The laundromat was quiet in the way only late afternoons could be.
Not peaceful.
Never peaceful. Not anymore.
Peace had become one of those words Heidi no longer trusted, like fine, safe, or corporate culture. It sounded good when people said it. It looked harmless printed on candles and throw pillows and therapy-office posters. But lately, peace felt less like comfort and more like bait.
The Tiki Tumble hummed around her in low mechanical breaths. Washers churned behind glass doors. Dryers turned in slow, hypnotic circles, sheets and towels tumbling over themselves like pale bodies in deep water. Sunlight slanted through the front windows in tired gold stripes, stretching across the checkerboard floor, touching the legs of folding tables, the bottoms of plastic laundry baskets, the scuffed baseboards Mrs. Alani had probably cursed at for twenty years and never replaced out of spite.
Outside, the island moved on as if nothing was wrong.
Scooters whined past. A delivery truck rattled down the narrow street. Somewhere near the bakery, someone laughed too loudly at something that was probably not that funny. The ocean breathed beyond the buildings, unseen but never absent, the constant low hush of it threading beneath every other sound.
Inside, Heidi wiped down the last washer.
The cloth slid over stainless steel in steady, practiced motions.
Circle.
Swipe.
Rinse.
Repeat.
The repetition helped. It kept her hands busy when her mind refused to slow. There was something merciful about chores. Machines did not ask questions. Towels did not look at her with worry. Soap did not demand explanations about floating bodies on security footage or cursed little bottles full of bones and blood.
Laundry had rules.
Sort colors.
Separate delicates.
Do not overload the small machines unless you wanted Lila to appear from across the street through sheer force of disapproval.
Cold water for blood.
That thought made Heidi stop.
Her hand went still against the washer door.
For a second, the laundromat seemed to tilt around her.
Cold water for blood.
Of course she knew that. Everyone knew that. It was one of those ugly little pieces of domestic knowledge women collected without wanting to. How to hold keys between fingers. How to laugh politely and step backward at the same time. How to check the backseat before getting in the car. How to get blood out of fabric before it set.
She swallowed hard.
“Nope,” she whispered to herself. “Absolutely not. We are not doing a full mental breakdown during the rinse cycle.”
The washer gave a soft metallic clunk, as if in agreement.
Heidi looked at the clock above the folding table.
Quarter past four.
Done.
She should have felt relief.
Instead, her gaze drifted to the back hallway, then to the narrow staircase beyond it, the one that led up to her flat. Her flat. Her place. Her little apartment above the laundromat with its thrift-store lamps, mismatched plates, half-dead basil plant, and windows that looked out over a strip of ocean blue enough to make a person believe in reinvention if they were very stupid or very desperate.
Heidi had been both.
Now the apartment felt different.
Not unsafe exactly.
Worse.
Observed.
Like the rooms had learned something about her while she slept and were waiting for her to notice.
Her fingers slipped into the pocket of her sundress.
The flash drive was there.
Smooth. Cold. Ordinary-looking in a way that felt insulting.
Beside it, wrapped in a scrap of dish towel she had tied too tightly around the neck, was the bottle.
The witch bottle.
The thing from Giselle’s cottage.
The thing Heidi had not asked for and yet somehow possessed. Tiny bones. Dried leaves. Bright petals trapped in glass. A smear of blood down one side that had been too fresh when she found it and was still too red now.
The two objects pressed against her hip with the intimate weight of secrets.
Proof and threat.
Evidence and invitation.
She pulled them from her pocket and set them on the folding table.
The flash drive landed with a small plastic tap.
The bottle made a softer sound.
A clink.
A whisper.
A tooth touching glass.
Heidi stared at it.
In the late sunlight, the bottle looked almost pretty. That bothered her more than if it had looked disgusting. Horrible things should have the decency to announce themselves. They should rot openly. They should smell bad. They should arrive with thunder and Latin chanting and perhaps one dramatic raven. They should not sit sweetly on a laundromat folding table, full of petals and bones, catching the sun like something a tourist might buy at a market and hang in a beach-house window.
The bottle warmed under the light.
Or maybe Heidi imagined it.
She reached out one finger and stopped before touching it.
“No,” she said.
The bottle did not answer.
Which was rude, considering how much it clearly had to say.
The bell above the front door jingled.
Heidi jolted hard enough to knock the spray bottle over.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
No one stood in the doorway.
The turquoise door was closed.
The street beyond the front windows looked perfectly normal. A man in a straw hat walked past carrying flowers wrapped in brown paper. Two kids on bicycles swerved around a pothole. A woman balanced a bag of groceries on one hip and yelled at someone named Mateo to stop running before he broke his head open.
The bell swung gently over the door.
Heidi stared at it.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
The machines hummed.
The ocean breathed.
The bottle sat in its sunbeam.
Then something black slipped out from under the row of dryers.
Heidi made a noise that was not dignified.
The black thing froze.
Heidi froze.
They stared at each other across the laundromat.
It was a cat.
Of course it was a cat.
Because apparently the island had looked at her life and decided what this haunting needed was ambiance.
The cat was thin but not starving, long-legged and sleek beneath a coat so black it seemed to drink the light around it. One ear had a small notch near the tip. Its eyes were yellow-green and deeply unimpressed. It stood half in shadow beneath Dryer Three, tail low, whiskers forward, every inch of it communicating that Heidi was the intruder here.
“Oh,” Heidi said, pressing a hand over her chest. “Fantastic. A cat.”
The cat blinked.
Slowly.
Judgmentally.
“No,” Heidi said. “Do not look at me like that. You broke in.”
The cat stepped out from under the dryer with theatrical silence.
“How did you even get in?”
The cat did not answer, because cats were government secrets with claws.
Heidi glanced toward the back hallway. The rear door was closed. The front door was closed. The windows were closed. The ceiling remained, unfortunately, capable of hiding things but not visibly breached by feline invasion.
“You know what?” she said. “Never mind. I do not need to know. I have reached my quota of impossible shit today.”
The cat looked past her.
Not at her.
Past her.
At the folding table.
At the bottle.
Its back rose.
Every hair along its spine lifted slowly, one black ridge of warning.
Heidi looked down at the bottle.
The bones inside had shifted.
She was sure of it.
A second ago, the smallest bone had rested against a pressed red petal near the bottom of the glass. Now it floated higher, turned lengthwise, pale and delicate as a fishbone.
The cat hissed.
Not a dramatic Halloween hiss.
A low, ugly sound. Ancient and serious.
The skin on Heidi’s arms prickled.
“Yeah,” she whispered. “That’s kind of where I’m at with it too.”
The cat backed away from the folding table without taking its eyes off the bottle, then leapt with startling grace onto Dryer Three. It landed on the warm metal lid, turned twice, and sat down with all the confidence of a landlord inspecting a tenant’s poor choices.
Heidi stared at it.
“No.”
The cat blinked again.
“I cannot have a cat.”
The cat began washing one paw.
“I run a business.”
The cat dragged the damp paw over one ear.
“There are health codes.”
The cat yawned.
“I am not emotionally stable enough for pet ownership.”
The cat looked at her then, and somehow the expression on its narrow face suggested that neither was anyone else on this island, yet here they all were.
Heidi pointed at it.
“Temporarily,” she said. “You are temporarily allowed on that dryer until I figure out who you belong to.”
The cat curled its tail around its feet.
“You hear me?”
It closed its eyes.
“Rude.”
A strange laugh escaped her.
Small. Shaky. Not entirely sane.
It felt good anyway.
For one absurd moment, there was only the laundromat, the fading sun, the quiet machines, and a black cat who had appeared out of nowhere and immediately judged both her housekeeping and her supernatural survival strategy. It was ridiculous enough to feel almost normal.
Almost.
Then the bottle clicked again.
Heidi stopped laughing.
The cat opened its eyes.
The room seemed to darken by one shade.
Outside, a cloud moved over the sun.
Inside, every machine kept running, but the sound of them changed. Not louder. Not softer. Deeper somehow. A layered pulse beneath the hum.
Like something breathing through water.
Heidi’s hand went to the mark high on her thigh beneath her dress.
The bite throbbed once.
Hard.
Her knees nearly weakened.
“No,” she said, louder this time.
The cat’s ears flattened.
The bell over the door gave one soft jingle.
Still no one there.
Heidi snatched the dish towel from the table and wrapped it around the bottle again. She tied the knot so tight her fingers hurt, then shoved the bottle and the flash drive back into her pocket. The minute the bottle disappeared under fabric and cotton, the pressure in the room eased.
The machines sounded like machines again.
The cat slowly relaxed.
Heidi stood in the middle of the laundromat, breathing through her nose, trying not to cry, scream, or start Googling exorcisms with questionable punctuation.
Her phone buzzed.
She flinched again.
The screen lit up with a text from Lila.
You alive?
Heidi stared at it.
Then laughed once, sharply.
“Define alive,” she muttered.
Her fingers hovered over the screen.
She typed: I need you.
Deleted it.
Too much.
Too true.
She typed again.
Meet me at my place. 6:00.
She stared at the message longer than necessary before sending it. Lila didn’t need details yet. She just needed to be there. Heidi needed one real thing in a day full of things that felt determined to peel reality apart with wet fingers.
She hit send.
Three dots appeared almost immediately.
Then:
I’ll be there.
Then, a second later:
Are you hurt?
Heidi closed her eyes.
No.
A lie.
Not physically.
Another lie.
I don’t know.
Too honest.
She typed:
Just come.
The answer came back fast.
Lock the door.
Heidi looked at the cat.
The cat looked at her.
“You heard the woman.”
She moved through the laundromat, checking locks with the grim efficiency of someone who had once checked apartment locks three times every night and had convinced herself this island would make her stop needing to. Front door. Back door. Supply closet. Office. Windows. The little bathroom near the vending machine. The door to Jacques’ shared wall, locked from her side even though she knew he had his own entrance and probably seven elegant ways to break in while apologizing in French.
When she returned to the front, the cat was still on Dryer Three.
Heidi grabbed her keys.
“You cannot stay in here alone.”
The cat looked insulted.
“I’m serious. You could be harmed. Or worse, you could harm my insurance.”
The cat hopped down, walked past her, and slipped into the back hallway.
“Excuse me.”
It trotted toward the stairs.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
The cat started up.
Heidi followed.
“This is not a democracy.”
The cat did not pause.
“Did Lila send you? Be honest.”
At the top of the stairs, the cat waited until Heidi unlocked the apartment door. Then it slipped inside before her as if it had signed a lease months ago and had simply been waiting for her to catch up.
Heidi stood in the doorway.
The apartment smelled faintly of detergent, coffee, sea air, and the lavender candle she kept lighting in the misguided belief that lavender could overpower dread. The afternoon light through the windows had turned thin and gray. Shadows gathered in corners with too much interest.
The cat crossed the living room, jumped onto the windowsill, and looked out toward the ocean.
Heidi shut the door behind them.
“Fine,” she said. “But you are temporary.”
The cat’s tail twitched.
“And unnamed.”
It turned its head.
She stared at its black face, its sharp little chin, the way it had appeared from nowhere beneath the dryers, silent and impossible and entirely too comfortable among haunted machinery.
“No.”
The cat blinked.
“I’m not naming you Ghost.”
The cat kept staring.
“That is too on the nose.”
Its tail twitched again.
“I hate this.”
Ghost turned back toward the window.
“Well,” Heidi muttered, setting her keys on the counter, “congratulations on your branding.”
She fed him tuna from a can because she had no cat food, no emotional boundaries, and apparently no remaining control over the narrative structure of her own life. Ghost accepted the tuna with the solemn entitlement of a creature who had never once doubted the universe would provide fish.
Then he jumped onto the back of the couch and began watching the door.
Not sleeping.
Watching.
Heidi’s stomach tightened.
She checked the time.
Five thirty-two.
Lila would be there in twenty-eight minutes.
Twenty-eight minutes to decide how to tell the woman she was falling in love with that something had carried her sleeping body out of her apartment, something invisible had left proof on camera, something in the water wanted her, a witch on a mountain had given her a blood-smeared bottle full of bones, and now a cat named Ghost had moved into the laundromat like a tiny omen with whiskers.
Easy.
Very casual.
Island dating was going great.
She paced.
The flash drive and bottle pulled against the pocket of her dress every time she turned. She tried setting them on the kitchen table, then immediately picked them back up. Tried putting them in a drawer, then opened it again because the thought of not seeing them was worse than seeing them. Finally, she wrapped the bottle in a clean dish towel, set both objects in a shallow ceramic bowl, and placed the bowl in the middle of the coffee table.
Ghost watched the bowl.
Heidi watched Ghost.
“You’re not helping.”
Ghost flicked one ear.
“You could at least act like this is strange.”
The cat lowered himself onto the couch back and tucked his paws under his chest.
“Of course. Loaf through the apocalypse. Bold choice.”
Her phone buzzed again.
Lila: Downstairs.
Heidi stared at the message.
Her body reacted before her thoughts did.
Warmth. Panic. Relief. Want.
All of it at once.
The knock came a moment later.
Not loud.
Three solid taps.
Heidi barely had the door open before Lila was there—solid, familiar, real. One look at Heidi’s face and whatever joke she had come with vanished.
Lila stepped inside and shut the door behind her.
“What happened?”
The words were quiet.
That almost undid Heidi more than if Lila had shouted.
She opened her mouth.
Nothing came out.
Lila’s eyes moved over her face, then down her body, searching for blood, bruises, some visible reason for the shape of Heidi’s fear.
“Heidi.”
“I’m not hurt.”
Lila’s expression sharpened.
“That is not the same thing as nothing happened.”
“I know.”
Ghost chose that moment to make his presence known by stepping onto the arm of the couch.
Lila looked at him.
Ghost looked back.
There was a pause.
Then Lila said, “You got a cat.”
“He broke in.”
“Of course he did.”
“He’s temporary.”
“What’s his name?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
Lila looked at the cat again.
Ghost stared at her with eerie yellow-green composure.
“Ghost,” Lila said.
Heidi threw both hands up. “Oh, come on.”
Lila’s mouth twitched.
“You named him Ghost?”
“No. The island named him Ghost. I’m being bullied by circumstances.”
Ghost leapt from the couch to the floor, walked to Lila, sniffed one of her ankles, and then, apparently satisfied with her credentials, rubbed the side of his face against her calf.
Lila looked down.
“Well,” she said. “He has taste.”
“Do not encourage him.”
“You fed him?”
“Tuna.”
“So you adopted him.”
“He was hungry.”
“So you adopted him.”
“I hate both of you.”
That did it.
The ridiculousness broke something loose.
Heidi’s face crumpled before she could stop it.
Lila was across the space between them instantly.
“Oh, baby.”
The softness in her voice destroyed what was left of Heidi’s composure.
She broke.
Not gracefully.
Not beautifully.
There was nothing cinematic about it. No single tear sliding down one cheek. No tragic trembling under flattering light. Heidi made an ugly, wounded sound and folded into Lila’s arms like her bones had finally gotten tired of pretending they knew how to hold her up.
Lila caught her.
Of course she did.
One arm around Heidi’s back. One hand in her hair. Chin tucked against Heidi’s temple. Body warm and steady and strong enough to make Heidi want to believe the world still contained things that would hold.
“I’ve got you,” Lila murmured. “I’ve got you.”
Heidi clung to her.
The tightness in her chest loosened for the first time all day, but it hurt on the way out. Like panic had grown roots in her ribs and Lila was pulling them free one careful inch at a time.
“I’m scared,” Heidi whispered.
Lila’s arms tightened.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Then tell me.”
Heidi shook her head against Lila’s shoulder.
“Not yet.”
Lila did not push.
That was one of the dangerous things about her.
She knew how not to push.
She knew how to wait at the edge of a person’s locked door with one hand raised and never once pretend patience did not cost her something.
Her lips brushed Heidi’s forehead.
Then her temple.
Then her cheek.
Slow.
Tender.
Grounding.
Heidi lifted her face.
Their mouths met with the hesitant inevitability of weather finally breaking.
The kiss was gentle at first. Testing. Lila’s lips warm, careful, asking without words whether Heidi wanted comfort or space or something else entirely. Heidi answered with both hands in Lila’s shirt, pulling her closer hard enough to make Lila inhale.
The kiss deepened.
Hunger slipped in through the cracks of fear.
Not replacing it.
Nothing replaced fear anymore.
But moving beside it. Under it. Around it. A bright, living thing pushing against the dark.
Heidi needed real.
She needed skin and breath and the solid truth of another body. She needed Lila’s hands, Lila’s mouth, Lila’s weight anchoring her to the room, to the apartment, to herself.
Lila backed her against the door.
“Tell me to stop,” Lila whispered against her mouth.
Heidi shook her head.
“Don’t.”
The word came out rough.
Lila’s eyes searched hers.
“You sure?”
“No.” Heidi swallowed. “But I want you.”
That answer landed between them, honest enough to make them both go still.
Then Lila kissed her again.
Harder.
Not careless. Never careless. But no longer gentle enough to lie about what they were doing.
Heidi’s body answered before her mind could catch up. Her hands slid beneath Lila’s shirt, finding warm skin, muscle, the shape of her ribs beneath her palms. Lila made a low sound into her mouth, and the sound lit something in Heidi like a match struck in a dark room.
The apartment narrowed.
The bowl on the coffee table. The bottle. The flash drive. The ocean beyond the windows. The watching cat. All of it fell back.
There was Lila.
Lila’s fingers threading into Heidi’s hair.
Lila’s knee pressing between hers.
Lila’s mouth at her jaw, then her throat, then lower, dragging heat in its wake.
Clothes disappeared without ceremony.
A shirt over a head. A sundress sliding from shoulders and pooling at feet. Shorts kicked aside. A bra unhooked with one hand because Lila was apparently insufferably competent even in moments of emotional crisis.
Heidi might have laughed if she had remembered how.
Instead, she gasped when Lila’s mouth found the hollow beneath her collarbone.
Lila paused there.
Her breath warmed Heidi’s skin.
“This okay?”
Heidi nodded.
“Words.”
“Yes.”
Lila kissed the spot again.
Then lower.
Heidi closed her eyes.
For a while, there was no footage.
No floating body.
No bite.
No blood in glass.
No ocean full of things older than language.
Only the bed.
Only cool sheets beneath overheated skin.
Only Lila’s hands on her like a promise made in a language the body understood better than the mind. Decisive. Reverent. A little rough when Heidi asked for it by the way she arched, the way she gripped, the way she said Lila’s name like both a warning and a prayer.
Lila listened with her whole body.
That undid Heidi most.
Not the desire, though God knew there was enough of that to burn the apartment down and leave only the cat blinking in the ashes. It was the attention. The unbearable intimacy of being noticed exactly. Lila touched her like she was reading a map she had no intention of rushing through, learning where fear lived, where pleasure hid, where the two had tangled so tightly even Heidi no longer knew which was which.
Heidi let herself sink.
Into the heat.
Into the rhythm.
Into Lila’s mouth and hands and weight.
Into the relief of wanting something simple.
Except nothing was simple.
Not anymore.
Maybe nothing had ever been simple.
Maybe desire had always been a thread, and every time someone pulled it, all the hidden things came with it.
When they finally slowed, they were tangled sideways across the bed, half beneath the sheet, skin damp, breathing uneven. The late light had faded while they were lost in each other, leaving the room blue around the edges. A lamp glowed softly near the dresser. Downstairs, a dryer buzzed once and went silent.
Lila laughed under her breath, warm and low.
“So,” she said, brushing damp hair back from Heidi’s face. “That what you called me over for?”
Heidi smiled faintly.
“That wasn’t exactly the plan.”
“Didn’t hear you complaining.”
“I’m not.”
“Good.”
Lila kissed her again.
Slow this time.
Lingering.
Comfortable in a way that made Heidi’s chest ache.
She wanted to stay there. Wanted to remain in that suspended pocket of warmth where nothing had to be named. Where Lila’s thigh rested between hers and Ghost prowled somewhere in the apartment like a tiny security guard and the bottle on the coffee table could go fuck itself for ten more minutes.
But the day returned.
It always did.
The weight of it pressed back in, patient and heavy.
Heidi shifted.
Lila felt it immediately.
Her thumb stilled against Heidi’s waist.
“There it is,” she said.
Heidi looked at her.
“What?”
“The thing you’re not saying.”
Heidi stared at the ceiling.
A thin crack ran through the plaster above the bed. She had noticed it the first week she moved in and told herself she would fix it. She had not fixed it. The island had a way of making cosmetic damage feel philosophical.
“I need to show you something.”
The mood shifted.
Lila did not move away, but something in her changed. Her body sharpened. Softness becoming alertness. Lover becoming protector so quickly it made Heidi’s throat tighten.
“Okay.”
Heidi slid out of bed.
The air felt too cool against her skin now. She reached for her dress, pulling it over her head with clumsy hands. Her fingers trembled as she crossed to the living room.
Ghost was sitting on the coffee table.
Of course he was.
Right beside the bowl.
Watching the bottle.
“Get down,” Heidi said automatically.
Ghost did not get down.
Lila came up behind her, buttoning her shorts, hair mussed, mouth still swollen from kissing. She stopped when she saw the bowl.
“What is that?”
Heidi did not answer at first.
She picked up the flash drive.
Then the bottle.
The dish towel had loosened.
A strip of glass showed through. Beneath it, something pale shifted in the dark.
Lila’s face changed.
Not fear.
Not yet.
Recognition of danger.
Island-born and bone-deep.
“Heidi,” she said carefully. “Where did you get that?”
“Giselle.”
Lila went very still.
Ghost’s tail flicked once.
“The mountain woman gave you that?”
“Yes.”
“That is not comforting.”
“I found it in my laundry.”
Lila turned her head slowly toward her.
“You found a witch bottle in your laundry.”
“Yes.”
“And you brought it upstairs.”
“I wrapped it in a dish towel.”
“Oh good. Fantastic. We’ll tell the demon you used kitchen linens. That should stop it.”
Despite everything, Heidi almost laughed.
Almost.
Lila did not.
Her eyes had gone dark.
“You don’t just keep things from Giselle’s mountain, Heidi.”
“I didn’t go shopping.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Are those bones?”
Heidi looked down at the bottle.
“Yes.”
“And blood.”
“Yes.”
“Whose?”
“I don’t know.”
Lila’s jaw tightened.
“Please tell me you did not touch the blood.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
Lila gave her a look.
“I’m not that kind of idiot.”
“Better.”
Heidi set the bottle back down carefully, as if rough handling might wake it.
Then she grabbed her laptop from the kitchen counter.
The screen woke blue-white in the dim apartment. The light made both women look paler than they were. Ghost jumped from the coffee table to the couch back and sat there like an old judge presiding over a trial.
Heidi plugged in the flash drive.
Her own reflection hovered faintly in the dark screen.
She did not look like herself.
Or maybe she finally did.
“This is from the other night,” she said.
Lila sat beside her on the couch.
Close, but not touching.
Waiting.
Heidi opened the first file.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then the footage appeared.
The laundromat from the security camera angle.
Grainy. Slightly warped. Washed in the cold green-gray of night vision. The machines lined up like sleeping animals. The folding tables stood bare. The vending machine glowed faintly in one corner, offering stale chips and candy with obscene cheerfulness.
Then Heidi entered the frame.
Or her body did.
Lila’s hand found Heidi’s without looking.
On the screen, Heidi moved through the laundromat in a loose, unnatural drift. Her hair hung tangled around her face. Her bare feet crossed the tile. Her sundress clung to her as if damp. Her lips moved constantly.
No sound.
Just silent talking.
To no one.
Lila’s grip tightened.
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you awake?”
“I don’t know.”
On the screen, Heidi stopped near the front row of dryers.
Her head tilted.
The way someone listened to a voice just outside hearing.
Then she smiled.
Not fully.
Not happily.
A small, awful smile that did not belong to her.
Lila sucked in a breath.
Heidi wanted to close the laptop.
Instead, she forced herself to keep watching.
Her body lifted on to one of the dryers, her dress slithered up her thighs, exposing between her legs. Her arms positioned back behind her supporting her weight.
Heidi’s head tilted back with her mouth slightly opened, a face of both pleasure and pain.
Only there was no one there.
She sat upon her linen drying throne, and invisible force pleasuring.
There was no one, to the naked eye, between her legs.
The empty street glowed under moonlight.
The ocean flashed silver in the distance.
Heidi’s body writhed, a convulsion she was familiar with when she climaxed with both Jacques and Lila. She whispered something silently as she ran her fingers down through her wetness. She then ran her fingers over the fresh bite. Then put her fingers in her mouth.
Heidi looked directly at the camera.
Slowly removed the fingers from her mouth, catching her lips.
Then she slid off the dryer, turned and walked out of frame.
The clip ended.
Neither woman spoke.
The apartment sounded too loud suddenly. The hum of the refrigerator. The creak of the old building settling. Ghost’s faint purr, absurd and steady from the couch back.
Lila’s voice came out low.
“Play the next one.”
Heidi clicked the second file.
The camera outside.
The sand.
The back of the building.
Her body staggered from the apartment door, movements loose and uncoordinated. She looked drunk, except Heidi knew drunkenness. Drunk had gravity. Drunk stumbled downward.
This was different.
This looked like someone being pulled by a string from inside the chest.
She fell.
Her body hit the sand and did not move.
Heidi felt the impact again in her own bones.
Seconds passed.
Then her body began to rise.
Not stand.
Rise.
Lila’s hand clamped over Heidi’s so hard it hurt.
“Heidi.”
“I know.”
“No.” Lila’s voice cracked. “No, you don’t know. You’re not walking. You’re not getting up.”
“I know.”
“You’re being carried.”
On the screen, Heidi’s body floated just above the sand. Limbs slack. Head lolling. Toes dangling. As if something invisible had hooked into her and lifted.
Then she drifted out of frame.
The clip ended.
The screen went dark.
For a long moment, the only light in the room came from the laptop and the lamp near the dresser.
Then Ghost growled.
Both women turned.
The cat was not looking at them.
He was looking at the far corner of the apartment.
The empty corner near the window.
His ears flattened slowly.
His pupils had gone wide and black.
Lila stood.
Heidi followed, heart hammering.
“What?” Heidi whispered.
Ghost’s growl deepened.
The air near the window seemed wrong.
Not visibly. Nothing moved. The curtains hung still. The glass reflected the room behind them in faint ghostly layers: Heidi, pale and rigid; Lila, half-dressed and furious-looking; the couch; the bowl on the table; the bottle wrapped in cloth.
But the reflection in the window held for one second too long.
Heidi saw something behind her.
Tall.
Wet.
Not fully shaped.
A suggestion of shoulders. A dark line of hair. Eyes like the place where sunlight drowned.
She spun around.
Nothing.
The apartment was empty.
Lila grabbed her arm.
“What?”
“I saw—”
“What?”
Heidi could not finish.
The bite on her thigh pulsed.
Lila saw her flinch.
Her gaze dropped.
“Show me.”
“Lila—”
“Show me.”
Heidi hesitated, then lifted the hem of her dress.
The mark looked angrier than it had that morning. Purple and red beneath the skin. Not bruising exactly. Bruises faded at the edges. This seemed to bloom inward, like something beneath the skin was painting its way out.
Lila crouched.
Her fingers hovered near it but did not touch.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes.”
“When?”
“When I’m near the water. When I touched the bottle. When that footage played.” Heidi swallowed. “When I think about him.”
Lila’s eyes snapped up.
“Him.”
Heidi looked away.
“I don’t know what else to call it.”
Lila rose slowly.
The room seemed smaller with her anger in it.
“Giselle has one too,” Heidi said.
That stopped her.
“What?”
“A bite. Like mine.”
Lila’s face lost color beneath its warm brown.
“You saw it?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“On the mountain.”
“You went back to Giselle?”
“I needed answers.”
“And did she give you any?”
Heidi laughed once.
It sounded brittle enough to break.
“She gave me vague prophecy bullshit, tea I didn’t trust, and apparently a bottle full of baby bones.”
Lila dragged both hands through her hair.
“Jesus Christ.”
“I know.”
“No, Heidi, you don’t. You don’t know this island.”
“I’m learning.”
“Not fast enough.”
The words landed hard.
Heidi flinched.
Lila saw it immediately.
Regret crossed her face.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did.”
Lila looked away.
The silence between them stretched thin.
Ghost jumped down from the couch and walked to the bowl. He sniffed the edge once, then recoiled with another low hiss.
Lila pointed at the bottle.
“That thing cannot stay here.”
“What if it’s protecting me?”
“From what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you don’t know it’s protection.”
“I don’t know it’s dangerous either.”
“It has fucking bones and blood in it, Heidi.”
“So does every fucking living thing on this island, apparently.”
“Do not joke right now.”
“I don’t know what else to do.”
Her voice cracked on the last word.
That took the fight out of both of them.
Lila crossed to her again, but slower this time.
Careful.
“Heidi.”
“I’m trying to be rational.”
“I know.”
“But the rational explanation is that I’m losing my mind.”
“You’re not.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I watched the footage.”
“That could be fake.”
“Did you fake it?”
“No.”
“Then no.”
Heidi pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.
“I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember any of this shit. I don’t remember fucking some invisible man on a dryer. I don’t remember falling or being carried.. I just woke up in the hospital like some drunk mermaid tragedy and now there’s evidence that some thing had me and I don’t know what it wants.”
Lila’s voice softened.
“Yes, you do.”
Heidi lowered her hands.
The answer sat between them.
Heavy.
Unspoken.
Me.
The apartment seemed to hear it anyway.
The bottle clicked.
Once.
Very softly.
Lila turned toward it.
Her expression hardened.
“Promise me you’ll get rid of it.”
Heidi said nothing.
Lila looked back at her.
“Promise me.”
“I can’t.”
“Heidi.”
“What if Giselle gave it to me because I need it?”
“What if whatever this is put it there because it needs you to keep it close?”
Heidi’s fingers curled into the fabric of her dress.
That question slipped under her skin.
Lila stepped closer.
“I know you want proof. I know you want something you can hold because everything else is impossible. But some things aren’t evidence, babe. Some things are hooks.”
The word moved through Heidi like cold water.
Hooks.
Her body above the sand.
Invisible hands.
A pull from somewhere deep.
She looked at the bottle.
For half a second, she imagined throwing it out the window. Watching it shatter on the alley stones below. Bones scattering. Blood smearing. Petals crushed under someone’s sandal. Done.
Then the bite pulsed again.
Not pain this time.
Warning.
Or longing.
She hated that she could not tell the difference.
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
Lila’s face tightened.
“That’s not a promise.”
“It’s the truth.”
“The truth is not always enough.”
“No,” Heidi said softly. “But it’s all I have.”
That quieted her.
Lila looked at her for a long moment.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed once under her breath.
It was not amused.
It was exhausted.
“I was supposed to come over here and make fun of you for needing emotional supervision.”
Heidi’s mouth trembled.
“You did do that a little.”
“Not enough. I had material.”
“What kind of material?”
“Well, first, your text was dramatic.”
“My text was three words and a time.”
“Exactly. Very murdery.”
Despite everything, Heidi smiled.
“And then,” Lila continued, nodding toward Ghost, “I walk in and you’ve acquired a haunted cat.”
“He is not haunted.”
Ghost sneezed.
Both women looked at him.
“Okay,” Heidi said. “He is maybe haunted-adjacent.”
Lila’s smile was brief, but it was real.
Then it faded.
She reached for Heidi’s hand.
“Come here.”
Heidi let herself be pulled close.
Lila wrapped her arms around her from behind this time, chin resting on Heidi’s shoulder. They stood facing the coffee table, the bowl, the objects inside it, like two people staring at the remains of a spell neither one knew how to undo.
“I’m scared too,” Lila said.
Heidi closed her eyes.
That was worse somehow.
Lila scared meant the floor really was gone.
“I don’t want this to take you,” Lila whispered.
“It won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No.”
Lila’s arms tightened.
“Then don’t say it like you do.”
Heidi turned in her arms.
Their faces were close.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I know.”
“I hate that.”
“I know.”
“I hate needing help.”
“I know.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Because you’re not as mysterious as you think you are.”
Heidi huffed a laugh.
Lila kissed it from her mouth.
This kiss was different.
Not the desperate heat from before. Not exactly comfort either. It carried anger in it. Fear. Possession neither of them had agreed to but both had started feeling anyway. Lila kissed her like she wanted to pull Heidi out of the reach of whatever had touched her. Like she could claim enough skin, enough breath, enough of the soft human places to make the dark thing understand there was no empty room here.
Heidi knew it was irrational.
She also knew she wanted it.
Lila backed her toward the bedroom again.
Heidi caught her wrist.
“The bottle.”
“Fuck the bottle.”
“Ghost is watching.”
“Ghost can look away.”
From the living room, Ghost made a small questioning chirp.
Heidi laughed against Lila’s mouth, and the sound broke open into a gasp when Lila’s hand slid beneath the hem of her dress.
“Promise me,” Lila said again, voice low against Heidi’s ear.
Heidi’s breath caught.
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” Lila whispered. “It’s not.”
Her hand moved with devastating certainty.
Heidi gripped her shoulders.
Thought fractured.
The room blurred at the edges.
Fear dissolved into sensation, and sensation became its own kind of language. Lila’s mouth at her neck. Lila’s fingers pressing deep and deliberate. Lila’s voice, soft and rough, asking again.
“Promise me you’ll get rid of it.”
Heidi gasped.
Her body arched before her mind could catch it.
“Yes.”
The word escaped her before she could decide if she meant it.
Lila went still for half a second.
Then she kissed Heidi hard, like the promise had saved them.
But Heidi knew better.
Even through the heat, even with Lila’s body against hers and Ghost somewhere in the next room and the apartment full of breath and skin and the trembling aftershock of need, she knew something was wrong.
Because the word had not felt like a lie.
And it had not felt like truth either.
It had felt borrowed.
Pulled from her.
Drawn out.
Asked for.
Downstairs, in the laundromat below, one of the machines started running.
Heidi froze.
Lila lifted her head.
“What was that?”
Another machine clicked on.
Then another.
Water surged through pipes behind the walls.
The sound rose beneath the floorboards.
Filling.
Churning.
Turning.
The apartment lights flickered once.
Ghost yowled from the living room.
Heidi shoved herself away from Lila and ran.
The bowl on the coffee table had tipped onto its side.
The flash drive lay near the edge.
The bottle had rolled free of the dish towel.
It sat upright now in the middle of the table.
Impossible.
Inside, the bones floated in a slow circle.
As if stirred by an unseen tide.
Lila came up behind her, breathing hard.
“Heidi.”
“I didn’t touch it.”
“I know.”
The washing machines downstairs kept filling.
One after another.
Water roared beneath them.
Too much water.
The bite on Heidi’s thigh burned hot enough to make her knees buckle. Lila caught her around the waist.
Ghost stood on the arm of the couch, back arched, teeth bared toward the front window.
Heidi looked.
The glass was dark now, reflecting the apartment back at them.
But beyond the reflection, past the room, past their pale ghost-shapes in the window, she could see the ocean between the buildings.
Black.
Flat.
Watching.
The bottle clicked.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Like nails on glass.
Then the machines below shut off all at once.
Silence slammed into the apartment.
Heidi could hear her own breathing.
Lila’s.
Ghost’s low growl.
And beneath all of it, so faint she almost convinced herself it was imagination, a voice from somewhere far away and deep below.
Not words.
Not yet.
Just the shape of wanting to become them.
Lila’s fingers dug into Heidi’s waist.
“We are getting rid of that thing.”
Heidi stared at the bottle.
The blood smear on the glass had changed.
It had lengthened, dragged downward in one thin red line, as if something inside had pressed a wet finger against it and slowly pulled.
Heidi whispered, “I don’t think it wants me to.”
Lila turned her toward her.
“I don’t care what it wants.”
The fierceness in her voice should have comforted Heidi.
It did.
It also terrified her.
Because whatever had been following Heidi had been violent before. Hungry before. Strange before.
But this was different.
This felt patient.
Curious.
As if it had been watching them and finally understood something important.
Not just how to take.
How to touch.
Not just how to frighten.
How to comfort.
Not just how to drag her body through the dark.
How to make her answer.
Heidi looked down at the place where Lila’s hand held her.
At the mark beneath her dress, still burning.
At the bottle on the table.
At Ghost, trembling and furious on the couch.
At the black strip of ocean visible through the window.
And in that moment—wrapped in heat and need and surrender, with Lila’s promise still damp on her lips—Heidi knew something was wrong.
Because whatever had been following her was still watching.
And it was learning how to ask.
