I was still standing there, breathing too hard, when someone knocked on my door.
I jumped so violently I nearly knocked a glass off the counter. For one wild, irrational second, I thought—impossibly—that it was him. That he had somehow known I was here. Somehow found me. To finish the conversation we never had months ago when we’d met each other in Vegas.
Which was insane. Completely insane. Jack Specter didn’t know I existed anymore, and even if he did, he certainlywouldn’t be knocking on the door of a one-bedroom apartment in a building with questionable plumbing.
I crossed the room and opened the door.
A woman stood in the hallway. Purple hair. Nose ring. A smile so aggressively friendly it bordered on alarming. About my age, maybe a year or two younger, wearing an oversized band t-shirt and leggings covered in tiny cartoon cats.
“Hi! Oh thank God, you look normal.” She pressed a hand to her chest like I’d saved her from something. “I’m Candy. I live next door. Well, technically my mom owns the building but she’s in Arizona right now because she says California cold is still cold when you’re sixty-seven, so I’m sort of in charge? Mostly I just collect rent and apologize for things. You’re Pauline, right?”
She said all of this without a single pause for breath. I opened my mouth, but she was already continuing.
“Anyway, I wanted to say welcome and also give you a heads-up about Meatball before you run into him and, you know, panic.”
“Meatball?” I repeated.
She gestured downward.
I looked.
My stomach dropped.
At the end of the leash in Candy’s hand was a dog. I think. It might have been a small bear someone had taught to walk upright. It had wiry gray fur sticking out in every direction, a face like a grumpy old man who’d seen too much, and eyes that tracked me with the kind of focus that made my skin prickle.
Oh no.
Suddenly I was eight years old again. Mrs. Ford’s German Shepherd breaking loose from its leash. The blur of fur and teeth charging across the park.
I’d chipped my front tooth that day. Wore a cap on it for years afterward.
I’d never trusted a dog since.
“He’s a rescue,” Candy was saying, completely oblivious to my internal meltdown. “Part wolfhound, part mystery. The shelter said medium-sized, which—” She laughed. “I mean. Look at him. I think they were using a different measuring system.”
Meatball growled. The sound came from somewhere deep in his chest, low and rumbling, like thunder before a storm.
“That’s his happy noise,” Candy said brightly.
“His happy noise,” I echoed, my voice coming out too high.
“Mhm! When he doesn’t like someone, he doesn’t make any noise at all. So this is good! This means he likes you.”
Meatball took a step toward me. His head came up to my hip. His nose was the size of my fist. He sniffed my knee with an intensity that suggested he was filing away my scent for future tracking purposes.
Don’t move. Don’t run. Dogs chase things that run.
I pressed my back against the doorframe and tried to remember how to breathe.
“He’s…” My voice cracked. “Very large.”
“Isn’t he great? Total gentle giant.” She tugged the leash, and Meatball retreated to her side—reluctantly, still watching me. “Anyway. Quick building orientation: hot water takes a minute, walls are thin so sorry in advance for my reality-TV addiction, and the radiator sounds like it’s dying but it’s been making that noise for three years and we haven’t exploded yet.”So.” She shrugged. “Odds are good.”
“That’s… comforting.”
“I thought so.” She grinned, already backing toward her door, Meatball lumbering beside her. “Welcome to the building, Pauline. I think you’re gonna like it here. Probably. Seventy percent chance.” A pause. “Sixty-five.”
The door closed. I caught one last glimpse of those unsettling dog eyes before they vanished.
