The volume had been perfect.
Not restaurant-perfect, where voices rose and fell with the natural dynamics of conversation and alcohol and ambient noise. Not the organic volume of men talking freely because they'd forgotten the pianist could hear.
This was engineered, I was sure of it. Like a sound check. Like someone had measured the distance between the back booth and the piano and adjusted the output accordingly.
My nails dug into the counter.
I replayed it again. First, there was the timing. The conversation had started during a specific passage of the Chopin. The section where the left hand dropped to a low, sustained pedal toneand the room went momentarily quieter, opening a window of reduced sonic interference. The two men had launched into specifics at the exact moment the ambient noise dipped.
They'd waited for the gap. They'd known where the gap would be.
The realization didn't hit like a slap. It seeped in like ice water, filling the spaces between my ribs, flooding the hollow places where breath should be.
It was a test.
The information wasn't real. Or maybe itwasreal, but it was expendable—a pawn sacrificed to see which way the bishop moved. Specific details, planted at a calculated volume, delivered in a timeline that would trace straight back to this restaurant, to this piano bench, to the conversation that happened within earshot of the blind girl who everyone was suddenly being careful around.
And I'd swallowed it whole.
Like a fucking amateur.
My hands were shaking. I gripped the counter edge and pressed my weight down through my arms, trying to anchor myself in the geometry of objects I could trust. The counter beneath my palms. The floor beneath my feet. The distance to the refrigerator, the sink, the drawer handles at hip height?—
I pushed off the counter and my hip cracked against the drawer handle. A bright flash of pain shot up through my side and I stumbled, catching myself on the refrigerator, and standing there with my palm against the humming surface while my sense of the room—the internal map that kept me upright, kept memoving, kept me alive in a world without light—stuttered like a projector losing its reel.
A flash of fear shot through me. That hadn't happened in months. And the last time, I'd recovered in seconds.
This was much worse.
This was the kind of fear that tasted like metal dissolving on the back of my tongue. The kind that didn't sharpen my senses the way danger usually did but flooded them, drowning the signal in noise.
Taking deep breaths, I shoved down the panic and tried to identify the things I was familiar with.
The faucet dripped behind me. One drop every four seconds. I'd counted that rhythm during a panic attack six months ago, letting the interval ground me in something measurable when the rest of the world went formless.
One. Two. Three. Four.Drip.
I pressed my back against the refrigerator and slid to the floor. The linoleum was cold through my dress. Above me, the motor hummed. Below my fingertips, the floor was smooth and real.
Think, Raven. Think.
I should tell Milo.
Pressing my knuckles against my closed eyes, I pushed until colors bloomed in the darkness. Not real colors. The phantom kind my brain still produced when pressure hit the right nerves. A constellation of sparks against the black void that had been my world ever since the accident.
One. Two. Three. Four.Drip.
My phone buzzed against the counter above me. I reached up, found it by touch, tapped the screen.
I'll see you tomorrow night. Sit tight. Trust me. —M
Trust me.
I pressed the phone against my chest—right over the spot where his bite mark used to be—and sat there in the dark with his words trapped against my skin.
I trusted him with my body. With my safety. With the fragile, terrifying thing living behind my ribs that I still couldn't bring myself to say out loud.
I just didn't trust him with the rest.
