I'm even less regular in updating this fic here than I am at AO3. For somewhat more timely updates, track my account over there, where I'm just "Roadie" without the -N60. This is the first of two chapters I'm finally updating here at once.
It's Boxing Day, 1896, and Charles wakes up to the smell of cooking sausage, and thanks the universe that the calendar has turned, it is no longer Christmas, and Sophie is back in the house.
He shaves hastily, wets his hair and combs it down, dresses, and stumbles down the stairs while tying his cravat by feel.
"G'morning, Sophie," he says, slipping into a chair at the table. "Smells wonderful."
"Thank you," Sophie says.
Charles watches her serve the sausage onto a plate, and then a pair of fried eggs, a ladleful of beans and a scone from the breadbox.
"I know most people feast on Christmas," he says, around a mouthful of scone, "But I feast every other day, when you cook."
"Flattery will get you everywhere," Sophie says, with a smile, as she begins to stack the dishes to take into the scullery.
"Helena already ate?" Charles asks.
"I assume so," Sophie calls through the scullery door, "She left as I was arriving."
"Left?" Charles asks, "We were supposed to meet this morning to talk about my upcoming meeting with our publisher."
Sophie emerges back into the kitchen, eyebrows furrowed, and says, "Well, that's unlikely. She's on her way to Paris."
The word is a string that lifts him from his chair like a puppet. "Paris?" he says. "No, Sophie, you haven't let her go to Paris, have you?"
"Well, I—"
Charles is already striding toward the hallway. "Ask Caturanga to wire notice to the authorities there."
"What? Charles, slow down and explain yourself."
Charles pauses with his scarf half-wound around his neck and looks at Sophie, because she is a brilliant woman, truly—how could she not have seen this?
"What reason would Helena have to go to Paris, Sophie?"
Her face softens, and he can see that she suddenly, very suddenly, understands. She reaches for her coat. "I'll speak to Rajinder. He'll have the authorities notified. Where are you going?"
He shrugs. "Paris."
Charles is standing on the platform, awaiting the next train to Dover, when a familiar—if unexpected—figure in a bowler hat strides up to him.
"Wolly," he says, "What are you doing here?"
"Same as you," Wolly shrugs. "Caturanga suggested that I tag along in case we needed to draw on our organization's vast influence to… find her."
The feeling that courses through Charles is both relief and new fear, because of course, he'd feared that they might not be fast enough, that she might be too far ahead, and it's even more terrifying to have that fear reaffirmed by another person who shares it.
But yes, from what he's learned, it seems the Warehouse could help them. But perhaps more importantly: it could, perhaps, protect her from the consequences of her actions, at least while she's in France.
And he realizes, now, that he's happy he won't have to be alone with her while he brings her back to England. He gets sick on the ferry, for one thing, and tries to imagine keeping track of her by himself while he's heaving over the railing.
"You don't get seasick, do you?" he asks Wolly.
"No."
Charles claps him on the shoulder. "Good man."
/
Nearly everyone gets sick on the ferries as they pitch and roll over the rough, windy waters of the English Channel. The railings are lined with men and women heaving over the side of the boat, looking pallid and green. On this boat, near the front, stand two men, one of whom has the collar of his coat turned up as though to hide from prying eyes that might notice him; one might assume, based on the neat trim of his moustache and the modern parting of his hair, that he worries that an available young woman might notice and judge him for his ailment. Behind him, another man of similar age, apparently unaffected by the tumult of the boat, wears one hat and holds another—presumably the hat of the ill man leaning over the railing—and looks out over the water as though watching for danger across the horizon.
They fade into the crowd, these two men, but they have been noticed by a dark-haired woman who also stands by the railing, but a different railing, on the opposite side of the boat and near the rear. She boarded earlier than they did, and saw them when they boarded as well; she lurked away from them, in the shadows, and then she took her spot where she is now, as far from them as she can possibly be while still being out of doors.
She gets seasick too, you see, and she has no desire to trouble the hardworking staff of the ferry company by becoming sick in the second-class indoor area where she has purchased her ticket.
One might think her an unusual woman, wearing trousers and a waistcoat, her shirt too-far unbuttoned to suggest that she is of good breeding or high morals. Now, as she stands by the outdoor railing, her trousered legs are parted, her satchel braced between them, her hands braced deep in her pockets. Her eyes are open, trained forward, always aware of the walkway from whence one of those men might approach.
One wouldn't know that the pitching and rolling of her stomach, the way her quickly-devoured breakfast of yesterday's leftover bread and butter threatens to revisit her, is not a sensation she seeks to flee but rather the focus of her concentration. She sinks into it. She embraces it as a thing that grounds her. Her back itches from healing but she does not want to heal. She wishes to suffer—to feel pain, to feel visceral discomfort, so she sinks into the nausea, she fights the urge to vomit not out of desire to maintain public propriety but rather because vomiting would alleviate her suffering, at least for a minute, and she doesn't want that. She salivates and swallows, and salivates and swallows, and hopes that if she can maintain this feeling of sickness for long enough she will be able to convince herself to remain onboard the ship at Calais, to ride it back to Dover, to return home to London without doing what she intends to do, what feels like the only thing that could ever give her wretched soul relief.
/
On land, his stomach finally beginning to settle, Charles turns to Wolly and says, "I'm terribly glad you're here, because, to be frank, I've no idea where to begin to look for her."
"The Gendarmerie Royale," Wolly says, as he steps into the road to flag a Hansom, or whatever the hell they call a carriage-for-hire in France." She took supplies from the Warehouse last night. Caturanga had just begun to survey when I left him, and he's to wire us a full list at the Gendarmerie."
"Supplies from the Warehouse. Your sodding Warehouse." Charles follows Wolcott into the cab, then reaches into his overcoat for his pipe and tobacco. "I suppose there's a limit to how much she could have carried."
Wolly huffs out a mirthless laugh. "There's a bag that Caturanga keeps in his workshop and carries on missions. It was the first thing he noticed that was gone."
"Only so many objects fit in a bag," Charles says.
"Not this bag. It will carry anything that will fit through its mouth."
Charles sucks and puffs desperately on his pipe. "Your sodding Warehouse," he growls again. "Once we have the list—what then?"
"I can only hope that the list will give us some sense of her plans, and we can move forward from there. If not, we'll go to the Commissaire near the house where… it happened. And we'll review their evidence and see if we can do a better job than they've done of identifying the killers."
Charles puffs futilely on the dregs of his pipe, then leans forward and dumps the ash out the side of the cab. "You think she's after them," he says.
"Of course, don't you?"
"Yes." He tucks the pipe back into his coat. "I simply hoped you'd think something different. That she's here to exhume Christina's body or some such thing."
"Oh, bollocks," Wolly groans.
"What?"
"Nothing. We'll have to check that, too."
Outside the Commissaire, Wolly pulls a small cloth purse from his pocket and empties it into his palm: two small brass objects tumble out. Charles watches him pick one up and flip a tiny switch on its end; it begins to writhe and wriggle like a worm on a fish-hook. Charles watches, transfixed, as Wolly tips his head to the side and eases the wriggling contraption into his ear, grimacing fiercely.
"What the devil—"
"Here," Wolly says, holding out the second device. "Babelfish. Feels like a demon working its way in, but you'll be able to speak and understand any language for as long as it's in there."
Charles takes the device and squints at it. "So that's how she did it," he says.
"It's also why she had that devil of a migraine for three days after she got home," Wolly says. "Consider yourself warned. Don't take it out until you're prepared to spend several days bedridden."
"I don't expect I'll be taking it out until you explain to me how to remove it," Charles says. With nervous fingers, he flips the switch on the end of the device, then does his best to mimic what Wolly had done, tipping his head to the side and letting the gadget worm its way in. It feels, as promised, absolutely atrocious, as though someone had tied a string to both eardrums and was pulling them in toward the center of his skull, the sound in his head like the high-pitched whine of a radio being tuned. Then, with a silent pop, everything clears.
"Très bien. Allons-y?" he says, and then claps his fingers over his mouth in surprise.
Wolly grins. "Yes, let's go," he replies.
/
Amélie Duprés is proud of the venue she maintains a short distance from the Tuileries. Hiding in plain sight, she thinks: nobody cares about the high-class Madame who operates in the shadow of the desperate wretches of the Tuileries. Her business is exclusive; one must first know where it is to have access, and that alone filters anyone without the appropriate connections.
She's running her accounts in the early evening, before her client for the night has arrived, when her assistant knocks on the door to her office. "Il-y-a… quelqu'un… qui veut de votre temps, Madame." There's… someone… who wants time with you, Madame.
Amélie sighs, and cracks her neck. "Je n'ai rien sur mon calendrier avant la soirée," she says. "Dites-lui qu'il a besoin d'un rendez-vous pour un moment avec la Madame." I have nothing on my calendar before tonight. Tell him he'll need an appointment for a moment with the Madame.
She is not impressed, not pleased at all, when her assistant hovers nervously in the doorway, smoothing her bodice unnecessarily. "Quoi?" she ?
"C'est une femme, Madame."
Amélie pauses at that. A woman is a rare visitor indeed.
The assistant continues, "Envoyée par la Damme Berkley a Londres, dit-elle," She was sent by the Lady Berkley in London, she says.
The woman waiting in the foyer has the air of a frightened mouse as she stands opposite Amélie. No, not a mouse: a fox, cornered by hounds, looking for a way to escape.
"Qu'est-ce que vous voulez, chérie?" Amélie asks. What is it you want, dearest?
"Un peu… un peu de soulagement, s'il-vous plait, Mme. Duprés," she replies. A little relief, please.
Amélie steps closer. She is bizarrely-attired, this young woman, as though clothes for a man have been modified and adapted to flatter a female body; she straightens, doesn't shrink, under the Madame's stiff glare.
Amélie appreciates that resolve. "Du soulagement," she echoes. "Le soulagement n'est pas ce que vous recevrez ici, avec moi." Relief is not what you'd receive here, with me."
The young woman straightens further, squares her shoulders, and meets her Madame's gaze with an edge of insolence. "C'est dans la souffrance que je trouve mon soulagement, Madame." It's in suffering that I find my relief, Madame.
Amélie catches the young woman's chin between her thumb and forefinger; turns it right, then left. The girl's eyes cast down and to the side and Amélie appreciates this show of deference, but she can also feel the tension in that jaw, the tremble in the body. She glances down and sees the girl's tightened fists at her sides.
She sighs and steps back. "Non."
The young woman's eyes widen, a mix of surprise and anger, and she says, "Non? Pourquoi non?"
Why 'no,' indeed?
"Ma fille," Amélie says, with a sigh. She steps around to the opposite side of the dark wooden reception desk. "Les gens qui viennent me voir sont ceux qui trouvent leur plaisir dans las douleur." My girl, the people who come to see me are those who find their pleasure in pain.
"Mais oui! C'est la raison que je vous ai retrouvée!" Well, yes! That's why I found you! She's animated now, and Amélie can see the loose strands of her hair falling from her bun as she gesticulates, a little too wildly, under the lamp. "S'il vous plaît, je suis – je ne peux pas l'expliquer, mais j'ai tellement de besoin… si vous ne m'aiderez pas, je ne sais pas… j'ai peur que—" Please, I am—I can't explain it, but I have such a need for… if you don't help me, I don't know, I'm afraid that—"
"C'est assez!" Amélie holds up a hand. Enough! "Je vends la douleur et la soumission comme plaisir, mais vous ne demandez pas le plaisir. Vous voulez, il me paraît, m'utilizer comme instrument dans votre automutilation. Je vends la douleur, mais ce que vous me demandez, c'est la violence, et ça je ne le vends pas." I sell pain and submission as pleasure, but you're not asking for pleasure. You want, it seems to me, to use me as a tool in your self-harm. I sell pain, but what you're asking for is violence, and that, I don't sell."
Amélie will not go to bed that night thinking about limits and tipping points. She will spare a thought for the aggrieved woman she sent back out into the dusk, carrying an unfashionable satchel, but it will be a slight thought, a wonder about what would drive someone so young to such desperate and miserable lengths. She will not know that the woman will wander into the Tuileries and find an empty bench where she will sit and watch her hands shake. She will rub them nervously over her knees, and then she will pinch herself, scratch at the insides of her wrists. She will want to cry; she will be desperate to sob but she won't do it here, in the middle of a park before the dark is thick enough to grant her privacy.
So she will sit. She will remember the breathing exercises taught her by her Kempo master, when she was a child (was she ever a child, truly?). Then she will bend down, open the bag, and reach too deeply into it, her arm vanishing up to the shoulder. It will emerge with a telescope. She will smile darkly, and stand, and hold that telescope to her eye, and she will rotate her body slowly, until she will stop, jerkily, like the gears of a clock suddenly jammed. Then she will lower the telescope, smile, and begin to walk out of the park.
For their next date, Gabi shows up at Myka's apartment with a full grocery bag. "I hope you like Mexican food. Actually, I don't even care if you do or not, because my grandmother's enchilada recipe is good enough to change your mind."
She unpacks all the ingredients onto the counter, and then, from the bottom of the bag, pulls something else; she tosses it to Myka. "No pressure if that's not your thing. Just thought I'd bring it, in case."
It's an embroidered zippered pouch; the kind you could get for two dollars at most of the gift shops in Chinatown back in DC. Inside: rolling papers, a lighter, a dimebag of weed.
"Well, I'm not law enforcement anymore," Myka laughs. She zips the pouch closed again and sets it on the counter. "We'll see."
The enchiladas are, as promised, blow-your-mind delicious.
"God," Myka says, without thinking, "my friend Pete would drop to one knee and propose marriage after one bite of this."
"Mmm, that's nice and all, but I'm pretty sure your friend Pete isn't my type," Gabi jokes. Then: "I think this is the first time you've mentioned a friend to me. Who's Pete?"
Myka stiffens. She shrugs and does her best to look nonchalant. "My old service partner," she says. "We're not in touch anymore, really."
Myka tries hard to relax again after that. She really, really does, but it's the second time she's spoken about Pete since she left South Dakota and the first time she's been the one to bring him up, and now it feels like he's all she can think about.
"You okay?" Gabi asks as they stack dishes into the dishwasher together. "You're, like, a thousand miles away."
"Yeah," Myka says. "Just—memory lane." She reaches across the counter and picks up the little zippered pouch. "You know, it might be a good day for a little of this, after all."
Myka has smoked weed exactly three times before. Well, technically, smoked it twice, and eaten it once in a cookie. All of them were in her freshman year of college, when her life was about 80% academics and 20% rebelling against her father, but when she decided she wanted to get into graduate school, she decided to call off the behavior that could land her with a record.
Together, she and Gabi open the window and shuttle the sofa to the floor right beneath it. Gabi rolls and lights the joint with practiced fingers and they pass it back and forth. Myka takes subtle pleasure in pressing her lips where Gabi's have just been.
"Never woulda guessed I'd ever date a cop," Gabi says, with a small laugh, before blowing a thin stream of smoke out the window.
"I was never a cop," Myka says.
Gabi shrugs. "'Law enforcement,' whatever. Secret service is even crazier than being a cop. You ever meet the president?"
"Oh yeah," Myka says. She holds up her hand, index and middle fingers crossed. "We're like this." She looks at her own hand and imagines herself and the president actually like that, twisted around each other like deformed carrots, and then she's thinking about deformed carrots, and she's giggling, just a little, and then harder, and harder, and she looks past her fingers and now Gabi is giggling too and neither of them can stop.
"Please don't tell me there was any, like, Monica Lewinski type—"
"No! No." Myka is still giggling so hard she can barely get the words out. "God, even if I'd wanted to, I would have been fired so fast."
Gabi grins. "Good," she says. She reaches over and drops the butt of the burned-out joint onto the bit of tin foil they've put on the table.
"Good?" Myka sputters, indignantly. "Are you saying you'd be judging me for sleeping with the presi…"
Myka trails off because Gabi is slipping closer to her on the couch. Myka's mouth is dry and she's craving flavor, taste, something, and the closer Gabi gets the more Myka is pretty sure that Gabi is really, perfectly, exactly what she wants.
"No," Gabi says and she is as sleek and dark-eyed and sexily predatory as a tiger. "I'm saying I don't want that picture in my head when I do this."
There it is, Gabi's mouth, Gabi's tongue, with Myka's mouth, Myka's tongue. Myka lies back on the couch under the warm weight of it, pulling Gabi against her. She's sort of high and having a hard time parsing the familiar from the strange in the warmth of Gabi's body against her own, the way it's hard but rounded and smaller than she's used to feeling. She likes it, though, she likes all of it, likes the way Gabi's fingers move against her face and neck and arms, she really likes the way Gabi's thigh feels between hers, and they're both wearing jeans but it's summer, it's summer and Myka wishes they were wearing shorts so that she could feel skin against the skin of her legs. She wants to find skin so she slips her fingers under the hem of Gabi's shirt, curls them against Gabi's back and Gabi makes a pleased sound and arches like a cat.
She wants more. Myka wants more, she wants Gabi's hands on her own skin. She slips one of her hands out and fumbles for Gabi's wrist, tries to coax Gabi's touch to where she wants it. But Gabi twists her hand free and quietly breathes "no" into Myka's ear.
Myka laughs. "What do you mean, 'no'? You got to second base in the car last time."
Gabi laughs breathily between kisses. "You're adorable," she says. "But you're also really high."
Myka stops. She pulls back. "Oh god," she says, "am I acting really high?"
Gabi quirks a small smile. "I mean…"
"Why aren't you acting high? We both smoked!" Myka is pushing her hair back from her face, trying to decide whether to glare at Gabi's knowing face or to turn away from it, to hide the incredibly embarrassing flush of her cheeks and dilation of her pupils. She shifts further away, to the opposite side of the couch.
"I smoke, like, every day, Myka. My tolerance is… stupid, to be honest."
"Oh god, oh god…" Myka swallows. "I'm such an idiot. I feel like such an idiot right now." She drops her head into her hands.
Gabi sits up and straightens her shirt before scooting closer to Myka. "You're not an idiot."
"I am," Myka says despondently. "We were having a great night and it could have turned into an even better night but I went and got…" she pauses, and then starts to giggle, "I got so stoned and now you think I'm an idiot, and I was totally ready to go further with you."
Gabi laughs. She's rubbing Myka's back, up and down along her spine. "Third base this time? Because I might be about to decide that this nobility shtick I'm pulling right now is totally misguided if that means I get some topless action tonight."
Myka makes a half-laughing, half-crying sound and backhands Gabi lightly on the knee. "Don't make fun. I'm having, I'm having a moment here. You think I'm an idiot."
"I don't."
"You do. And I am an idiot. I'm an idiot for Pete, and I'm even more of an idiot for Claudia, and for—for—"
"Listen to these names pouring out of you." Gabi scoots closer again and wraps her arm around Myka, pulling her into her side.
Myka groans. "You should probably go. I'm making an ass of myself."
"No can do, Chiquita," Gabi says, with a chuckle. "You aren't used to this and I'm getting the vibe that you tend toward the paranoid type of stoned, so I'm staying right here until you sober up."
Myka sighs and lets herself sag against Gabi's shoulder. Gabi makes a small, comforting sound and brings Myka with her as she stretches out along the sofa, her head settling on the armrest.
"Why don't you tell me what happened with this Pete guy?"
"It's so completely idiotic."
"I really doubt that."
Myka looks up at Gabi through the corner of her eye. Gabi isn't looking at her, she's looking up, at the ceiling, and her hand is warm and firm at the small of her back. And Myka starts to talk.
/
Pete feels like a bit of a dick for the way he's treating this Steve guy, but somehow he can't help it.
Like, there's a lot about Steve that's annoying. He's uptight. Gets pretty pissy pretty easily for a guy who calls himself Buddhist. But he's smart and (apparently) reliable and if Pete's honest about it, he's going to make a great Agent once he gets his sea legs.
Maybe if he'd start, like, wearing a curly wig and skinny jeans and a close shave or something, Pete might be able to figure out how to stop resenting everything about his presence.
/
Myka wakes up cotton-mouthed and groggy on top of her made bed, under a throw blanket, still wearing her clothes from the night before. It takes a minute (or three) of blinking before she remembers the previous night, of pouring her heart out to Gabi on the couch downstairs, of Gabi listening quietly and rubbing her back, and at the end, when she felt way more tired than she should have after just lying still and talking, Gabi had taken her upstairs and, apparently, put her to bed.
She's relieved to find that she does remember the conversation, and that, while she'd been a little loose-lipped, she hadn't divulged anything dangerous or confidential.
Myka rolls onto her stomach and groans into her pillow. Hell of an impression, Bering.
She stumbles to her feet and looks down over the edge of the loft to see Gabi sleeping flopped down on the sofa. The sight fills her with both relief and dread: she has to face her again, but perhaps she can do something to repair her image.
It'll start with breakfast. She tiptoes down the stairs and across the living room as quietly as she can. She starts with the coffee pot, and then in the fridge she finds eggs and—thank you Kevin for your purchasing habits, thank you Tracy for your concern for your husband's cholesterol—bacon.
The bacon sizzles so loudly that Myka doesn't hear the sofa groan and the floors creak when Gabi gets up. She turns around to pull the milk from the fridge and jumps about ten feet in the air to be met with the face of a groggy Gabi, hair cowlicked from her night on the couch, sitting at the breakfast bar.
"Hey," Gabi smiles.
"Hey yourself," Myka says, with a smile. She begins to lean across the counter for a kiss but Gabi turns her head just slightly away.
Myka forces a smile. Morning breath, she tells herself. "I hope you like eggs and bacon?"
"God yes," Gabi replies.
Gabi sits quietly, sipping her coffee, while Myka transfers the bacon onto a plate and then cleans out the frying pan before scrambling the eggs. The quiet between them starts as comfortable shared silence, but as they sit side-by-side and eat their breakfasts it stretches into something tense, prepared to snap.
"Do you want to have a shower?" Myka asks, eventually. "I've got some jeans I wear with heels that you could probably wear with your flats if you want to borrow clean clothes."
Gabi picks up her mug to sip at her coffee again, and that's how Myka knows she's nervous: the cup has been empty for a few minutes.
"Do you want more coffee? I can make more," Myka says, but as she begins to stand from her barstool Gabi stops her with a hand on her forearm. Myka freezes.
"Listen, Myka," Gabi says.
The stool's pleather seat squeaks a little as Myka sinks back down on it. She swallows a sigh: she knows where this is about to go.
Gabi takes a breath. "I think you're really great, but…"
Myka sighs and tips her forehead into her hands, elbows braced on the counter. "I screwed up, didn't I."
"No, no—"
Myka rolls her head just enough to the side to shoot Gabi a narrowed sidelong glance.
Gabi smiles a little, acquiescent. "Okay. Maybe a little."
Myka groans and tips her eyes back down again. "Okay."
Gabi turns toward Myka, propping her elbow on the counter. "Look, Myka, I'm not the kind of lesbian to have a problem dating a bi girl, and I'm not afraid to be with someone who hasn't been with a girl before. You're into me, I'm into you, then as far as I'm concerned, we're good."
Myka sighs. "But?"
"But I've got a hard line when it comes to… certain kinds of baggage."
And now Myka's confused, because she knows she hasn't talked about Sam. Because the Warehouse is her most recent baggage, but Sam—the so-very-mundane shooting that she couldn't manage to stop—is still her heaviest. "What do you mean?" she asks.
"This Pete guy," Gabi says.
Myka bolts upright. "Pete? Oh my God, Gabi, Pete and I are so not like that. Never, ever like that."
Gabi shakes her head, a touch of sadness—no, condescension?—in her eyes. "You should hear yourself talk about him."
"I did hear myself talk about him. I heard every word I said. I—okay. I can't believe I'm going to say this but I do love Pete, but I swear to God, if you ever meet him, you can never tell him I said that. I love Pete a lot but I can say with about a thousand percent certainty that kissing him would basically be like kissing my brother."
Gabi is still shaking her head but now she's laughing, quietly, breathily. "Methinks the lady doth protest too much," she says.
Myka throws her head back and groans again, louder this time. "Have you been talking to my sister? Because that is exactly what she said. To the word."
"Based on what you've said about her, I'm pretty sure the only way I might ever have met your sister would have been if she sold me a book sometime," Gabi says.
"Well, you'd probably get along. Apparently." Myka presses her fingertips into her eyes. "So this is… you've really made up your mind?"
"I have," Gabi says. "I'm sorry."
Myka takes a deep breath and stands up. She picks up her empty plate and reaches for Gabi's. "It's fine," she says.
"I'd like to be friends," Gabi offers as Myka loads the plates into the dishwasher. "Could we—could we maybe try that?"
Myka stands back up and turns around. "Friends," she says. "Sure."
They part ways with promises to be in touch later, make plans for beers or something.
After Gabi leaves, Myka cleans the kitchen. She takes a shower, dresses in clean clothes, and starts a load of laundry. Then she goes to her laptop, logs on to OkCupid, and disables her profile.
She flops onto the sofa—the guilty sofa, still pressed up against the wall under the window—and opens the contacts screen on her phone. She scrolls down to Helena's number. It's pretty far down her "frequent contacts" list now. They more or less stopped texting when Helena moved into the B&B. When they did, it was often between one part of the Warehouse and another: "I'm taking an inventory break and making coffee. Want some?" or "I'm driving home in 30 minutes if you want to ride with me," or "Could use your thoughts on this report—come to the office for a few mins?"
The more substantive messages, the ones where they complained to one another about the irritations of daily life, or shared brief moments of happiness, were so long ago at this point that Myka's phone has long since deleted them.
She thinks about texting Helena now. She wonders who has the number that used to be Helena's. She knows that the Helena she misses, in this moment, is not the real Helena, the one who is probably bronzed again, but the old one, the imaginary one, who managed to convince Myka that a friend—a tether, a person to ease the transition into this new world—was all she sought from her.
Myka navigates away from that contact screen and drops the phone onto her stomach.
Over the next few days and weeks, Myka intends, over and over again, to invite Gabi for a hike or a drink or a coffee, just to hang out. But she can't quite bring herself to press the call button, or to hit "send" on those texts.
Gabi apparently can't either.