MONDAY MORNING CAME ON LIKE a head cold. I stumbled into the bathroom of the staff apartment, dragging the full weight of the week to come. I avoided looking into the bedroom, where the bare mattress stared back out like an accusation. I’d slept on the couch all weekend, shoving the duvet to one side during the days so I could sit up and review reports and reply to subcontractor emails and make a dent in the gin bottle.
I was making progress. It was fine.
I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and peeled back my shirt collar to look at the wound on my shoulder, which was … not fine. I’d left the gauze off all weekend, vaguely remembering something my mother had said about how it was important to “let it breathe.” The cut itself was a livid white smile inside a wide ellipse of red. The skin around it was swollen, tender. I caught my own eye in the mirror as I prodded it, and I realized that the injury was the best-looking part of me: the bags under my eyes were definitely well past the carry-on limit, and it was painfully obvious that I hadn’t actually showered or brushed my hair over the weekend. I ran my fingers through my tangles as though that would make a difference.
I looked like something that had been pulled out of a shower drain, but really, I was fine. I’d just had an intense weekend. I’d gotten wrapped up in reading background checks on all the staff. They were super clean, although some of them had heavy redactions that I would have wagered were redacted because they were magic. I got wrapped up in those reports. I got wrapped up in all of them—it wasn’t that I had lingered over Tabitha’s, I hadn’t. There was nothing there that I didn’t already know. Background reports don’t go all that deep. They don’t explore why are you the way you are? or what would it take for me to understand you?
Besides, there wasn’t time to linger. If there was no time to shower, there certainly wasn’t time to dwell on things I couldn’t change.
I turned away from the mirror and started the process of making myself into a human being, someone who could walk into a meeting with Marion Torres without embarrassing herself. I’d shopped on Saturday morning, and the clothes and makeup I’d bought were all still packaged and tagged. As I tossed labels and stickers into the tiny bathroom trash can, I reflected that I could have just driven back up to Oakland. I could have gone to my empty apartment there and grabbed the things I needed to live here, in this other empty apartment.
But I had needed some new things anyway. I only bought the slightly nicer brands because I was flush with cash, not because I was trying to impress anyone at Osthorne. If the things I was wearing happened to look like the clothes the faculty at the school wore—well, they looked good, didn’t they? There was nothing wrong with drawing style inspiration from people who look good in what they’re wearing. There was nothing wrong with wanting to look as casually professional and put-together as they did.
I kept telling myself that as I showered and got dressed and tried to make myself look like someone who could walk between worlds. It was an outfit, not a costume.
This could be the real me.
On my way across the lawn to the school, I rubbed absently at my shoulder. It didn’t hurt, per se, but it felt taut and soft at the same time, like overripe fruit. I gave it a poke and bit back a swear as a flash of blue pain bit through my vision. Okay, so maybe it did hurt, per se. Very fucking per se.
I was still massaging it with the heel of my hand when I got to the main office. I ran into a student on their way out—another girl holding a pink hall pass and a white pharmacy bag. I turned to look after her, pausing with my hand on the doorframe, my mouth half-open to ask a question I hadn’t finished forming yet. The question vanished entirely at the sound of a throat clearing.
“Can I help you?” I turned to see Mrs. Webb, watching me with a flinty glare. I could deal with her. I was used to flinty glares. People don’t like a PI nosing around: they think we’ll create drama by turning over stones and revealing what’s living in the soft damp dark underneath. They don’t realize that the things live in the soft damp dark whether or not we expose them to the sunlight. “Did you have an appointment with Ms. Torres? I don’t see you on her schedule,” she rasped, not bothering to open the thick engagement calendar that sat on her desk.
“Actually,” I said, clearing my throat, “I’m here to talk to you, Mrs. Webb. I’d like to get your perspective on what happened on the day of the murder. When you found the, um. Body.” My I-can-handle-this petered out rapidly as Webb watched me, unblinking.
“I gave a full testimony to the NMIS under oath,” she said.
“Yes, but I was just, uh, hoping to—”
“I have no interest in discussing it further,” she said. “You can read the deposition transcripts in the file I composed for Ms. Torres to give you. It is a very thorough file, Ms. Gamble.”
Mrs. Webb and I regarded each other. The way she was staring at me reminded me of the way she’d been pinching herself when I saw her last. I tried hard not to let my gaze fall to her arm, where there were surely bruises hidden under the cardigan. I knew I had to push for answers: What did you see? What did it do to you?
After a moment, she clicked her tongue. “Alright, then, let’s see it.”
I blinked at her, feeling like a cow faced with a differential equation. “What?”
“Take that ridiculous jacket off and let’s see your shoulder,” she rasped, bracing her arms on her desk and pushing herself out of her chair. My indignation was slow to set in.
“Ridiculous? This is a nice jacket, I got it from—hey, what are you doing?” With quick fingers, she’d somehow gotten my jacket halfway off before I’d even realized what she was doing. Fucking mages.
Mrs. Webb pressed on the red, swollen skin of my shoulder with her dry fingertips. They were so cool, so gentle—then, she pressed harder, and my shoulder lit up with white-hot pain. Then, “Ow, shit, no, hey, st—”
Then everything went very fuzzy around the edges, and my shoulder exploded.