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Serena just stands there, her jaw dropped in a rare lapse of composure. She looks like a computer trying to run a program it doesn't have the memory for. Eventually, she silently mouths, What the hell? and retreats, the click of the door shutting me in with the ribbons and the absolute absurdity that is my life.
12
ANTECEDENT
SERENA
Walking into The Rusty Grate is a full-scale assault on the olfactory system, primarily dominated by the overbearing scent of incinerated espresso beans and the earthy musk of a sedimentary layer of dried mud. The rafters are populated by a jury of glass-eyed taxidermy rejects, all watching with a vacant, unblinking fixity. Every time I take a step, the floor emits a long, pathetic groan, the building itself complaining about the architectural indignity of being asked to support another person.
The location is intentional. Baryn decided that if the first episode about Casey was going to introduce Stillwater to his listeners, it should actually sound like Stillwater.
According to him, recording in one of our rooms at the inn lacked sufficient environmental context, while conducting an interview beneath several poorly preserved woodland mammals provides the kind of atmospheric authenticity his profession demands. He assures me the background noise will make the episode feel more immersive. I maintain that there is nothing immersive about listening to an espresso machine scream every ninety seconds while a dead raccoon supervises the conversation, but I am not, as he has reminded me twice, a podcast producer.
Behind the counter, a kid in a flannel shirt has abandoned the pretense of work. He’s leaned out from behind the espresso machine, his chin hovering inches from the steam wand and risking a third-degree contact burn just to shave a few feet off the distance between us. One hand remains fixed around a rag, frozen mid-wipe against the laminate, while his neck is twisted at an angle that is most definitely not sustainable—all to ensure he doesn’t miss a single syllable of our conversation.
I shift in the cramped wooden booth, hyper-aware of the dampness of my hair seeping into the collar of my shirt. I didn’t have time for a blow-dryer; I barely had time for a brush before twisting the strands into two short, wet braids.
I take a bite of my elk-steak sandwich, tearing through the thick, gamey meat before washing it down with a gulp of coffee bitter enough to cling to the back of my tongue.
Tamsin’s upper lip curls as if she might actually retch. Her grilled cheese and tomato soup remains safely devoid of anything that once had antlers.
Simon has the field recorders lined up on the scarred oak table, their matte-black shells and backlit displays looking like fragments of a crashed satellite in this shrine of fur and timber.
Tamsin snorts, poking a finger at a particularly large, furry windscreen Simon has inexplicably produced for one of the shotgun mics. “Is that strictly necessary for the acoustics? Or is it just so the witness feels like they’re being interrogated by a Muppet?”
Simon’s lips twitch—a microscopic break in his stoic expression that I imagine counts as a full-bellied laugh for him.
“It’s a deadcat,” Simon says, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that seems to vibrate the very table. “Wind diffuser.”
He tips his chin toward the ancient ceiling fan turning lazily above us, its warped wooden blades pushing a steady current of air directly across the table.
“A dead cat,” Tamsin repeats, her eyebrows arching toward her hairline. “Perfect. Because nothing puts a nervous small-town local at ease quite like a hair model and his brooding sidekick waving a deceased feline at them while asking about a seventeen-year-old disappearance.”
Simon assembles the equipment with a reverence that borders on the ritualistic. He handles every cable, connector, and preamp with the same care I give a fragile ilium during a recovery. He’s the anchor in the room, a tall, dark, and brooding weight that keeps Baryn’s high-energy charisma from floating off into the rafters. While Baryn is the face and the voice, Simon is clearly the foundation—the man who makes sure the truth doesn’t just get told, but gets captured in 32-bit float.
In my world, the dead speak through what survives them. Bone. Trauma. Pathology. Evidence I can examine, classify, and keep at a professional distance. None of it can tell Baryn’s listeners what Casey sounded like when she laughed or why she called me Birdie or how profoundly irritating she could be when she decided the laws of physics were up to interpretation.
For that, unfortunately, they need me.
I’m a scientist. I deal in cold facts and hard evidence. Yet here I am, about to sit behind a microphone and talk publicly about the girl who has occupied some part of my mind for more than half my life.
Simon is not a conversationalist. His contributions are dry and timed for maximum impact. When Baryn starts adjusting his collar in the reflection of a blank screen, checking his angles as if the microphone can see his jawline, Simon doesn't even look up from his cable management.
"Focus, Narcissus," he grumbles.
Baryn huffs, but he stops preening. “I was checking the recording software.”
Simon raises a single, dark eyebrow in a slow, skeptical arc. He clicks an XLR cable into place with a satisfying, metallic snick. “Sure.”
I can’t stop my eyes from drifting to the way Baryn occupies the space across from me.
He doesn’t fit my established data set.
Historically, my preferences have skewed toward men who are easy to account for. Archival academics. Perpetual Ph.D. candidates who exist in a haze of library dust and can turn choosing a restaurant into a recursive decision-making exercise. System-bound techs who survive on caffeine and Python code and possess roughly the same relationship with sunlight as deep-sea organisms.
Safe men.
Manageable men.
