Day 7 — Night 1/2

Van stood beneath the gallery awning and tried to recover whatever dignity he had abandoned inside.

The waterfront had grown quieter while they were in the exhibition. Most of the shops were still open, their windows spilling amber light across the boardwalk, but the traffic had thinned. Somewhere farther along the shore, music drifted from a restaurant. Waves worked against the pilings beneath him.

Van concentrated on those.

Water. Wind. Music.

Things that did not require him to explain why he had fled from a marble woman.

He rubbed both palms across his face.

The gallery door opened behind him.

Van lowered his hands as Katherine stepped outside and let the door close. She crossed the few steps between them without glancing back toward Jessica or the exhibition.

“Ready?”

Van had prepared three different versions of an apology while waiting. None survived the question.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Katherine slipped one arm through his. “Walk with me.”

He looked at her, waiting for the question that did not come.

They started along the boardwalk.

For several minutes neither of them spoke. Katherine did not ask what had bothered him, whether Jessica’s sculpture had reminded him of something, or why a man who could stand in front of Alters had been defeated by an art exhibition. She simply matched his pace and stayed beside him.

Van had underestimated how much he would appreciate that.

The shops slowly gave way to landscaped paths and buildings belonging more obviously to the Hotel. The salt smell weakened as they moved away from the artificial waterfront.

Van glanced toward Katherine. “How’s the dossier going?”

Her head turned. “That is a surprisingly dangerous question.”

“I was just asking if you found it.”

“I know.” She adjusted her hand where it rested against his forearm. “But Dossiers has a failure condition. I have to retrieve it alone. If another contestant or the Master meaningfully helps me, the attempt fails.”

Van frowned. “Meaningfully according to who?”

“The System.”

“That sounds helpful.”

“It is wonderfully precise.”

“So if I say something by accident—”

“I don’t know.” Katherine kept walking. “Telling me you passed a locked door might be harmless. Telling me you passed a locked door beside a room I was considering might count as assistance. You could make an observation with no idea it mattered.”

“And then you fail.”

“Possibly.”

Van nodded. “Then I’m going to stop talking about it.”

“A wise policy.”

“Good luck, though.”

Katherine considered that. “I think encouragement remains legal.”

“Good.”

They continued walking. A pair of functional inhabitants passed them in the opposite direction, engaged in a conversation neither Van nor Katherine could quite hear. Katherine shifted closer to give them room without releasing his arm.

Van had become more accustomed to the contact over the course of the evening. Not good at it, just better.

The path bent around a low stone wall. Beyond it, the Hotel campus spread under a dark sky, windows lit here and there across the buildings.

Katherine looked ahead. “I have a safer question.”

“That wording makes me nervous.”

“It shouldn’t.” She smiled. “The girls have been comparing notes.”

“Oh, God.”

“Just about the Master Suite.”

Van relaxed slightly. “Oh.”

“The rooms change for every bond assignment. Different furniture, different atmosphere, different little narrative the Hotel is trying to create.” Katherine glanced toward him. “Which one did you like best?”

Van’s steps slowed by half a beat.

Katherine caught it. “No you don’t.”

“What?”

“I am not asking which date you liked best through proxy.” Katherine gave his arm a small squeeze. “I am genuinely asking about the rooms.”

Van tried to answer. That turned out to be harder than expected.

Claire’s suite had been bright and relentlessly romantic. The kind that belonged to a version of a relationship Van had only seen on television. Lizzy’s suite was a college student’s dream dorm. Naomi’s was close, dark, and a quiet kind of intimate. Cassie’s room had turned friendship into a pillow fight despite the Hotel clearly wanting something else.

Each one had been nicer than anywhere he had lived in years.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

Katherine waited.

Van frowned. “They all felt forced.”

Her brows lifted.

“I don’t mean bad. The Hotel picks an idea and then leans on it. Claire gets this romantic teenager version of a date. Lizzy gets a carnival. Naomi gets something designed around making everything feel controlled.”

“And Cassie?”

“Pillows.”

Katherine laughed.

“I’m serious. That room wanted something from us too. We were just bad at cooperating.”

“That may be why she enjoyed it.”

“Probably.”

Van thought about the question again. “The weird thing is, there was always something that didn’t feel forced.”

“Some part of the room would just feel normal. I wouldn’t really notice it at the time. Then the next day the Suite changes again and I realize there was one chair, or one lamp, or the way the kitchen was set up that didn’t feel like part of the performance.”

She nodded to herself as he spoke. “You preferred the ordinary parts.”

“I think so.” Van shook his head. “But if you put all the versions in front of me right now and asked me to point at the pieces, I’d probably get half of them wrong.”

Katherine gave that more thought than the question deserved. They crossed beneath a line of low lamps. Her shadow stretched beside his across the path, shorter now than it had been that afternoon.

“I understand that,” she said after consideration.

“I’ve lived in a great many places. Apartments. Hotels. Safehouses. Embassy housing. Rented houses under names that belonged to women who never existed. One extremely unpleasant basement in Prague that a handler insisted qualified as a residence because it contained a mattress.”

Van smiled. “That sounds like an optimistic description.”

“He was always an optimist,” she agreed easily.

“I always treated them as temporary. Even the places where I stayed for years. There was no point becoming sentimental about furniture I might abandon with six hours’ notice.”

“Did you?”

“Become sentimental?”

He nodded.

Katherine opened her mouth to dismiss the idea, then reconsidered. “There was a balcony in Lisbon. It faced the wrong direction. Almost no direct sunlight. The building opposite was ugly enough that I once seriously considered buying curtains to block the view.”

“That seems excessive.”

She smiled to herself. “But there was a bakery downstairs. Every morning the whole building smelled like bread before the traffic started.”

“I had a kitchen in Vienna that was too narrow for two people to pass each other. I hated it while I lived there.” Her smile returned faintly. “I miss the blue tile.”

Van looked across the campus. “Maybe when this is over, you can get one on purpose.”

“One what?”

“A place you actually like.”

Katherine glanced toward him.

“When the Architect is dead and everything isn’t…” Van gestured broadly at existence. “This.”

“Very specific.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.”

He thought of her statue comment. “And maybe somewhere near your own statue.”

Katherine’s stride shortened for one step.

Van’s smile widened as he continued, “Then you can complain when tourists come to look at it.”

She laughed with derision, “That is your vision for my retirement?”

“You, sitting in a café near your own statue complaining about the tourists.”

Katherine looked ahead again. Her fingers had stopped moving against his arm.

“That’s…” She broke off, drew in a breath, then gave him a small smile. “I refuse to live somewhere because civic planners erected a monument to me.”

“Fine. Two streets over.”

“Three.”

“Deal,” he declared swiftly as though he had cheated a used car salesman.

The Master Suite entrance came into view ahead, interrupting whatever response she was preparing.

Katherine straightened slightly. “Come along. I would like to see what architectural insult the Hotel has prepared for me.”

* * *

Claire sat cross-legged near the foot of her bed with three Archive books spread around her and another open across her thighs.

Evelyn occupied the desk. She had been reading for several minutes without turning a page.

Claire had created four headings in her notebook.

EXPLICIT.

SUGGESTED.

INFERRED.

UNKNOWN.

Evelyn looked over the top of her book. “That appears more organized than your usual method.”

Claire glanced down at the page. “Lizzy’s idea bothered me.”

“Because?”

“Because I liked it too quickly.”

Evelyn lowered her book.

Claire tapped one of the open books beside her. “The alternate version of me has wings. We started with the theory that maybe she couldn’t fly naturally, so the transformation gave her a way to do it. Then I went looking for confirmation.”

“And found?”

“Nothing explicit.” Claire turned the notebook toward her. “That’s the problem. The Archive shows the wings. Some transformation descriptions sound like they might be compensating for missing abilities. Some of the alternate versions behave differently from us. But I can’t find a clean statement that says their native power sets are different.”

Evelyn set her book down.

Claire continued. “Yesterday I would have written the whole thing under evidence. Today I started separating what the Archive actually says from what it makes me think.”

“That is an improvement.”

Claire made a face at her, then looked back to the notebook. “Explicit is easy. If the text says somebody gained an ability, that’s explicit. Suggested is something like the wings, where the presentation pushes me toward an interpretation. Inferred is when I start connecting separate details and building a theory from them.”

“And unknown?”

“Everything I’m tempted to fill in because the other columns look incomplete.”

Evelyn’s mouth curved faintly. “Keep that column.”

Claire shifted the Archive book on her knees. “The part I don’t like is that the categories still depend on what the Archive lets me see.”

“Yes.”

“If the System shows me ten entries that all suggest the same thing, that feels stronger than one.”

“It may be stronger evidence.” Evelyn folded her hands over the closed book. “It is not necessarily independent evidence.”

Claire went quiet.

“The Archive is curated,” Evelyn said. “If it chooses which ten entries you receive, repetition can be a property of the selection rather than the history.”

Claire looked down at the page again.

Evelyn continued. “That does not mean the material is false. We have no reason to assume crude fabrication. It means you must distinguish between what a source says and what the source encourages you to conclude.”

Claire drew a line beneath SUGGESTED.

“So the implication can be real and still be manipulative.”

“Certainly.”

Claire pressed the pen against the paper. “That makes it harder to trust my own conclusions.”

“It should make you more exacting about them,” Evelyn said. “Not less willing to make them.”

Claire rested the end of her pen against the paper. “If the Archive wanted me to believe alternate power sets were different, it wouldn’t have to lie. It could just keep handing me examples where the transformations look redundant for us.”

“Correct.”

“And if it wanted me to miss something else, it could make this mystery interesting enough that I spend all night solving it.”

“Also correct.”

Claire leaned back against the headboard. “You think that’s what it’s doing.”

“I think Verena is preparing something, and I think the System has become increasingly interested in where we direct our attention.”

“The challenge?”

“Eventually.”

Claire glanced toward the dark window. “Day Ten.”

“Yes. We still have mine and Fiona’s bond assignments before then.”

“So what are we supposed to be ready for now?”

“I don’t know.”

Claire’s pen stopped halfway to the notebook.

Evelyn continued. “Record the theory. Keep the distinctions you made tonight. Test them when new information appears. But do not mistake a compelling pattern for a confirmed fact merely because the Archive presented it elegantly.”

Claire nodded slowly.

“And do not become so committed to one mystery that you fail to notice when the problem changes.”

Claire wrote beneath the four headings:

DO NOT PROMOTE IMPLIED INFORMATION WITHOUT NEW EVIDENCE.

She considered it, then added:

COOL WINGS STILL NOT PROOF.

Evelyn laughed and Claire smiled despite herself.

* * *

Lizzy had made it halfway through describing the carnival before she realized Mara had not said anything in several minutes.

“And then he missed the bottle toss completely, which was actually kind of reassuring because he had been so bad at the ring game, and I thought maybe he was trying to reverse impress me or something equally ridiculous and so I—”

Mara’s smile widened.

Lizzy stopped. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Ugh, you’re doing the mom face.”

Mara’s smile vanished on command. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lizzy pulled one of the pillows tighter against her stomach.

They had changed into sleepwear after returning to the room. Mara sat against the headboard with her legs tucked beneath the blanket. Lizzy had claimed the other side and gradually migrated toward the middle as the story accumulated.

“I’m listening,” Mara said.

“I know.”

“You’ve had a very full couple of days.”

Lizzy collapsed backward onto the pillows. “That is a very small sentence.”

“Yes, I know,” Mara’s tone was affectionate and patient.

“You don’t know enough because I haven’t told you everything.”

Mara’s brows rose with surprise, “You can, you know.”

Lizzy pushed herself back up. “Fiona and I had that fight, and then Fiona said all those things, and then everyone hugged her, and then she apologized at dinner, and Cassie said she was proud of me, which may actually have been the strangest part.”

Mara’s expression softened. “Cassie meant it.”

“I know.”

“That bothered you?”

“No.” Lizzy looked down at the pillow. “That might be why it bothered me.”

Mara let her think.

Lizzy finally sighed. “Fiona is terrifying.”

“She gets this way where she looks at you and suddenly you’re rethinking your whole life trying to decide where you went wrong to make this amazing she-devil so angry with you.”

“That is a very specific kind of fear.”

“She is very talented.”

Lizzy’s smile faded around the edges. “But physically? No. I never thought she would hit me.”

“Even in the Archive?”

“No.” Lizzy shook her head. “She was angry. Really angry. But she kept stopping herself. She kept trying to make me agree with her. If she wanted to hurt me, she wouldn’t need to argue first.”

Mara studied her. “That’s probably fair.”

Lizzy was non-plussed, “And I can phase anyway.”

“That occurred to me.” Mara settled farther against the pillows. “I have actually wondered whether Fiona’s sound could reach you while you’re phased.”

“Sort of.” Lizzy tucked one foot beneath herself. “Everything gets muffled. Not muffled like putting your hands over your ears. More like…” Lizzy rotated one hand in the air. “Ghost versions of sounds.”

“Ghost versions.”

“I know that sounds stupid.”

“No. Keep going.”

“The real world is still there, but I’m not completely participating in it. Loud things become these distant echoes. Voices are hard to understand unless I’m only partly phased.”

Mara nodded slowly. “So Fiona?”

“I think I’d be fine.”

“You think.”

“Important distinction, right?.” Lizzy pointed at her. “She creates force through sound, right? Pressure in the air. If I’m phased enough that walls and bullets don’t interact with me normally, I don’t think the force would either.”

“But you don’t know.”

“No.” Lizzy considered it. “Actually, now I kind of want to know.”

Mara kept looking at her until Lizzy lifted both hands.

“Fine. No screaming experiments.”

Mara smiled. “Your power really is amazing.”

Lizzy’s posture changed. “Oh.”

“You walk through walls. Fiona can level a room and you’re sitting here wondering whether you could simply step out of the blast.”

“When you say it like that, it sounds cooler.”

“It is cool.”

Lizzy tucked hair behind one ear. “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Katherine’s power is pretty amazing too.”

“That’s true,” Mara agreed but didn’t seem convinced.

Lizzy’s eyes moved toward Mara, then down toward the shape of her beneath the sleepwear.

Mara followed the glance. “Oh.”

Lizzy turned pink. “I didn’t mean—”

“You absolutely did.”

“Katherine can just decide what she looks like.”

Mara’s mouth curved. “You’ve been comparing again. I thought we agreed to stop that.”

Mara had always been more overtly feminine than Lizzy. Fuller chest. Rounded hips. The kind of figure that filled out even the Hotel’s simple sleepwear without effort.

“I might have preferred Katherine’s power.” Lizzy looked down at her lack of curves. She was thin with smaller shoulders and hips. “I could have options then.”

Mara laughed. “That is a dangerous word in this place.”

Lizzy smiled. “Could you do it? Make yourself look different. Like Katherine.”

“With an illusion?” Mara considered. “Visually, yes.”

Lizzy sat straighter. “Really?”

“Within limits. Color and small details are easy. If I wanted to change my whole build, I could make it convincing while I stood still.”

“But if you walked?”

“The illusion would have to track every part of me perfectly. A few steps and my false knees would start disagreeing with my real knees.”

Lizzy laughed. “That’s horrible.”

“It is excellent for photographs.”

Lizzy’s eyes became distant. “So you could make yourself look like Katherine.”

Mara reached over and took the pillow away before Lizzy folded it in half. “What are you thinking?”

“Katherine is really pretty,” her voice was searching for the right tone. She landed on wistful. “I’m sure Van has noticed.”

Mara tried to hide her smile, but failed. “I assume Van has eyes, yes.”

Lizzy rushed ahead. “I mean, she’s tall like him and really lean and has that whole spy thing. She’s mature and sophisticated."

Lizzy waved helplessly at herself, “She’s just, different.” She chewed briefly at the inside of her cheek. “Do you think he prefers tall and lean?”

Mara considered her for a second. “Why would there be one best shape?”

Lizzy blinked.

“Some women are tall. Some are short. Some are lean. Some are curvy. People don’t find just one kind of woman attractive.”

“That sounds obvious when you say it.” Lizzy glanced down again.

“I’m sure Van notices appearances,” Mara continued. “He’s not blind. But nothing I’ve seen suggests he is ranking us by body type. Half the time the Hotel tries to make appearances the point, he looks uncomfortable enough to crawl through a wall with you.”

Lizzy looked toward the ceiling. “What if he does have a favorite?”

“He probably has preferences. So do you. That is different from there being a correct body for a girl to have.”

Lizzy was quiet for a few seconds. “What would you change?”

Mara lifted a lock of blonde hair and examined it. “I would like hair that behaves in humidity.”

Lizzy groaned. “That doesn’t count.” Lizzy threw the pillow at her.

Mara caught it and laughed.

* * *

The Master Suite door opened.

Van took one step inside and stopped.

Katherine nearly walked into his back. “Well?”

Van rubbed a hand across his cheek in contemplation. “I don’t know.”

The Suite had changed. That part was expected. What it had changed into was not.

The enormous living space was gone. A narrow room stretched ahead of them beneath a low ceiling. The couch was brown, compact, and cheap. The kind you buy in a box and assemble by yourself. A square coffee table stood in front of it with one leg broken and held together with bright silver tape. The television was small enough to look lost on the cheap stand beneath it.

Two mismatched lamps occupied opposite sides of the room. One had a white shade. The other had a yellow shade decorated with faded green leaves.

Beyond the couch, a tiny kitchen occupied one wall. The cabinets were plain wood. The countertop ended almost immediately after the sink. A narrow table with two chairs had been pushed against the opposite wall because there was nowhere else for it to go.

Through the windows beyond it, traffic moved along a busy street several floors below. A car horn sounded. Then another.

“This is clearly a downgrade.” Van looked around. “I wonder if we made them mad somehow.”

Katherine didn’t answer.

Van walked farther inside. “I think the couch costs less than the pillows Cassie threw at me.”

Still nothing.

He inspected one of the lamps. “The Hotel couldn’t even find two of the same lamp.”

After a week of impossible luxury, the cheap apartment felt almost aggressively ordinary. He stepped toward the kitchen and opened one cabinet. Three mismatched glasses and two plates were the only dishes within.

Van laughed. “Oh, wow. It’s like the refugee housing I had, but 20 years older.”

Silence from the door again. He turned to find Katherine still standing inside the doorway. Her hand had fallen away from the frame. The color had drained from her face. Even her eyes seemed pale.

Van’s amusement vanished. “Katherine?”

She didn’t respond immediately.

“Katherine,” he called again, beginning to worry.

Her eyes shifted toward him with a sudden snap of motion. Color returned slowly beneath her skin.

Van crossed part of the room, reaching out to steady her. “What is it?”

Katherine inhaled. Her gaze moved past him to the couch, the lamp, the narrow kitchen.

She tried to smile and stopped before it formed. “Well.”

Van waited.

Katherine rubbed both hands down the sides of her shorts. The cotton was still cut for the leaner body she had worn earlier that day, fitting closely now around the fuller shape of her hips. Her hands came to rest against her thighs.

Van didn’t move closer. “Katherine?”

“This is my apartment.” Her response was stiff and wooden. All the warmth of the evening having fled from her voice and manner in a single moment.

He glanced around questioningly. He wanted to ask for more, but wanted to be careful.

“I mean my first actual apartment.”

Van looked back at the crooked table. “Oh.” He looked again at the couch, the mismatched lamps, the glasses behind the cabinet door. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I was insulting everything.”

“You couldn’t have known. And besides,” Katherine managed a thin smile. “you were accurate.” She finally moved away from the door. Her fingers touched the back of the couch.

“This was the most comfortable thing I owned.”

“The same couch?”

“God, I hope not.” A weak laugh escaped her. She ran her hand along the fabric. “No. The same model, I think. Or close enough.”

Van remained near the kitchen. “When did you live here?”

Katherine looked toward the windows. Traffic moved below them. The view extended over brick buildings, fire escapes, signs, windows, air conditioners, utility lines. Nothing about it belonged to the Hotel.

“Before I was recruited for my service.”

Van knew enough about Katherine’s career to understand the distance hidden inside those words.

“How old were you?”

“Younger than you are now.”

Katherine crossed toward the windows. Her reflection moved over the glass: blonde hair, blue eyes, a softer face Van had only learned that evening. Beyond it waited a city from decades ago.

“I haven’t thought about this street in years.” Her voice had lost the light playfulness from the walk.

She lifted one hand toward the glass without touching it. “There was a laundromat across the street. The machines all leaked and half the dryers didn’t work.”

Van followed her gaze. The storefront existed below, a red sign above rows of machines visible through the windows.

“This isn’t approximate,” Katherine said. “The pharmacy was there.” She pointed. “The restaurant beneath us closed after eight months. Then it became a Chinese place.”

A dull metallic knock came from somewhere inside the wall. Katherine’s eyes closed. When she opened them, she was looking toward the yellow lamp.

“My mother gave me that.” She turned in place to indicate the whole apartment. “She hated this apartment.” Another knock came from the wall. Katherine walked toward the little table. “Everything was too small. The neighborhood was too loud. The building was too old. The lock downstairs barely worked.”

Her fingers touched the chair. “I loved it though.” Katherine looked down at her own hand. “Or maybe just the freedom of it.”

Van leaned one hip against the kitchen counter. “This was the first place that was yours.”

He looked around again. The couch. Cheap furniture. Mismatched lamps. A tiny kitchen.

Katherine had been a young woman here. Before missions had become the organizing principle of her life. Before aliases and safehouses and handlers. Before Van had been born.

He tried to picture her carrying groceries up the stairs or arguing with a landlord about the radiator.

“I learned how to cook for myself in that kitchen,” she said.

Van glanced toward it. “That kitchen doesn’t have enough room to cook in.”

She produced a ghost of a smile. “Well, I tried anyway. Most of it was edible.” Katherine’s eyes had become bright again. She caught him looking and the old memories were stripped away in an instant.

Her shoulders settled. Her hands left the furniture and folded across her middle. “Your concern is appreciated, Van. It is unnecessary.”

He stared at her. “You don’t believe that.”

Katherine met his gaze. “What?” She scoffed, “I am perfectly capable of handling an old apartment.”

Katherine folded her arms more tightly.

Van shook his head. “I don’t know what to do here. I’m not asking because I think you need me to fix it. I’m asking because I want to be able to help you.”

Katherine studied him. For several seconds she remained square to him, shoulders straight, voice waiting behind whatever answer she had prepared. Then she uncrossed her arms.

“All right.”

She crossed the remaining distance, gave him the same crooked smile she had worn through most of the date, and slipped her arm through his again. “Would you care for the grand tour?”

Van looked around the entire apartment. “How long is that going to take?”

“That is extremely rude.” She laughed again, squeezing his arm. This time she allowed the smile to stay.

Van smiled betrayed his relief at her change in mood. “Lead on.”

Katherine turned them toward the kitchen. “Welcome to the culinary heart of the home.”

“That's the sink.”

She opened a drawer. Inside were utensils accumulated one at a time rather than purchased as a set. Katherine laughed softly. “They even got the spatula right.”

“You remember a spatula?”

“I only owned seven kitchen utensils.”

Van leaned closer. “Why are there three bottle openers?”

Katherine closed the drawer with a hip. “I have no idea,” she declared airily.

She led him around the small kitchen with unnecessary ceremony: the cabinet where she once stored cereal, the section of counter where a cheap coffee maker had lived, the burner that failed often enough that she removed the knob.

Katherine remembered more with every object. Not dramatic things. Her first attempt at hanging curtains. A downstairs neighbor who played trumpet badly on Sundays. A crack in the plaster she covered with a poster because the landlord refused to repair it. The convenience store where she bought milk too late at night.

She had forgotten the name of the man who ran it. Twice, several minutes apart, she tried to retrieve it and failed.

They moved into the narrow hallway where two framed prints hung. Katherine stopped in front of one. “Oh, God.”

Van examined the print. It showed a stylized city skyline under a red sun. “You don’t like it?”

“It was twelve dollars,” she nodded seriously. “Which I couldn’t spare at the time, but I thought it made me look sophisticated.”

Van considered the print more seriously. “Did it?”

She smiled affectionately, looking at the print. “No. It did not.”

Katherine nudged him with her shoulder and turned him around to continue. The bathroom was right where she left. It was tiny enough that Van could span it with both arms. The tub had a shower curtain patterned with blue squares.

By the time they left the bathroom, Katherine was laughing at the bad paint and telling Van about the upstairs neighbor whose enormous dog made the ceiling vibrate.

At the end of the short hallway, Katherine stopped before the final door. “And here we have the bedroom.”

Van glanced around. “This is going to be small.”

Katherine placed one hand dramatically on the knob. “My bedroom was small enough to give closets claustrophobia.”

She opened the door with a tiny flourish. The door swung wide and both of them stared at the room on the other side. The bedroom beyond was enormous. A king-size bed occupied the center beneath a broad headboard. Two bedside tables stood far enough apart that Katherine’s entire old kitchen might have fit between them. A sitting area occupied one corner.

Beyond an open doorway, polished tile led into a bathroom large enough to contain a separate shower, deep tub, double vanity, and more floor space than the apartment’s living room.

The Hotel had kept the same cheap wall color, the same baseboards, and the same inexpensive lamps. It had simply stretched the room until all of them looked absurd.

Van leaned into the doorway. “No. This is too absurd.”

Katherine covered her mouth.

Van looked back at the living room behind them, then into the bedroom again. “Your bedroom ate the apartment next door.”

Katherine lost the fight. Her laughter came quickly and without control. “I think it consumed the entire floor,” she managed.

“The bathroom is bigger than the rest of your apartment.”

Katherine stepped into the bedroom and turned in a slow circle.

The king bed looked absurd against the remembered walls. A cheap framed print hung over it, enlarged to nearly three times whatever dimensions it had originally possessed.

Katherine leaned against the doorframe, laughing until she had to wipe beneath one eye. When it faded, she looked toward the bathroom, then down at herself. “I need a shower. A very long shower.”

Van glanced toward the tub. “You have the right infrastructure for it.”

“I intend to exploit it.” She rolled one shoulder, then the other, and pressed her fingers into the muscle near the base of her neck.

“Still adjusting?” Van asked.

“Yes.” She twisted slightly at the waist, testing the motion. “Changing shape is easy. Living in one is more complicated.” She put both feet together and bent at the waist, holding her ankles to straighten her back. The pose highlighted the shape of her ass and pulled the hem of her shorts an inch higher than she intended.

Katherine relaxed the stretch and pulled the cotton back into place. She placed her hands against the curve of her hips. “These hips of mine take some getting used to after seven days of moving like a cat burglar.”

Van’s eyes betrayed him for approximately half a second. The cotton shorts made the difference difficult to ignore. They had been comfortable on her leaner form earlier that day. On the body she wore now, they fit tightly around fuller hips and thighs. Van redirected his attention to the ceiling.

She laughed. “I’m going to stretch under the hot water until my back forgives me. Wait in the living room.”

Van glanced behind him at the cheap couch. “All right.”

Katherine stepped toward the bathroom, then stopped.

She looked around the oversized bedroom once more.

“Van.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

He wasn’t sure which part she meant. For not asking about the gallery. For walking with her. For listening to the tour. For suggesting a place she might one day stay.

Van decided not to ask. “You’re welcome.”

Katherine nodded once and disappeared into the bathroom.

The door remained open until the shower began running. A few seconds later it closed. Van returned to the living room and lowered himself carefully onto the cheap brown couch. Traffic moved below the apartment windows. Somebody honked twice on the street. The radiator knocked inside the wall. Behind him, water began to strike tile in the enormous bathroom that had never existed here.

Van sat in Katherine Wren’s first apartment and listened to two different versions of her life occupying the same room.

BONUS PICS FROM THE INFERNAL COURT