I stood in my doorway for a long moment. Processing.
Purple-haired neighbor. Enormous, possibly demonic dog. Building with decent odds of not exploding.
Somehow, this was the most normal part of my day.
I went back inside where I finished unpacking. Made a cup of tea with water that took exactly as long to heat as Candy had warned. Sat on the edge of my bed and scrolled through my phone without seeing any of it.
The crumpled magazine cover sat in the trash across the room.
I could still feel it there. Like a splinter under my skin—too small to see, impossible to ignore. Jack Specter, in my apartment, in my city, taking up space in my head when I had far more important things to worry about.
He was not part of my plan. He was a memory I’d already survived once. A closed chapter.
But even in the dark with my eyes shut tight against the unfamiliar ceiling, I could still feel him.
His face was crumpled in the trash across the room.
And somehow—impossibly—his eyes were still on my skin.
CHAPTER 2
Pauline
Three weeksinto my dream job, and I’d discovered that dreams were mostly just nightmares with better marketing.
California Times was a shark tank in business casual. My coworkers smiled with too many teeth and stole stories like pickpockets—quick and shameless. The senior journalists guarded their sources like dragons hoarding gold. The junior ones would sell their own mothers for a front-page byline.
And me? I fetched coffee.
I fact-checked other people’s articles. I transcribed interviews I didn’t conduct. I ran errands for colleagues who couldn’t be bothered to remember my name, calling me “new girl,” “hey you,” or—memorably—“the one with the hair.”
My hair was magnificent, thank you very much. My grandmother had taught me to love my curls when the world told me to straighten them. I had visited her twice this week already, sitting beside her hospital bed and letting her know I was here now. She was weaker—tired in a way that scared me. But she still smiled when she saw me, still called me her baby girl, and I held onto that like a lifeline.
“Pauline!” Gerald’s voice cut across the newsroom like a foghorn. “Where’s my latte?”
Gerald. Gerald was our floor manager, a man whose management style consisted entirely of shouting and whose belly arrived in rooms approximately three seconds before the rest of him. He had opinions about everything. Deadlines. Formatting. The proper ratio of cream to coffee. The decline of modern journalism. The audacity of interns who breathed too loudly near his office. He expressed all of these opinions at maximum volume, usually while bits of pastry flew from his mouth.
He reminded me of Meatball, actually. The same barrel chest. The same suspicious eyes tracking everyone’s movements. The same tendency to growl at anyone who got too close to his territory. Except Meatball was probably smarter, and definitely better groomed.
I fantasized about stapling things to Gerald’s forehead at least twice a day.
“Coming,” I called back, already rising from my desk.
This was my life now. Pauline Wells, college graduate, award-winning journalist at the Newark Tribune, reduced to fetching oat-milk lattes.
I made my way to the coffee station, passing Alice Pearson’s desk on the way. Alice was technically my superior—a senior reporter with sharp blonde hair and sharper elbows who looked at me like I was something unpleasant she’d stepped in. She was on the phone, laughing at something, twirling a pen between her manicured fingers. She didn’t acknowledge my existence. She never did.
The espresso machine hissed and gurgled. I watched the liquid drip into Gerald’s favorite mug—the one that said “World’s Best Boss” in faded letters—and contemplated the life choices that had led me here.
I had wanted this job. I had wanted it so badly I could taste it. California Times was prestigious, respected, the kind of publication that made other journalists sit up and pay attention. Getting hired here was supposed to be the beginning of everything.
Instead, I was making coffee and praying that Gerald didn’t yell at me for the foam being too thick again.
“Hey.”
I turned. Ethan Miles stood behind me, holding two donuts on a napkin like a peace offering. He was two years my senior at the paper, with warm brown eyes and a desk across from mine and an apparent immunity to the office’s cutthroat atmosphere. He’d been kind to me since my first day. Explaining the Byzantine politics of the newsroom. Warning me which editors were approachable and which ones ate junior reporters for breakfast. Bringing me snacks without being asked, like I was a stray cat he’d decided to adopt.
“Rough morning?” he asked.
