Steve has taken over her former room while she was away, and Myka is fine with it too. He has politely asked her if she wanted to get her room back, but she has declined, ensuring him it would be stupid and cumbersome for them both to switch again. No, she's moved in H.G's old room instead. The betrayal was still stinging when she put her suitcase down in the room Wells had lived in. Myka had raised her chin. Here she was, invading this sanctuary, breathing the air Helena had tainted with her hatred and villainous mind. She was purifying this place again, somehow. The old woman's stuff had been stored in boxes, but not put away. The boxes had been left there, as if no one had known what to do with them. As if it was merely temporary.
And it was temporary after all, as Myka has helped herself. She is purifying the place, yes, but she cannot bear to erase all traces of H.G Wells from this room, for not all of her is evil and needs to be purified. Deep inside, Myka knows that. So she's placed Helena's books back on the shelves alongside her own. The boxes behind the door still contain most of her clothes, that's all. Little by little, Myka has unpacked the rest of the other woman's belongings. There's not a lot of things, really. When she thinks about it, drawing a list of H.G's things, Myka can't help but feel that she had not planned to stay long, and that hurts. It hurts even more when she thinks she should have seen it coming.
To be honest, she doesn't know if she is purifying this room or getting poisoned. More and more, she notices small changes in her own behavior. It's not as if she had the irresistible nagging wish to trigger an ice age or kill people. She nearly wishes it was something like that. No it's more vicious – She cannot admit it to herself, but she is falling for the very woman who betrayed her trust, her admiration, her friendship. She's clinging to the smallest traces of her, anything at all that would prove she's still there in this room. For weeks, Myka has flipped through the pages of H.G's books, chasing the lingering warmth of her delicate fingers.
One night, while she was turning her pillow to rest her cheek on its cold side, her nose had caught the familiar scent of Helena's shampoo, still trapped under the pillow case, safely nestled between the goose feathers. She had slept so peacefully after this discovery that she had given in and adopted the shameful habit of dripping small quantities of H.G's perfume on the damn pillow whenever the smell of her vanished.
And soon enough, this habit is only a drop in the bucket, as she more or less consciously steps into a routine made of small rituals. Rituals that the other inhabitants of the B&B have learned to ignore, just like they choose to ignore that the shawl she wears on cold days is not hers.