opinion of someone and sticks to it, regardless of the twists and turns.”

That registered to Rai as vaguely insulting. “Maybe I’ll write her a letter, or something.”

“I’m sure she’d appreciate it.” Sao stood and yawned.

“You dropped a tissue.”

Sao gave him a quizzical look and turned to pick up the rectangle of napkin that had been left on the bench. “No,” he said. “This must have been here when I sat down.”

He turned it around. It was not a napkin, but an envelope.

Rai dried his hands on his pants and took it, clawed open the top, pulled out a folded piece of paper.

Dear guests: you have been offered a final chance to leave.

If you choose to remain, your fate may be the same as the last.

Not a secret. The writer had skipped straight to blackmail for them. He must have been grinning like an idiot, because Sao was more unnerved looking at him than at the letter.

Rai proceeded to fold the paper back up along its original lines - primly, exaggerated, two fingers pinching the paper with the rest fanned out. Just in case anyone besides the two of them (he wasn’t sure where or who) was watching.

“I was just thinking about souvenirs,” Rai said.

—

Thomi came in from the scalding sunset in her colorless coat and drab twinset, accented by a tiny gold chain like the one that Muka had attached to his watch. She had also somehow managed to bundle her hair into a tight bun, leaving her entire waxy face exposed. Sao said she used makeup to look older, and Rai saw it now.

With her outfit and bun and pale pinched features (and the fact that he’d consumed more sitcoms in the past three days than he had in a decade) she reminded Rai of the grandmother in a show he used to watch with Lem, when he was a kid. Lem was Grandpa Cadmus’s wife, which made her something close to his ‘Grandma’, but he didn’t call her that. And Lem would never be caught dead in a wallflower cardigan and a sweater with its neckline ‘practically shoved up my nose,’ as she would say.

The quippy septuagenarian on TV had inch-thick glasses that made her eyes look huge and watery. Thomi achieved the effect naturally. Rai tried not to stare, but there was something eerily magnetic about her without the hair covering half her face.

Or nostalgic. Sao would call it nostalgia.

Catching an eyeful of his own reflection in the wide, black windows of the dining room, Rai decided he’d better hold his tongue on anything related to appearances. He looked like he had been dunked in grease and dredged out of the vat with two bruised eyes. Even Sao, who couldn’t look bad if he tried, was visibly less polished than he usually was. The sweater really detracted from his usual effects. Thomi’s reflection, meanwhile, gleamed like a cloud of moonlight.

Thomi sat down, looked at her tablemates, and decided she needed a drink.

“Your choice of vintage,” she said to Marinell with a curt nod.

Marinell was their sole chef and waiter for dinner, since Guy was on babysitting duty over at the school. The manager came to them tongue-tied and sweaty, but his hands were steady enough when he uncorked the bottle and poured out three glasses. A few words of thanks paired with a high-voltage smile from Sao and the hands were rattling like the rest of him. He stumbled away like a man with a concussion, but quickly returned with appetizers; three plates of stuffed tomatoes.

“Today’s main is steak with mushroom sauce,” he stuttered, and teleported out of the room.

Thomi and Sao accepted this as entirely normal. “Such a strange few days it’s been,” she said. The balloon glass looked cartoonishly huge in her tiny pointed fingers.

And she downed the glass in one gulp.

“Shall I?” Sao asked in his velvety way. She accepted, and he poured.

“I know none of it’s your fault, and there were troubles that started far before your arrival, but it is such a strange coincidence. That two detectives turn up at our doorstep and the very foundation of the town is upturned.” She now took a conservative sip. So a drink poured by Sao was less trustworthy than one from Marinell.

“I’m an Investigator. It’s an assistant role to the cops and detectives Level 2 and up.” Rai picked up his own glass. “Civilian experts and auditors are in the same category. I’m kind of the latter. The Birdsing pickup that brought us here was just glorified paperwork. And Sao’s my assistant.”

“Like private eyes? No wonder you had Cherry’s attention.”

“Some PIs are part of the Investigator level. But most of them are fully independent.”

“Very independent they must be, if you aren’t one of them. Have you ever thought of striking out on your own?”

Rai finished his glass. Sao poured him some more before Rai could tell him not to. “What, as a PI? Not really. What I do is close enough, and having access to the national archives keeps me busy. I tend to get carried away when I’m doing my own thing. Working for the metro police is a pain in the ass but my grandpa used to say, I need to be part of an institution to keep me in check.”

“It works, most of the time,” Sao said with a smile plastered across his face. Rai could almost hear the granny sitcom’s laugh track.

“I see,” Thomi said. “You’d like it on the fae Citadel. Their lives are completely regimented. What they eat, the hours they sleep, fitness levels and magic usage…”

“Hours of sleep, huh? I’m guessing they’d exile me in no time.”

“I suppose so. Guy tells me you enjoy your caffeine.”

“Guilty as charged.” After some consideration, Rai took off his gloves. The glow of aura made his tableware gleam radioactive, and Thomi couldn’t help but stare. Good - she wasn’t the one controlling the distractions. “So, Miss Thomi, we had some loose threads leftover from the last time we spoke, right?”

“That’s right. And I have a confession to make.”

Her look with her huge bloated eyes gagged him for a moment. “Uh, so about Lumi-”

“I’m the one who killed Muka.”

The dining room went so quiet Rai could hear the grass and branches rustling, like ghosts laughing at him, at the whole situation he’d dumped himself into.

—

“Bullshit,” Rai said reflexively.

Her expression was taut. With the big dark eyes her face looked like a hollowed skull. “Do you know who he really was? Ever thought about why he might despise the Citadel so much? He was a criminal. An escaped murderer.”

Rai scowled back. “Did he tell you that, or did you read it somewhere?”

“Oh, he told me. Twenty two years ago, he got into an altercation with a worker in one of the Citadel facilities. He killed the man and took the disc containing some vital genetic research. He regretted it, of course. The Muka you met was honest about how much he cared about the school, how much he valued the family he worked for after his Citadel retirement - but you understand this meant he always had a dark side. My father knew this too. They were friends, but my father knew to be careful around him.”

“From what we read, Muka was part of the fae immigration department,” Sao said. “What was he doing at a research facility?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me everything. I was hardly ever in Temperance until I finished my studies. Until I started working for him, I got the impression he simply saw me as a child. And Muka would never bring up such a topic in front of children.” She tilted the dregs of her drink. They slid around, smearing red, like a blood clot. “But I did pick up a little on what he did in immigration. It’s what you’d expect. You must have heard him talk about how he hated being watched, the thought of the school being watched, the surveillance system on the Citadel? Well, guess what his specialty was.”

Her smile was sharp as fishing wire.

“His magic, his focus study in the fae academy, was makeshift sensors - for remote listening and viewing. Nearly invisible particles. If you have a certain sensitivity, or the training to see, they may resemble mosquitoes, or fireflies. His skill was nothing exceptional, to hear him talk of it. There were hundreds with a similar specialty, and his particles couldn’t go far unless they hitched a ride, on a bird or insect for instance. Or the shoulders of a visitor. And of course, he tried to rub shoulders with everybody in town.”

“And that’s how he heard all the little secrets he needed to put into a certain set of letters.”

She suddenly looked away. A ribbon of hair dropped out of the bun and fell over her neck. “Mr. Marinell making off with his father’s millions. The cleaner’s gambling away her family home. And one of our term teachers had done horrendous things with animals in his youth. But they never repeated their crimes, because in Temperance, they were supported. What that meant is: they were given something to lose. They were paid well and treated with sympathy. Muka even staged a ridiculous letter for himself, and I was sure everyone would see through it instantly. I thought I had to write something more believable for my own letter, but the people of Temperance were absolutely accepting of a silly thread about a wig and horns.”

“The seducer story was your own idea?” Sao asked.

Rai choked on some tomato stuffing.

“Yes and no. I played up an existing… incident.” She directed a small smile at her plate, still empty. “The prolific Mr. Hode tried to put his hands on me shortly after I came to Temperance. As if I’d have interest in some pigheaded fool old enough to be my grandfather. He never got anywhere, and Muka would never let him, but putting a reminder of this in my letter…”

“You thought it might frame him as the writer,” Rai muttered.

“Hode’s been lingering in Temperance like a bitter smell, telling his family that he’s working hard for their sake. He’s been unemployed for years, and from what I heard he was never a good cop to begin with. He’s always leeched off Muka and the mayor.” Suddenly hungry, Thomi speared up a few tomatoes. She waved the knife in her other hand as she spoke. “Keeping Muka happy and himself out of his wife’s way is in his best interest. He’s relying on his wealthy in-laws to leave him something for his service. Being run out of town for fondling a college coed would be a fantastic way to be written out of a will.”

“Will things be alright even without Muka?” Sao asked.

“You mean, with Hode?” Her smile faded. “I’ll work it out. He’s not high on my list of priorities. I suppose I’ll be safe from him in prison?”

“If you get taken in,” Rai said.

“How magnanimous of you.”

“We still don’t know why you kicked the principal down the stairs. If you did it at all.” Rai helped himself to more wine. Credit where it was due; his weak aura resisted most common substances, including alcohol. Innate sobriety made for some joyless nights in his own college years, but on the job, he could match any suspect or colleague in drinks and retain whatever wits he came in with. The worth of those wits, well, it depended. “I guess you can infer: I think you’re covering for someone. Tell us more about Temperance’s so-called mayor.”

“And you’ve already inferred that the mayor is no single person - there’s no formal post, what would be the point? The mayor’s identity is made up of several of the more influential denizens of the town. It started mostly as a joke. As did the letters. And it evolved into a means of control. Whoever couldn’t be paid off could be driven out by discomfort and fear. With Muka’s surveillance technique - and funds - he was essentially head of letters.”

“The old carrot and stick scheme.” Rai was skeptical. He had to be, when expectations were so nicely met. Truth never played nice.

“Of course, they didn’t have to leverage threats often. One knowing letter would keep anyone in line. Mostly, the ‘mayor’ was well liked for all their charity, spent on keeping the town clean and in working order. You saw Birdsing - and you’ve likely heard of the ruffians from Garland. We don’t have any of that. Of course, I always suspected that there was some muscle behind the scenes, but all Muka told me was his role. And he always preferred a peaceful approach.” She shrugged. “I haven’t met the rest.”

Rai didn’t like that. But if she didn’t want to offer any new names, maybe she’d take up an old one. “Does this mean that Muka was the one who frightened away the man named Lamort?”

The redness around her eyes started to break containment, spilling over her otherwise bloodless face, like wet mascara, or a bad case of hives. She went for her glass again. After reinforcing her nerves with some wine, she only said, “Not quite. Lamort was part of the mayoral council. He left on his own. He knew his wife was getting close. She wasn’t as close as he thought at the time, but eventually–”

Another hearty gulp.

“--she found this place, didn’t she? Britania S______. It was…” Her lip pulled back, exposing a sliver of a snarl. “It was that woman’s fault that Rose disappeared. They got too close to the Citadel murder and Muka knew. And he began to act strangely. And that’s why I had to do what I did!”

And she slammed down the glass. Rai was shocked it didn’t smash. Even more shocked was Marinell, who was just in from the kitchen with their main course, three reddish brown shapes steaming away and threatening to spill off undersized plates. The dish had a tiny green garnish at the top, which would have looked accidental except that each serving had an identical sprig in the same place.

Thomi settled as Marinell swapped the old dishes with the new. Rai wondered if the man had heard the outburst after all. Could be the pressure of three customers at once was getting to him. Marinell stuttered the name of the dish (ribeye with red wine mushroom sauce) and after seeing his own sweat dotting the table, searched wildly and too long for a handkerchief that was sticking out of his pocket. The man looked so wired that Rai wondered if he would explode in place of Thomi’s glass. Luckily, Sao suppressed him with another simpery smile and thank-you.

“This looks delicious,” Sao said. Marinell was gone, so the act of sniffing and sighing and purring wasn’t for his benefit - Rai had to assume Sao really did find it amazing. “Look at the marbling - it’s perfectly done.”

Thomi also took a moment to spoon up and savor some of the sauce. Her eyes were the same color, shape and consistency of the soup-drenched mushrooms. “Marinell’s got talent. He loses some confidence with Guy around as competition, but he’s always been good.”

“I do wonder why he got such frightening letters,” Sao said.

“Did you see them?”

Sao was so enthralled by his steak that he didn’t catch Thomi’s sidelong look. Rai, who had never really acquired a taste for viscous brown lumps and ‘perfectly’ rare meat, did.

“No.” Sao excavated some mushrooms. “Rai, you need to try the sauce, if nothing else. Sweet and sour, a little spice. ”

“I will. We were talking about Rose? That she had to disappear?”

“Ah, what Muka did to her.” Thomi drew up her knife again. “Cherry did go to Muka that night. And I was out of town on a grocery run until late. Muka told me what happened later. The woman Britania was a writer with an interest in faeries. She was looking into his history - the murder on the Citadel twenty years ago. She had come by - knowing full well that her child and her husband Lamort would not be there, but it gave her an excuse.

“Muka met her behind the school and he, perhaps with the help of some connections, did away with the woman. But earlier that day, Rose had spoken to her and learned of her plans. And that miserable woman…” The knife plunged through the steak and squeaked when it hit the plate. “She set Rose up to be her spy or her backup. Rose went up the tower to watch the sunset - something completely out of character for her. She saw Muka’s altercation with the woman. She must have been shocked – and then she fell.”

Thomi inspected the slice of steak she’d just cut, dipped it in the sauce and bit into it. The soggy chewing almost drove Rai under the table. She finished and started another cut.

“Muka knew where Cherry and Rose were the whole time - remember, he could cast seeing eyes anywhere in a short distance. He knew about their meetup on the tower, he’d have detected it as it happened. But I’m not sure he would have gone after Rose if she hadn’t fallen. He was a murderer, but that was a long time ago, he didn’t have that energy anymore. He likely thought Rose hadn’t survived the drop; and they could recover her body later. And Cherry…”

“But Cherry did go to him, eventually,” Sao said. He’d managed to make half of his steak vanish without Rai noticing.

“Cherry… yes, it was her who pushed Rose. If only she hadn’t lost her temper. Or if only Rose hadn’t ignored her, but Rose was watching Britania being eliminated, she must have found it hard to look away. If Muka hadn’t assumed… Rose might have made it through and the Britania woman would have gotten her story out, or maybe Muka would have found another way to silence it. It could have been the downfall of the school, but perhaps…” She sliced through the meat. “The school may not be able to sustain the loss of him anyway.”

“What did he do with Rose? And the other woman?” Rai asked.

Her paper forehead crinkled. “I don’t know what he did with the woman. But he had some associates commandeer an ambulance, or a convincing van with an alarm, and take Rose away. He needed a credible excuse for a student going missing - and Lumi became an unwitting witness.” She took another sheer slice of her steak. “I don’t know where they took Rose. But the fact that he wouldn’t tell me was too much to bear. I could sense nothing good had come of her. He was a friend of my father’s, and he did trust me, but hurting a child? One that depended on him, was sent off by her family and had nobody but him to rely on?”

“She had you,” Sao said, wholesome as a commercial for baby wipes.

Rai narrowly resisted kicking him. “I guess you didn’t know this part. Rose wasn’t a kid, Thomi. She was an adult faerie.”

Fork and knife went down. “What?”

“From what I can tell, she infiltrated the school last year specifically to look into Muka and his crime on the Citadel. She paid her own way in and used a whole slew of makeup to keep up appearances. I don’t know if she was working with Britania from the start, but Rose definitely had her own interest in the Citadel murder case.”

Thomi’s eyes were melting. “Muka would have noticed her. Fae exude magic - he definitely would have noticed.”

“Cherry said that Rose helped her find ways to sneak out of the school. If Muka’s surveillance has a limited range, she might have found ways to get out when she needed to do her lip fillers and set up her tuition payments. Maybe she had some kind of magic to combat his. Or she may not have to use any magic at all.”

Thomi shook her head, glassy strands coming loose and sticking out like wires. “This is ridiculous. I would have noticed.”

“Could you have overlooked her just a little, because she made Cherry happy when nothing else did?” Sao asked.

“Maybe. I don’t know. But… so I killed Muka for…”

“Why don’t you tell us how it happened, and we’ll consider if you really did it,” Rai said.

“You still don’t believe me. Very well. That day, it rained, and all the children were indoors - you know that already, you heard the same thing from the children themselves. Muka went for his walk - I intercepted him on his walk and took him to the tower stairs before the cleaner came. The children were in the opposite wing of the building, and heard nothing. He refused to tell me what happened to Rose, said I had to accept it, that eliminating her was to keep me as safe too. I couldn’t possibly see how.” Her voice cracked. “He fell to the landing below. I followed him down and he tried to go further, and lost his balance - or maybe I pushed him-”

“You’re not committing,” Rai said, and finally took a bite from his glob of mushrooms. It caught in his throat like glue. “Did you push him or did he fall? Did you smack his head on the steps a few more times or just leave him?”

“What is wrong with you?” she whined, throaty with tears.

“So you murdered him before his walk, met with the cleaner and proceeded with the day,” Sao said. He was the only one who didn’t sound like a strangled frog.

Thomi nodded just as Rai shook his head. Sao gave them a pained look and continued with his steak. There was nothing but the clinking of glass and silverware until Marinell came out with their final course.

—

Dessert, or ‘pudding’ as Marinell so quaintly put it, was a baked apricot tart with vanilla ice cream. Prepared by Guy earlier that day, he added as he was pouring out their coffee. He was looking a little less feverish - maybe he’d had some coffee himself, Rai thought.

He gobbled up his piece of tart and gave Thomi and Sao what felt like sufficient time with theirs.

“So, about Lumi,” he said.

They paused, forks in the air. Sao looked even more comfortable than he had in the lounge. His eyelids were drooping and he was swaying a little on his seat. Once or twice now he had snapped his head up after clearly drifting off. Sao was a napping fiend, but he was typically too polite to drop out mid-meal; mid-conversation. But then, for the last few days he’d been kept awake longer than he would typically.

“What about him,” Thomi said. She also looked overly relaxed, as if she didn’t know where this was all headed.

Rai took over. “You wanted us to see his file. So tell us: are you really his mom? His biological mother?”

“Yes,” she said. She did her best to look haughty, but it was hard for those oversize eyes to express anything but pleading. “As I said, I’m happy to do any genetic test.”

“I gotta say, you look too young to have a kid his age.”

Tenuous focus returned to her face. “I had him young.”

“And the father?”

“Long out of the picture, of course. Did you not just hear me? Or do you need all the scandalous details spelled out, how a child just over ten might find herself in that situation?”

Rai pressed his elbows into the table and his fingers against his temples. “We can do something about that. Point us at the guy. No need to say more, no need for Lumi to –”

“Lumi isn’t the topic here. I only wanted to confess what I did to Muka. Was that not clear enough?”

“Was he the father?”

She looked like she was going to stab the fork in his eye.

“It was Lumi’s file you showed us to draw us back. And now he’s not important…? And you didn’t think we’d ask about this?” Rai shoved a hand into his inner pocket and pulled out the white envelope with his letter - well, the letter he and Sao would have to share. “Did you have second thoughts? Drop us this so we might skip dinner?”

“It only made him more eager to stay,” Sao sighed. “Let’s have our dessert; the ice cream’s melting. Thomi, we’ll leave after this. What happens next is up to the authorities of Interstate-.”

She read the letter Rai held up. “No, I didn’t send this. But… this must have come from the mayor’s group. If this is what they think it’s - it’s not good. Perhaps you really should leave.”

Throwing down her spoon - or dropping it - Thomi stood and knocked the coat off the back of her chair. Rai picked it up for her, held out the sleeves for her to stick her arms in, and she fumbled that too. She smelled sour. Rai had heard faeries were conditioned to stay off red meat and alcohol, and a large number of their kids inherited the lifestyle. For some it became a biological intolerance.

What was Sao’s excuse, then? He was yawning a lot, shoulders sagging, and he had come close to putting his head down on the table again. But his wine glass was untouched. Maybe the mushroom sauce was boozier than Rai had thought.

He followed Thomi to the lobby, Sao trailing behind. “Thomi,” Rai said, “Is Lumi really not related in any way to the man named Lamort?”

“Absolutely not. Lamort is gone. You’ve heard from more than just me.”

“Then is Guy Lamort’s kid?”

“What?” She teetered, more hair coming loose from her bun. “Now that’s a truly outlandish idea. Guy is… Guy is…” she shook her head and turned away, pushing the door open. The night brought in a greenish haze that settled over the parking lot like smog. The coldness and wetness of the air didn’t seem to shock any sobriety into her, and she staggered down the front steps. “Arrest me if you want. I’ll be heading back now. Driving drunk.” She jutted her tiny chin out, but it didn’t jut as far as her eyes. “So go ahead - arrest…”

“I can’t arrest people. I’ve said that before,” Rai snapped. He held her arm to steady her, and she dragged him further out. Behind them, Sao was having some trouble negotiating the stairs. “If you want to make a formal confession, we’ll have to record it, or we can take you to a station.”

She shook him off. Her bun finally gave out and her hair flew out like a splash of mercury. “It’s your own fault for letting a murderer get away.”

“But I don’t think you killed Muka,” Rai said. “If you wanted this to be convincing, you should have said you did something that actually matched his injuries.”

“What?”

They faced each other in a seemingly endless sea of mist. Rai couldn’t even see the edges of the lot. And no fireflies, if those had been real in the first place. “Muka had multiple dents on both sides of his skull. It wasn’t just a fall down the stairs. Someone with a lot of rage beat the hell out of him, hit his head repeatedly, against the step. Maybe used an additional weapon.”

Crystalized in terror, she could barely voice a response. “You mean to say– ”

Rai did not get to hear what he meant to say. The square bumper of a pickup truck barrelled out of the fog and whipped her with its front bumper. Thomi caved with the impact, bent in half and when she couldn’t bend anymore went flying forward as if on skates, hair flapping like a sail, strands grazing Rai’s face as she shot past. She skidded to a bloodied stop, facedown on the asphalt behind him.

The tail lights faded as the truck headed for the exit, but the fuzzy yellow eyes didn’t fully vanish. The driver was idling. Deciding whether to circle back and finish the job.

Rai didn’t wait. Bending, he hooked one arm under Thomi’s legs and one behind her back (and tried to ignore the sharp thing he felt jutting out the side of it) and hefted her up. She was only a little heavier than Muka - must be all the wet hair, which immediately began catching into his zippers and fingers and mouth. He didn’t see what was making it so wet, but he tasted it. Spitting hair, he took off for his car, blinded suddenly when she let out a shrill wail, the sound blasting him straight in the face. At least her lungs were okay, at least she was still alive.

His hands flared almost white as he ran. Giving Thomi’s face an ugly pallor, the way of the worst fluorescent lights. Making him an easy target.

He had parked at the end of the row closest to the hotel - not too far - he kept telling himself that until he was there. Not safe, but there. And then he saw Sao hovering back at the front door by the plaque reading Saturn Hotel.

The tail lights at the edge of the lot had turned and turned, out of sight, then turned into headlights - and the rumble of the engine consumed the night. Just breathing filled Rai’s head with a horrible throbbing. Not too far, not too far - he could see Sao’s silhouette clear as cut diamond despite the fog so he couldn’t be too far - but there was still too much distance between them. Rai had never known Sao to be a proponent of physical fitness, and even an athlete would get pasted if they tried to outrun a truck.

Sao would also be running along the wall; if he got clipped he wouldn’t go flying like Thomi. Pasted would definitely be the word.

“Sao!” Rai roared hard enough to see his breath part the mist. Thomi stopped her own wailing and stared at him, wide eyed like a baby. “Sao! Stay inside! Find a place to lock yourself in and don’t fucking come out for anyone! Wait for me!”

Propping Thomi on his knee, Rai clawed around through the missing window, unlocked the door and rolled Thomi into the back seat. Then he hopped into the driver’s seat, jammed his keys in (with a single thrust. He allowed himself an iota of pride here; he’d seen the exact thing botched in so many otherwise-decent films) and pulled away from the hotel.

—

Well.

Rai hadn’t made much sense. If Sao was not to come out for anyone, would he be expected to hold up that promise when Rai returned? In the first place, weren’t they supposed to stick together, or some such truism?

But Rai rarely gave such firm orders, so Sao did his best to obey.

He staggered back into the lobby, touched the banister of the central staircase, and shivered. He tried to shove his hands into his coat sleeves and almost fell. Thomi had made it look so easy, but then, Rai had been helping her. His head was spinning and his feet might as well have been on backwards, but he made it up the stairs.

For some reason, only when he started down the interminable hallway did it finally register that he’d seen Thomi hit by a car. She had been thrown, hair streaming behind, looking like a silk kite, or inverted umbrella, or a squid. He hadn’t seen her face when it happened - for that he was cruelly grateful. She had left dinner nearly in tears. Rai chased her out of the dining room. Sao wondered, why hadn’t he stopped them?

Sao heard footsteps behind him. This wasn’t unlike dreams he’d had before, and the way the night had unfolded thus far, he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t dreaming. But even in his dreams he never wanted to see what the footsteps were carrying towards him.

He tried to maintain an even gait. Casual, that’s what it was; don’t look like you’re in a rush. The truth was he couldn’t move much faster than he was going without stumbling.

The sight of the window at the end of the hall, the reminder of his sharp-tongued school friend on her bench with her books, blew past the fog from his brain, just for a moment. Was he drunk? Sick? Was there a gas leak? No - it had to be something he ate.

One of the dishes. Had it been food and not alcohol that put Thomi off-balance? Had Rai been affected? Sao recalled Rai saying sleeping pills didn’t work on him, even what would be the level of overdose for a human. Nothing to worry about. He’d get Thomi to safety.

Sao gripped the doorknob for support and pulled out his room key. He and Rai had not been able to check out because neither Marinell nor Guy had been at the front desk all afternoon. Thank goodness for inefficiency. He flung open the door and, lacking any further coordination, used the momentum of falling against it to slam it shut. He slid to the floor.

The room was all whites and grays, like a monochrome film, drenched in moonlight. Sao listened for the footsteps and heard nothing but the pulse in his ears. Steadying his breath, he stood up and locked the room from the inside, then pulled the chair from under the desk and propped it under the knob.

The whole ritual reminded him of his days at home. Or the place he was supposed to call home, before he met Van and Hro and got his nice apartment and qualifications, and then met Rai. But now he was here, back where he’d started. Life really was one big merry-go-round. Or a carousel; ‘merry’ wasn’t the descriptor for such a mechanism.

Sao went into the bathroom, turned on the lights, and jumped.

Only his reflection. A cretin centered in a filigree frame, his unmade, patchworked visage the punchline of some miserable joke. The bewildered expression didn’t help much. Nor did the sweater with the tortured horse, pierced through the back with a striped pole. Where was his other shirt? It had been tucked under his coat, over the back of his chair; most likely now on the floor of the dining room.

He’d only managed to get one coat sleeve on.

Sao shed his coat and searched the pockets for some concealer, and remembered he had run out. He instead pulled out a second, unfamiliar pouch. Purple. It was Rose’s.

A pale little girl’s lip filler wasn’t going to help him here. But - he chided himself - she wasn’t really a little girl at all. Not that it helped to acknowledge. Besides, why was he worrying about his face now? What was the point of keeping up appearances when nobody was there to see—?

At that moment, the room door exploded.

Hidden in the bathroom, Sao heard what might have been a balloon popping followed by a deafening, splintering crack, then a thud and rattle as something metallic flew into the room. The doorknob, he supposed.

As if it would protect him from whatever force had ripped through the much thicker outer door, Sao locked the bathroom. Despite the adrenaline, his eyelids were threatening to shut; his bones felt like cotton wool. He was sleepy, but with none of the usual luxury; not in a way he could enjoy. The face in the mirror was melting, loose chunks of chin and cheeks sliding off in slabs. He rubbed his eyes. Hair didn’t grow on the scars and it gave his face a fungal look when the unscarred bits of chin grew out. How long had it been since he’d shaved? Hadn’t the room come with some disposable razors? A cutting edge might…

Feet trudged through the debris outside and Sao decided that confronting the intruder with a four-inch strip of metal would bring him more harm than good.

He pressed his face to the mirror, but his mind did not clear, only became colder. He wondered if he was dying. The face in the mirror didn’t look like a living person’s.

It had to be something he’d eaten.

With effort that almost sent him toppling, he threw the contents of Rose’s cosmetics pouch out into the sink and dug around for the box he was looking for. Unable to find the opening flap, he plunged his thumb into the front and ripped it clear through the middle, breaking the scab that Cherry and her blasted tome had left him. He pulled out a foil packet from the bloodied cardboard.

Pills, little black ones. He smiled again, thinking of a case he and Rai had looked into just over a month back. The illicit black pills that made zombies of those who wanted to try out the latest suicide techniques, without the commitment. But the ones in Rose’s beauty bag were smaller, and really just a dark blue now that he looked closely; the package exaggerated the depth of their blackness. He was a little disappointed. Of course, these weren’t the same pills, they were completely unrelated. He was just reminiscing. Flashing through memories, taking inventory of one’s life, by some primordial instinct. Like people did before they died.

The intruder rattled the bathroom door. Politer than simply blowing through unannounced, Sao supposed.

His vision was swimming; the instructions on the box may as well have been a toddler’s fingerpaint. He shoved three capsules in his mouth and washed them down with tap water.

Though they tasted like charcoal (which was fair, that was the primary ingredient), Rose’s choice of diet pills were ferociously effective. His stomach immediately began churning and he bent over the toilet, thankful the mirror didn’t see down that far. Up came dinner - tart, coffee, chewed meat and more mushrooms than he ever wanted to think about for the rest of his existence.

And there went the bathroom door, in a detonation of ash and splinters.

The force propelled Sao forward, his hand coming down on the lid of the toilet before he was done with it. Some lingering swill, red wine sauce and ice cream, spilled from his throat, streamed down his chin and landed right on the disapproving equine face below. Sao fell forward, hit his head on the tank, and rolled off onto his side. As the molten blackness at the edge of his vision began closing in, he remembered Rai telling a story about something similar happening to him. No, for Rai, the incident had occurred with a public urinal.

The sudden, off-color recollection engulfed him with delight. Smiling wider than he had all evening, he let his head drop against the cool sea of polished tile waiting below.

It was hardly his proudest moment, losing consciousness in the stink of his own stomach acid, unable to unhook his mind from the image of Rai, mummified head to toe in bandages, and someone very familiar screaming, “Stop! He’s bleeding - you hit him! Stop this–”