Chapter 3: Dinner of Vipers

He had full access to this account. So I opened a different bank's app, one I had never used, set up a new account with my own ID, and moved every cent I could.

It took twelve minutes and two verification codes. When it was done, the old account held exactly twelve dollars and sixty cents.

I looked at that number and thought, Keep it, Garrick. Buy yourself a sandwich.

It felt strange, how quickly my hands knew what to do.

In my first life, I had spent six years believing I was bad with money, because that was what everyone told me.

But I had run shipments across three states. I had balanced budgets for entire warehouses. I had simply never been allowed to apply any of it to myself

I was good at this. I had always been good at this. Nobody had ever told me, because it had been so much more convenient for them if I didn't know.

It was nearly eleven when I finally stopped, my coffee cold, my phone full of proof.

I sat there in the quiet kitchen, listening to the refrigerator hum, and for the first time since I woke up, the panic loosened enough for me to feel something else underneath it. Something steady.

And that was when I heard it.

A soft, clear chime. Not from the phone. Not from the room.

From inside my head.

The kitchen disappeared.

I was standing in a small white room, no walls, no ceiling, nothing but pale light and a faint, strange chill, like breath on a window.

In the air in front of me, plain letters hung like frost:

STORAGE SPACE: 1 m³

Status: Active

Capacity upgrades require earned income.

First condition: earn $500 within 7 days, or the space will seal.

I blinked, and the kitchen came back. My coffee mug was still in my hand.

"No," I whispered. "No, no, no. I'm not losing it. I'm not."

But I tried anyway. I held the mug out and thought in, and it vanished from my fingers, no sound, no flash.

My heart stopped.

I thought out, and the mug was back in my hand, still warm, and a little colder at the base than it should have been.

I stared at it, my pulse roaring.

A pocket of space. A deadline. And a chill that did not belong to any ordinary room.

I looked at the clock on the stove.

Eleven forty one.

Seven days to earn five hundred dollars. And dinner at seven o'clock tonight.

I put down the mug, picked up my phone, and started to plan.

I wore the blue dress.

Not because Winnifred liked it. Because I wanted her to relax.

People who think they've already won stop paying attention to the details, and the details were exactly what I needed.

I stood in front of the bedroom mirror for a full minute before I went to the kitchen.

The dress hugged me in all the places Winnifred believed it shouldn't, and I turned slowly, one way and then the other, and looked. Soft arms.

Full hips. A neck I had always liked and never been told to. A woman who had survived a death and walked out the other side.

You're not here to be small tonight, I told her. You're here to be useful. To yourself.

Then I went to cook the lemon chicken Winnifred pretended not to love.

By six-thirty, the apartment smelled like lemon and garlic and roasted chicken.

The table was set with the good china. In the middle of it all, tucked inside the fruit bowl behind a pyramid of oranges, was my old phone, its screen dark and its recorder running.

A second phone, my real one, sat inside my napkin pocket beside my plate, recording as well. I wasn't taking any chances.

Garrick came home at six-fifty with flowers. Gas-station roses, a little wilted.

"For my girl," he said, and kissed my cheek. "You look beautiful."

Liar, I thought, and smiled. "Thank you."

Winnifred Hale arrived at seven o'clock exactly. Silver hair in a perfect bob, pearls at her throat, a leather folder tucked under one arm.

She looked at me the way you look at a dish you didn't order.

"Odessa." She air kissed both of my cheeks without touching them. "That's a brave color on you, dear."

"Thank you, Winnifred." I took her coat. "I love bravery."

Garrick coughed into his fist to hide his laugh. His mother's eyes narrowed, just slightly, and then she let it pass.

She did a slow lap of my living room before she sat, trailing one gloved finger along the bookshelf like a health inspector.

"You really ought to replace those curtains, dear. They're so... homemade." She glanced at the crack in the ceiling.

"And that. Honestly, Garrick, I don't know how you live like this."

"It's temporary, Mom," Garrick said, and gave me a smile that made my skin crawl.

Temporary. Of course it was.

We sat. I served the chicken.

I gave myself a generous portion, and I watched Winnifred's gaze drop to my plate and rise again, and I kept eating without a flicker.

"Delicious," she said, after one bite. "Though perhaps a smaller portion next time, Odessa. Garrick's colleagues are so health-conscious these days. It reflects on him."

"Mm," I said, and took a second helping of potatoes.

Garrick topped up my wineglass without asking. "Relax, babe," he said, in a voice like warm honey. "You look tense."

I smiled and let the glass sit untouched.

That small white pill in my handbag had taught me to wonder what else I had been served, over the years, with a gentle voice and a kind smile.

She let a long silence go by. Then she laid her fork down and reached for the leather folder.

"Now. A little housekeeping."

Here it came.

"You know that Garrick and I have always worried about you," Winnifred said gently, in the voice of a woman reading a bedtime story.

"You work so hard. You've never had a head for numbers. We would simply like to take some of the burden off you."

She slid two documents across the table. The top one was a quitclaim deed, with my apartment's address printed across the front.

The second was labeled Durable Power of Attorney.

"The apartment will go into the Hale Family Trust," she went on.

"Purely for liability reasons. And the power of attorney simply lets Garrick manage the investment account on your behalf, so you never have to worry."

I looked at the papers. I looked at her face. I thought, You haven't even bothered to hide it. You really believe I'm that stupid.

And the worst part was that, in my first life, she had been right.

I had sat at this very table, in this very chair, in this very dress, and I had picked up that very pen.