Page 103 of Wells

"Cera."

My voice comes out flat. I press my palm against the door and lean closer.

"Cera, I know you're home."

Still nothing.

My chest tightens, the calm I've been holding fraying at the edges. I picture her on the other side of the door, collapsed on the floor, unable to reach the handle.

I knock a third time, loud enough that the sound echoes down the hall.

"If you can hear me, you need to open the door." My voice drops lower, steady except where it shakes at the base. "I'm not leaving. If you don't answer, I'm kicking it down."

I'm not trying to scare her. I'm trying to reach her, to make sure she's okay.

The door finally opens.

Cera stands in the gap, one hand gripping the edge of the frame. Her face is swollen, her skin blotchy from crying.

I've never seen her like this.

Relief comes first again, just for a second. She's standing, breathing. Then the dread lands right behind it, sharp. Something happened.

My eyes move over her, scanning for injury, bruises, anything visible. Her arms are bare. No marks. Her posture is stiff but steady. She is not holding herself like someone in pain.

I look past her into the apartment, through the narrow opening the door allows. The living room is dim, the blinds drawn. A single lamp glows in the corner. I search for movement, for someone else in the room, for anything that tells me what did this to her.

Nothing.

She's alone. My gaze snaps back to her face.

Her brown eyes are red along the edges, and the way she looks at me tells me the warmth is gone. There is no relief, no pull toward me for comfort.

She looks at me the way you look at a stranger who showed up at your door uninvited.

My brain scrambles for an explanation. Locke. Something happened after I left this morning. He went back to the hospital. He died. That would explain this. That would explain why she is standing here, wrecked and unable to find words.

"Cera, I've been so worried. What's wrong? What happened?"

She doesn't answer me at first. Then she licks her lips and tilts her head, and I know immediately this isn't about anyone else. I've done something. I've upset her.

"I think you should go, Wells."

The first thing that rises in me is anger. How dare she treat me like this, disappear without a word, and only answer the door after a threat. But I know the anger is a cover for the fear under it, the sheer terror of what's happening.

"Why did you ghost me like that, Cera? What did I do?"

"Why did you ghost me like that, Midnight?"

The minute that word leaves her mouth, I know it's over. I know nothing I say will fix this.

TWENTY-FIVE

Cera

Ash Wednesday: The morning after the revelry, the faithful are marked with ash and told to remember they are dust, the city turning from indulgence to reckoning overnight. She scrubs the last of the disguise down the drain and counts what the lie cost her, again.

Some cold part of me that has been holding it together all day takes satisfaction in watching it finally land on him. His shoulders go rigid. His eyes search my face for something he won't find there.