She was starting to look familiar.
Maybe, eventually, she'd start to look like me.
11
The Basement
The stairs groaned under my weight like they were remembering something painful.
I'd been in the back room for three days—or maybe four, or maybe just two, time had stopped meaning anything—sleeping on the couch, eating Matt's soup, wearing the soft dresses I'd chosen at the mall. The bear sat on the pillow beside me. I'd named him Mr. Beary, though I couldn't remember why that name felt right. It just did. Like the dresses. Like the bar. Like Matt, who didn't ask questions and didn't look at me like I was broken.
The basement.
Matt had mentioned it the first night."There's a basement you can use for... whatever you need."I hadn't asked what he meant. I hadn't needed to.
Now I was standing at the top of the stairs, my hand on the railing, looking down into the dark.
"You want me to come with you?"
Matt was behind me, his voice careful.
"No."
"There's a light switch at the bottom. Left side."
"Okay."
"Bunny."
I turned. He was standing in the doorway of the back room, his arms crossed over his chest, his expression unreadable.
"You don't have to do anything down there. Not today. Not ever. The job is upstairs. The basement is just... space."
"I know."
"Do you?"
"I know that you're giving me a chance. I know that you're not asking questions. I know that you're not calling the police."
"That's not what I—"
"Thank you, Matt."
I turned back to the stairs and started down.
The basement was cold.
The air was thick and still, heavy with the smell of concrete and old water and something else—something metallic, something that reminded me of the warehouse, of the alley, of the room where Rue had died.
I didn't remember killing her.
But I remembered the basement.
Or maybe I didn't.
Maybe I was remembering something else.
The light switch was where Matt had said it would be—left side, just below a junction box that looked like it hadn't been touched in decades. I flipped it, and the fluorescents flickered to life, buzzing overhead, casting the room in shades of grey and green.
