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"This is a first-edition paperback," he said.

"It is."

"This version has been out of print for—" He stopped. He looked up at Antonio. "Where did you find this?"

"I have sources."

"You have sources for rare horror paperbacks?"

"I'm a horror writer, Hakeem. Sources are an occupational requirement."

Hakeem looked back at the cover. Burnt Offerings. A family rents a house for the summer, and the house feeds on them to restore itself. It was one of the great haunted-house novels—a book that understood, long before Toni Sanchez wrote a word, that the most terrifying thing a house could do was make you want to stay while it was taking you apart.

"You listened," Hakeem said quietly.

"I always listen."

"I know that now." He turned the book over again, running his thumb along the cracked spine. "This is… this is really thoughtful."

"There's something else."

Antonio reached behind him to the counter and picked up a folded piece of paper. It was a single sheet, slightly creased, with text on one side—the dense, formatted look of a manuscript page. Antonio hesitated for a breath before offering it.

"This is from the new book," he said. "A scene you haven't read."

Hakeem took the page. He could feel the weight of the gesture before he read a word—Antonio handing him a piece of the manuscript voluntarily, after everything that had happened around his drawer and the theory Hakeem had built from fragments he'd stolen.

He read it.

The scene was short. A man in the house at dawn, standing in his living room, aware that someone upstairs was awake and moving. This scene was different from the pages Hakeem had read in the drawer. This watching was not ambiguous or coded as danger or surveillance. The man was listening to the house the way you listen to a place that holds someone you love—with attention that had stopped pretending to be anything other than what it was.

Hakeem's eyes stung.

"Is this me?" he asked.

"It's a character."

"It's me. And you know it's me."

Antonio looked at him with an expression that wore no disguise.

"It's the version of you I see," Antonio said. "Which is not the same thing, but it's close."

Hakeem set the page on the counter with care, as if it were something that could bruise. Then he kissed Antonio with a familiarity that surprised both of them; brief, warm, and specific.

"Thank you," he said, smiling against Antonio's lips.

"You're welcome."

"I'm keeping the page."

"I assumed you would."

The Last Cue was in full evening mode by the time Hakeem arrived for his shift. Red bulbs and the dining area scented with manufactured dread and expensive mezcal. Layla was behind the bar in a black tank top with FINAL GIRL printed across the chest in dripping white letters, which he knew she made, and Hakeem respected her commitment to slightly hideous, homemade art.

She saw him come in and pointed at him with a bottle of tequila. "Birthday boy!"

"Please don't," Hakeem groaned, but it was affectionate.