A Taste for Monsters - Chapter Two

The first message popped up while Grace was trying to decide wheter a woman could cross a burning courtyard without losing her eyebrows.

She had written the scene three different ways and believed none of them. On the desk beside her laptop, her tea had cooled beneath a skin of milk. Rain rattled against the window, and the cursor blinked at the end of a sentence she had begun to dislike, almost passionately, simply because she had looked at it too many damn times.

She pulled her ready copy of Dawn of Destiny closer. In chapter twenty-six, smoke, diverted water and failing torchlight had broken the enemy's view of Annochd's streets. She had made herself account for the conditions then. The woman currently stranded halfway across her screen deserved the same effort.

Her phone vibrated against her leather journal.

Have you seen this?

The message came from another writer, followed by a link. Grace glanced at the headline, started to turn back to the manuscript and looked again.

MAN FOUND DEAD IN DOWNTOWN COURTYARD

She opened the article.

The photograph showed shallow stone steps beneath an archway, police tape stretched across a narrow passage and the blurred shoulder of an officer near the camera. The building had once housed private arbitration chambers, according to the report. Most of it had since been converted into ordinary offices, though a decorative figure above the entrance still held a pair of scales. Grace recognised the frontage from passing cars. Behind it lay a small courtyard shared by the surrounding businesses.

A man had been discovered there shortly after dawn. Police were treating the deat as suspicious. His name had not yet been released.

Farther down, the reporter described the chair.

Grace sat back.

She read the paragraph again, then returned to the photograph. Nothing in it showed what the reporter said a witness had seen: a man seated beneath the rear archway, with a borken set of scales placed at his feet

On the shelf beside her desk stood the reading copies she took to events. Grace pulled out the fourth book of The Arkannian Saga.

The book opened easily where she had bent the spine at a previous convention. She turned past the pages she had read aloud and found the next scene. Her protagonist returning to the courtyard. The dead lord left in the chair from which he had pronounced his judgements. At his feet, the scales taken from the chamber where he had condemned people for crims he committed himself.

Grace rested her thumb beneath the paragraph.

A delivery van pulled away outside. She watched through the window until it passed beyond the neighbouring house, then turned back to the screen.

The reporter had written broken. In the novel, one pan had been torn from its chains. Grace turned the page to check, although she remembered choosing the detail.

Her phone vibrated again.

Probably nothing. Just reminded me of your book.

Grace typed Aye, I see what you mean, deleted it and put the phone faceown.

She read the article from the beginning. The location had legal associations. Scales belonged there. Chairs were hardly unusual. She closed the book and left her hand on it.

A moment later, she opened it again.

By lunchtime, she had checked the report five times. On the sixth visit, a photograph of the dead man had replaced the building.

Adrian Mercer, fifty-siz, property investor.

He stood at a formal dinner in a dark suit, one hand resting on the shoulder of a younger man with the same narrow face. Beneath the photograph, his family described a devoted father and an active memober of the business community. An updated paragraph said investigators were appealing for anyone who had been near the building overnight to come forward.

Grace searched his name.

Fundraising dinners. Planning applications. A photograph outside a refurbished apartment building, Mercer smiling beside two people holding ceremonial scissors. She opened a report about a disputed development, scanned for his name and clicked through to another page.

Then she stopped with the cursor over the next link.

She returned to the family photograph. Mercer's hand rested comfortably on the younger man's shouler. The younger man had leane towards him.

Grace closed the search results.

At the signing, the masked woman had brought her first novel. That did not mean she had never read the fourth. Her questions had reached beyond the passage Grace had chosen, into the part that followed it, though Grace had scarcely considered that at the time.

She searched for her phone and hopened Hannah's number.

Do you remember the woman in the red half mask?

Grace read the message without seding it.

Someone would have photographed her. The convention floor had been crowded with people taking pictures. A face in the background, a leather jacket beside a stall, the mask turned towards the camera. Hannah could ask the registration desk.

Grace's thum rested above the screen.

She deleted the message and went downstairs to make fresh tea.

Three days later, the cordon came down.

Grace learned that from a short follow-up report she read in the kitchen, still wearing her gym clothes. A man arrested for questioning had been released without charge. There had been no further arrests.

She finished her water, rinsed the glass and went upstairs to shower.

For most of the afternoon, she worked. Whenever she returned to the article, she closed it and added another hunred words to the story she'd chosen to work on that day. By half past five, she had written a conversation in which everyone sounded as though they were withholding something.

She deleted it.

Then she opened the map on her phone.

The building stood a little over a mile away.

Grace changed into black jeans, a dark green tank top and boots. She pulled on her leather vest and took her keys from the bowl beside the door. Her hair fell loose to her waist. In the hall mirror, she brushed it back from her face, then let it fall again.

She switched off the light.

The rain had stopped. Water lay in the broken edges of the pavement, and the air smelled of damp leaves and hot oil escaping from a takeaway near the corner. Traffic crawled towards the main road. People were still leaving work; a woman hurried past with a laptop back held close beneath her arm, glancing up at the cloud.

Grace kept her hands in her pockets. At the first junction, she checked the map. At the second, she checked it again, though she knew where she was going.

Without the tape, the building looked disappointingly ordinary. Light shone from an upstairs office. A delivery n otice had been stuck to the glass of the main door, and someone had left a paper cup on the ledge beneath the carved figure.

Farther along, the narrow passage led between the former arbitration offices and the adjoining building. Grace could see the courtyard at its end.

She stopped beneath a streetlamp and checked the time.

A message from Kate sat above an ad she had not asked to receive. Bloody ads she thought, sighing she opened the message.

Dinner this week? You can tell me whether you actually got any writing done.

Grace answered Thursday? and put the phone away.

At the passage entrance, she waited while a man carrying a folder came out. He glanced at her and held the little iron gate.

"Thank you."

He lifted the folder in acknowledgement and continued towards the street.

The courtyard was smaller than it appeared in the photograph on all the articles. Three shallow steps led to the rear archway, with office doors on either side. An empty planter stood beneath a window. Somewhere above her, an AC unit rattled before settling into a low hum.

The chair had been removed.

Grace opened the pic on her fphone and stood where she thought the camera had been. She compared the line of the arch, the drain and the strip of pale stone beside it.

There.

Mercer had been sitting there.

She lowered the phone.

In her novel, the courtyard had room for a hundred soldiers. Rain ran down the dead lord's sleeves while the woman who killed him addressed his surviving officers. Grace remembered writing it late at night, moving the chair closer to the steps so everyone would have to pass it. She had gone back the next morning and altered the position of his hands.

Here, an office door would have opened. Someone arriving early, carrying coffee or searching for keys, would have looked towards the arch.

Grace glanced at the upper windows. Most were dark. In one, a fluorescent strip lit the edge of a filing cabinet.

She moved a little nearer the steps.

"You looking for something?"

Grace turned.

A man stood at the mouth of the entrance, hands hanging at his sides. She had not heard him approach. He wore a grey sweatshirt beneath an unfastened jacket and held his head slightly forward as he looked at her.

"Just having a look."

"At what?"

"The building."

His gaze dropped to her phone.

"You one of those people? Come to take pictures?"

She slid it into her vest pocket.

"I'm leaving."

He stayed where he was.

Grace approached, then stopped beyond his reach. The entrance remaine visible past his shoulder.

"Excuse me."

He looked more closely at her. His eyes narrowed.

"I know you."

Grace said nothing.

"The book thing. You were on my feed."

"You've mistaken me for someone else."

She moved to pass him.

His hand closed around her upper arm.

Grace truned into the grip, pulled her arm down and drove the heel of her other hand against his chest. He stumbled into the opposite wall. She stepped towards the exit, but his fingers caught the back of her vest and dragged her sideways.

Her shouler struck brick. Pain ran across her upper back and cut off her breath.

"Get your fucking hands off me."

She drove an elbow backwards. It connected with something solid, and his grip loosened. Grace twisted free, but he lunged before she could get clear. His open hand struck her face and knocked her against the wall... again.

Her teeth caught the insie of her cheek.

She tasted blood.

"Let her go."

The man turned his head.

The woman from the signing stood a few paces inside the courtyard.

Her dark red mask caught the light above the passage, one ridged brow throwing a shadow across her eye. Her jacket was fastened to the throat. She held her hands low.

Grace saw the knife when the man did.

He released her with a shove and backed away. The woman moved between them.

"Stay out of it."

She kept coming.

He glanced towards the exit, then tried to push past her. His hand reached for her shoulder. She turned, her arm moving close between their bodies, and he made a short, startled sound.

She shoved him away.

He fell against the steps. His shoe scraped stone as he tried to rise, one hand pressed against his jacket.

Grace pushed herself off the wall.

The woman watched him. For a moment, neither moved. There was room for her to step back. The exit lay open behind her.

The man reached towards her.

She went down beside him.

"Wait," Grace said.

The woman's arm moved once more.

The blade sank deep, and the man choked, a wet, gurgling sound that made Grace's stomach clench. Blood sprayed across the pale stones, bright arterial crimson that darkened as it spread. The woman twisted the knife, and the man's body convulsed, his fingers scrabbling uselessly against the stone.

She stood. Blood darkened the front of the man's sweatshirt and spread beneath him across the pale stone. His foot shifted weakly, then stopped.

Grace braced one hand against the wall.

Beyond the courtyard, a horn sounded. Someone laughed on the pavement, the sound clear enough to make her glance towards it.

She looked back at the man and waited for him to breathe.

"Look at me."

Grace did.

The woman had stopped a little beyond arm's reach. A dark strand of hair had come loose beside the mask. Her uncovered cheek was flushed, her mouth parted as she breathed. The knife hung beside her thigh, dripping blood onto the stone.

"Are you hurt?"

Grace touched the corner of her mouth. Her fingers came away with a small read smear.

The woman looked at it. The muscles along her jaw shifted.

"Your head?"

"No. My shoulder." Grace swallowed. "I don't think it's bad."

"Can you move it?"

Grace rolled it carefully and winced.

"Aye."

The woman came closer.

Grace looked past her at the body.

"He was down."

"Yes."

"You could have stopped."

The woman waited until Grace met her eyes.

"Would you like me to tell you I was frightened?"

Grace stared at her. "Were you?"

"No."

There was no hurried explanation. The woman stayed where she was, watching Grace's face. Grace pressed her elbow against the phone in her pocket. She could reach it without moving towards the woman.

Her fingers remained spread against the brick behind her.

"You followed me."

"You came here alone."

"That's not an answer."

"No, it's not."

The woman stepped closer. Grace shifted back and felt the wall against both shoulders. To her left, the courtyard lay open.

She stayed where she was.

The knife rose slowly between them.

Blood marked the blade. The woman held the edge away from Grace's skin and turned her wrist enough for the steel to catch the light.

"Is this what you came to see?"

Grace's breath caught.

"I didn't know you'd be here."

"But you hoped."

Grace looked up.

They were close enough now for her to smell the leather warmed by the woman's body, and beneath it the faint woody scent she remembered from the hotel. Over the woman's shoulder, she could see the man's shoe. One lace had come undone.

Her gaze returned to the exposed half of the woman's face.

"Put it down."

The uncovered eyebrow moved.

"Are you afraid?"

Grace looked at the knife, then deliberately back at her.

"No."

The woman went still.

Her lips parted. The blade stopped turning, then moved closer, the flat of it pressing against Grace's cheek. The metal was still warm from the man's body, and slick with his blood. Grace expected revulsion, nausea, fear... anything but the jolt of electricity that shot through her at the contact. Her breath caught as the woman traced the knife along her jawline, leaving a faint red trail in its wake. The woman moved closer still, their legs touching. Gace could feel the heat radiating from her body, could smell the coppery scent of blood mingling with leather and something uniquely her. One of the woman's legs slid between Grace's, pressing against her core. Grace gasped, unable to stop herself from grinding against the woman's thigh. Her breathing quickened, heat pooling low in her belly as excitement flooded through her veins.

This was wrong, twisted, dangerous... and she had never wanted anythign more.

"You should be," the woman said quietly, her voice low and husky.

"Probably."

Grace lifted her hand and caught the front of the jacket.

For a moment, neither moved. Beneath Grace's fingers, the leather shifted with a deeper breath. The woman glanced at the hand gripping her, then back at Grace's face.

Grace recognised the hesitation. She had seen it at the signing when she had looked openly at the woman's mouth.

She tightened her grip.

"You keep looking at my mouth," the woman said.

"So do you."

Her empty hand rose beside Grace's head and rested against the brick. She leaned closer, stopping before their lips met.

"Tell me to move."

Grace pulled her in.

The first contact was harer than she intended. Her cheek stung. The woman made a low sound against her mouth, turned her face and kissed her back.

Grace closed her eyes.

She had imagined that lower lip for three nights. Now it was warm beneath hers, moving with an answering urgency that made her grip the jacket more firmly. She drew the woman closer. Pain caught beneath her shoulder blade; she shifted and kept hold.

A palm settled at her waist.

Grace moved into it.

The woman drew back an inch, her eyes passing over Grace's face. They paused at her cheek before returning to her mouth.

Grace followed her.

The second kiss began more slowly.

She felt the woman's fingers against her sie, then tighten as Grace slid her hand from the jacket to the warm skin above its collar. A pulse beat fast beneath her fingertips.

The woman pressed closer.

Grace answere, parting her lips, pulling her in until the leather creaked beneath her other hand. The palm at her waist held her firmly against the wall. When she caught the woman's lower lip between her own, the breath that escaped her was sharp enough to make Grace do it again.

A siren sounded beyond the buildings.

The woman lifted her head.

Grace kept hold of her jacket. Another siren joined the first, closer now, and somewhere near the entrance a voice called out.

"I have to go."

"Wait."

The woman looked back at her.

Grace could still feel her mouth.

"Who are you?"

Something shifted across the uncovered half of her face. Her gaze moved towards the entrance before returning to Grace.

"Not yet."

She stepped away.

Grace's hand fell from the jacket. Cold air reached the place where the woman had stood.

The woman glanced towards the exit, then moved towards a noarrow opening beyond the steps.

"Will I see you again."

She stopped.

When she turned, her eyes went briefly to Grace's mouth.

"Do you want to?"

"Yes."

The answer left Gace before she could examine it.

The woman held her gaze for another heartbeat, then disappeared through the opening.

Grace remained against the wall until a car door slammed on the street.

She looked down at the man beside the steps.

Blood had reached the seam between the stones and followed it towards the drain. His hand lay open beside his jacket. She had not noticed his fingernails before. One was torn.

Grace watched the hand. A few moments earlier, those fingers had been scraping against the ground.

She straightened and took her phone from her pocket. The screen stayed dark beneath her thumb. She could still feel the woman's mouth, though the cold had begun to reach her through her tanktop. When she swallowed, the cut inside her cheek stung.

Footsteps entered the courtyard.

"Police. Is someone back here?"

Grace turned.

Two officers came into the courtyard. The first saw the man and moved towards him; the second approached Grace with one hand raised.

"Ma'am, are you injured?"

"He attacked me."

Her voice sounded steadier than she expected.

The officer glanced at her cheek, then at the hand holding her phone.

"Is that your blood?"

Grace lifted her fingers toward her face.

"Don't touch it for a moment."

Her hand stopped.

His gaze followed a line from her cheek towards her jaw. She could feel where the blood had begun to dry, pulling faintly when she moved her mouth.

"Are you cut there?"

"He hit me. I bit the inside of my cheek."

"And along here?" He indicated his own jaw without touching it.

Grace looked past him. His colleague was kneeling beside the man, speaking into his radio.

"That was a knife."

The officer's attention returned fully to her.

"Who had the knife?"

Grace's fingers tightened around the phone.

"Someone came into the courtyard."

"Are they still here?"

"No."

"Which way did they go?"

She glanced towards the opening beyond the steps. His eyes followed hers, and he spoke briefly into his radio before moving her father from the body.

"Did that person put the knife against your face?"

Grace nodded.

The officer's mouth compressed. He looked at the blood again.

"All right. You're safe with us. Let's get you out of here."

Grace opened her mouth, then closed it.

He had already shifted closer to her, placing himself between her and the courtyard. She let him guide her towards the exit. Behind him, his colleague asked for something over the radio, and Grace looked back before she could stop herself.

The man had not moved.

"What's your name?" the officer asked.

"Grace MacBhàtair."

He asked her to repeat it. She did, more slowly.

"Any dizziness, Grace?"

"No."

"Trouble breathing?"

"No."

"Stay with me. We've got an ambulance coming."

At the gate, she caught sight of herself in the dark window opposite. The mark along her jaw looked broader than she had expected.

She turned away.

An ambulance arrived while the officer was walking her towards the street. People had begun gathering beneath the lamps. A woman in the doorway opposite spoke quickly to another officer, pointing towards the courtyard. Grace heard shouting and someone being hurt before the paramedic approached her.

Her shoulder throbbed with each step.

They sat her on the open rear step of the ambulance. The paramedic checked her cheek and asked her to follow a small light with her eyes. Grace answered his questions, described where she had struck the wall and kept her hands folded between her knees.

When he moved closer to examine the red line along her jaw, she held her breath.

"Does that hurt?"

"No."

"You can breathe normally."

She let the air out.

The officer stood nearby. Before the blood was cleaned away, he asked whether they could photograph the marks on her face and the injuries she described. Grace agreed. She turned when asked, lifted her chin and stared at a point beyond his shoulder.

The camera made a small, ordinary sound.

Then the paramedic began wiping her cheek.

She flinched.

"Sorry. Tender there?"

"A little."

She could hardly feel the gauze. What she felt was the blade passing over the same place, and her own body moving towards the woman instead of away.

Grace pressed her boots firmly against the road.

"You all right?"

"Yes."

The paramedic paused, watching her.

"Just tell me if you need a minute."

She nodded and let him finish.

The officer opened his notebook once the paramedic stepped aside.

"Can you tell me why you were in the courtyard?"

Grace accepted a cold pack and held it against the side of her face the man had struck.

"I read about the man they found here."

"Did you know him?"

"No."

"Then what brought you down?"

She could tell him about the chair. About the scales, the fourth novel and the passage she had read aloud. She could describe the woman sitting three rows from the back, her questions and the old hardback waiting beneath her hand.

"I've a novelist," Grace said. "The place interested me."

He wrote that down.

"And the man in the courtyard tonight? Did you know him?"

"No."

"Had you seen him before?"

"Not that I remember."

Grace described him blocking the exit, looking at her phone and recognising her from something he had seen online. She told the officer about the hand on her arm and how she had tried to break free. Those details came easily. She could put each movement in order, explain where she had been standing and which shoulder had struck the wall.

He asked what the man had said. She repeated what she remembered.

The col pack crackled beneath her fingers.

"What happened after he hit you?"

Across the street, rainwater dripped from an awning onto a folded café chair. Grace watched three drops fall.

"Someone told him to let me go."

"The person with the knife?"

"Yes."

"A man or a woman?"

Grace lowered her eyes to the officer's notebook. He had left a space beneath the question.

"A woman."

His pen moved.

"Can you describe her?"

"Dark clothes. A leather jacket."

"Anything else?"

Grace could see the mask as clearly as though the woman still stood in front of her. The curved horn. The edge beneath her eye. The small strand of hair that had worked loose.

"Something over part of her face."

"A mask?"

"Yes."

"What sort?"

She adjusted the cold pack against her cheek.

"Red. It covered one side."

"Why side?"

Grace touched her own right temple, then let her hand fall.

"Could you see much of her face?"

"Some."

The officer waited for more. Grace looked towards the ambulance interior, at the straps hanging beside the stretcher.

"It happened quickly."

"Take your time."

She wanted him to ask about the attack again. She could tell him how the man's fingers had dug into her arm, how hard the brick had struck her shoulder. She could give him those things without having to choose where to stop.

"What did the woman do?"

"She got between us. He tried to push past her."

"And then?"

"They were close together. He fell against the steps."

"Did you usee her stab him?"

Grace pressed her lips together. Pain caught inside her cheek.

"Yes."

The officer glanced at her face.

"Then she came towards you?"

"Afterwards."

"With the knife?"

"Yes."

"And put it against your cheek."

Grace nodded.

He looked down at what he had written, then back at her.

"Did she tell you not to call us?"

"No."

"Did she say anything about what woudl happen if you spoke to the police?"

"No."

His eyes stayed on hers for a moment.

"You don't have to minimise what happened. You had a knife against your face."

Grace could still hear the woman asking whether she was afraid. She remembered answering, then reaching for the jacket.

"I know."

"What did she say to you?"

Grace folded a corner of the cold pack between her fingers.

"She asked if I was hurt."

The officer's pen slowed.

"Before or after she put the knife against you?"

"Before."

"What else?"

Grace looked towards the entrance to the courtyard. An officer had moved the gathering crowd farther along the pavement. Someone protested that they were only waiting for a friend.

"She asked if I was afraid."

"What did you say?"

Grace felt the word waiting in her mouth.

 "She was very close."

He nodded once an wrote.

She watched him finish the line. He had given her somewhere to place the pause, somewhere to leave the answer she had not supplied. She kept the cold pack against her cheek until the skin beneath it ached.

The paramdic returned to ask whether she wanted to go to hospital. Grace declined. She listened to the instructions about her shoulder and the blow to her face, repeating them when he checked that she had understood.

The officer waited until he had moved away again.

"Do you remember anythign else about her? Her voice, perhaps? Ha you ever seen her before?"

Grace's hand stopped against the cold pack.

At the convention, the woman had laid her book on the table and refused to give her name. Grace had wondered how her fingers would feel against that wrist.

"I don't know who she is."

The officer watched her for a moment before making another note.

He asked about the woman's height, her hair and how long she had remained in the courtyard. Grace answered what she could bear to answer. Once, he returned to the question about threats, and she shook her head.

She did not tell him that she had asked the woman to stay.

When he gave her his card, she slipped it into her vest pocket.

"We'll need to speak again, Ms MacBhàtair. You may remember more once you've had some rest."

"All right."

"If anything comes back to you, call. Even if it seems insignificant."

Grace nodded.

"Is there someone who can come and get you?"

She thought of Kate arriving before Grace finished explaining where she was. Kate would touch the uninjured side of her face, inspect the bruises and ask what had happened. Grace would have to hear herself describe the knife while Kate held her hand.

"I'll call a taxi."

The officer remained nearby until it arrived.

On the journey home, Grace watched Los Angeles pass in wet reflections. A bus pulled away from a stop, its windows bright around the people inside. Outside a restaurant, two men waited while one shook water from an umbrella. The driver turned down the radio after glancing at her in the mirror.

Her cheek ached. Each turn pulled at the bruise on her shoulder.

She tried to keep the courtyard in order.

The man catching her arm. The wall. The woman arriving.

Then the scrape of his shoe against the steps.

Grace looked down at her hands.

She could remember saying wait. She held on to that for several seconds, turning the word over, until she reached what followed it.

She had stayed against the wall. She had watched the knife rise.

At a red light, she caught sight of herself in the window, Her hair lay loose around her shoulders. Her mouth looked slightly swollen.

She touched it.

The memory came with such immediacy that she withdrew her hand as though someone had caught it. For a moment she could feel the woman's pulse beneath her fingertips, fast and unmistakable.

Then the man made that sound again in her head.

Grace swallowed hard.

"Need me to pull over?" the driver asked.

"No. Thank you."

He looked back at the road.

She put both hands beneath her thighs and left them there until they reached the house.

Inside, she locked the door and stood in the hall without turning on the light. Her keys were still between her fingers.

Her phone vibrated.

Kate had agreed to Thursday and suggested a restaurant.

Grace read the message twice. She typed Something happened tonight, then stared at it until the screen dimmed.

She woke it, deleted the words and set the phone on the narrow table.

The keys struck the bowl. She flinched and caught its rim before it could rock against the wall.

In the bathroom, the mark along her cheekbone had deepened. The blood was gone from her jaw, but she leaned towards the mirror and turned her face, looking for a line.

There was only skin.

She pulled her lower lip aside to examine the cut, rinsed her mouth and wtached pale pink water circle the drain. Then she wet a cloth and wiped her jaw again.

The cloth came away clean.

Grace lowered it to the basin.

She had been frightened when the man grabbed her. She could find that fear easily: the lost breath, the frantic effort to free her jacket, the certainty that he was coming at her again.

She tried to carry it into what happened next.

The woman raised the knife. Grace's breath caught.

She stopped there, eyes fixed on her reflection.

It would have been easier if she had frozen. Easier if the kiss had happened while she stood rigid and waited for it to end. But her hand had closed on the jacket. When the woman paused, Grace had pulled her closer.

She gripped the edge of the basin until her shoulder hurt.

"Jesus Christ."

The words sounded small in the bathroom.

Perhaps the blow, the shock, the relief of someone intervening had done something to her. She turned towards that explanation and found the signing table waiting: her hand resting on the book, her gaze dropping to the woman's mouth, the satisfaction when she had finally made her falter.

Grace shut her eyes.

She could not make the dead man disappear from the courtyard. He had been there when she kissed her. Grace had known where he lay.

Her stomach turned. She bent over the basin and waited, breathing through her mouth, but nothing came up.

After a while, she straightened.

The officer's card pressed against her ribs through the lining in her vest. She took it out and laid it beside the tap. A drop of water darkened one corner.

She had told him there had been no spoken threat. She had watched his eyes return to the mark on her face and let the rest settle between them.

Grace picked up her phone.

The number was there. She could call and begin the conversation. She could tell him that she recognised the woman's voice, that they had spoken before, that she remembered more of her face than she had admitted.

Her thumb hovered over the keypad.

She pictured the officer turning to a fresh page.

What happened after she put the knife down?

Grace set the phone beside the card.

She stood there until the screen went black.

In her study, her current story remained open on the screen. Beside her laptop lay the fourth book of The Arkannian Saga, a marker tucked into the scene with the chair and the broken scales.

Grace sat and opened it.

Her protagonist stood before the surviving officers, certain enough to give orders. Grace read the paragraph twice, then closed the cover.

The officer's card lay in her hand. She ran her thumb over the damp corner and looked towards the phone she had brought from the bathroom.

She remembered the woman stopping at the opening.

Do you want to?

Grace pressed the card flat against the desk.

She could hear how quickly she had answered.

For a moment she stayed like that. Then she opened the drawer, placed the card inside and pushed it shut.