002

IVY'S POV.

The radiator coughed like an old dog dying in the corner. I opened my eyes to an identical cracked ceiling with a water stain resembling a broken wing. For three weeks, this flat had been my coffin cheap plywood coffin, paper-thin walls, lock that never felt locked enough. My heart was spinning, and I didn’t know why. Dreams scraped at the inside of my head: red snow, a man’s voice saying my name as if a curse, the snap of something that should never bend that far. I sat up, sweat cold on my spine. The sheets reeked of detergent and fear. I could not recall the face in the dream, only the sensation teeth at my throat, inevitability. I swung my legs to the floor. The wood was sticky; I’d spilled Coke last night and covered it with a sock. In the wardrobe mirror, I seemed to have borrowed cheeks too sharp and eyes older than twenty-six. The neon sign nearby buzzed LIFE INSURANCE half the letters dead. Its pink glow crept across my skin; for a moment static under my ribs responded, a low voltage hum, as if the whole world had a loose wire and I was the only one who felt it. I pressed my hand hard into my breastbone so that it stopped. Coffee. Routine. Normal things. The kettle rattled, lid missing, sending steam like a little train. I raked instant grounds with a shaking spoon. My phone had zero messages, same as the day before, the day before that. The only ones who ever texted were ghosts, with area codes I didn’t know: We’re coming. You can’t hide what you are. I stopped opening them after the third one; some doors only lead to drops. I sipped from the chipped mug that read WORLD’S OKAYEST MOM thrift-store joke, no one laughed. The coffee burned my tongue and the pain was real pain, clean, mine. The memory hit: Marcus giving me the travel-stained envelope, smile crooked, apologetic. “Hold this for me, Luce. Just a day or two.” Me trusting him, always trusting him, because love is a drug, makes you stupid. The envelope had bled ink on my fingers; hours later the men in the gray sedan had arrived, probing with silk voices and eyes like empty rooms. Marcus was gone then, apartment stripped, name most likely fake. He had used me as a dead-drop and the dead were lining up. The mug had snapped, exploded on the linoleum. Brown rivers surged to the baseboard. I looked around, freezing, waiting for the mess to punish me. When there was nothing I knelt and picked shards with my bare hands. A triangle of ceramic kissed my thumb bright blood welled, single ruby bead. I waited for the sting, for the lasting hurt of healing. Instead the blood sank back in, skin knitting in front of my gaze, no scar and no sign. The hum in my chest louder purred. I moaned, “No,” as if that could reverse what I had observed. The overhead bulb flickered, it popped, it poured fine glass on me. Darkness swallowed the kitchen. I remained on my knees, gasping through my mouth, tasting copper and dread. Doorway. Coat. Go. If I kept moving the fear couldn’t grab me. I pulled yesterday’s jeans from the chair, struggled into them, zipper biting. My sneakers stood by the door, laces already tied habit of someone who might need to run barefoot in the night. I pocketed the shredded cash: eighty-three dollars and a bus ticket to nowhere I didn’t want to go. The hallway reeked of boiled cabbage and someone’s weed. Apartment 4B’s TV blared Sunday cartoons; the kid inside laughed as I did once, because safety had once sounded like my mother humming in another room. I was walking two steps to the stairwell when the building’s breath shifted. Quiet, too quiet, like a needle lifted off a record. My skin registered movement before my ears: at the bottom of the stairs, hooded, faceless, patient. I stepped back. The shape stepped forward. Heart racing, I retreated into my flat, closed the door, tried the chain that couldn’t hold a kitten. Through peephole: empty hall. Maybe he’d never been there. Perhaps paranoia had finally put on flesh and come collecting. I had my back to the door and slid down. The radiator clanked, sudden as gunshot. I tasted iron; the cut on my thumb throbbed though completely gone. I had the hum spread fingertips, gums, behind my eyes as if something inside was testing its cage. I imagined electricity barreling along copper wire, sparks jumping gaps. If I let it out, what would it burn? Phone vibrated unknown caller. I let it ring until voicemail ate it. Then a text: 

 We felt that. Light-bulbs are such tattletales. No signature. My stomach folded in half. I tossed the phone onto the couch; it bounced, screen spider-webbing. Another bill I couldn’t pay. I needed air that tasted nothing like my own decay. Window. Fire escape. Plan. A sash groaned open; city noise swarmed in sirens, gulls, the distant lullaby of traffic. I crawled my way out, knees scraping rust. Cold pricked through my T-shirt, pleasant, grounding. The alley was down below a throat of dumpsters and shadow. I descended two rungs and looked back, and here it was: a single feather wedged between metal slats, longer than my hand, black as oil slick at midnight, tip dipped in crimson that hadn’t dried. It shone improperly, reflecting light that wasn’t there. My pulse stumbled. I picked it up. I felt like it had caught a live wire and heat surged up my arm. For an instant the world turned colors inside out too hot, bleeding sky and moon the watching eye. A loud howl rippled in the distance, wolf not dog, impossible in this city of concrete and betrayal. The hum inside me roared answer. I let the feather fall; it settled an inch above the grate, like a fly on a feather that resisted gravity, swirling slowly like a compass needle seeking north. Seeking me. Footsteps on the stair inside my building heavy, unhurried, climbing. The vibration ran through the iron rail and into my bones. They’d found me, again. I gazed at the feather, at the alley, at the roofline, where the moon hung like a hunted thing. No choices, only directions. I stuffed the feather into my pocket heat branding my thigh and swung down the ladder, rungs rattling. Halfway down to the ground, the bulb in the alley exploded too, showering me with glittering dust. Dark rushed in, friendly for once. I landed hard, knees buckling, pain blooming clean. The power sang from behind my teeth, ready, awake. I could taste blood I’d bitten on my tongue; it melted, like sugar, before I could spit. “I’m not human,” I breathed, gauging the shape of the confession. The night absorbed it, returned nothing. Somewhere above, my apartment door opened. Men said things in low calm voices, the same kind that never fought, only removed. I squatted in the dumpster shadowed by the smell of the garbage trailing around like a lover. A flashlight traversed the fire escape, beam slicing smoke. It missed me by inches, settled on the feather’s vacant grate. Silence was stretched, elastic, poised to snap. Then: sirens again, closer. The men retreated, their footsteps no longer walking with certainty. I waited until the streets of the city began to feel normal graffiti, rats, a couple screaming in the distance about money before I got up and went ahead. My legs could shake but they worked. I was walking north, not on target, just away. The feather pulsed in my pocket, my second heartbeat. I didn’t know what it was, only that it connected me to the red snow, to the howl, to the name Kael Blackthorn I had never heard but somehow knew about, and it meant shelter and storm. I stopped under a buzzing streetlamp at the corner. My reflection looked back from a dark shop window: wild hair, ringed eyes and a sharp mouth. The glass shimmered, revealing something else taller and fiercer, eyes bright with ember gold. I blinked; suddenly the scene was gone. The overhead lamp flickered once or twice before it stopped. I pulled my hood up, looked into the crowd that swayed on the streets everywhere and let the city swallow me whole again. Back there, in a place far away but not far enough behind, a wolf howled once more, as it answered the ache in my blood. The prophecy had begun to turn, and I was the next rotation.