Filling In The Blanks

They bring the four into the main room the way Mary wants it: no hallway audience, no elevator, no chance to bolt for glass.

Morning light makes the penthouse look like a listing photo that took a wrong turn. Stone floors. The raw cut in the wall. Twenty claimed women already placed through both units like furniture that breathes. Jaz and Eve stand off the open space with their hands empty and ready. Jaycee stays in the bedroom doorway and does not come closer. Tessa sits on the far edge of the island and stares at her own knees.

Grant looks at the four.

He makes himself look properly. If he is going to take them, he is going to know what he took.

The tall one is first even before anyone speaks. Blonde hair in a collapsing ponytail, sun on her shoulders, a scraped knee that has dried dark. Athletic through the arms and thighs, the kind of body that used to belong to a field and a roster. Her event lanyard is still around her neck like a joke she has not been allowed to take off. She stands with her weight on her back foot, chin up, eyes wet and furious.

Next to her is smaller and darker: black hair in a tight braid, gold studs in both ears, a clean sharp face she is trying to keep blank. Olive skin. A thin scar through one eyebrow. She is wearing a wrinkled button-down that was expensive yesterday. Her hands are folded in front of her like she is in a meeting that has gone very badly.

The third has pink still fading through brown hair and last night’s makeup smeared under her eyes. Short, narrow waist, a silver ring on her thumb she keeps turning. A tiny nose stud. She looks like she came to the school to be seen and then learned what being seen costs. Her mouth is already trembling.

The last one is all cardigan and glass. Curly auburn hair. Freckles across her nose and chest. Wire-rim glasses sitting crooked because she has been pushing them up with a shaking hand. She is not plain. She is the kind of pretty people call cute until they look again. She keeps glancing at the terrace door as if thirty floors of air might be a better plan than Grant.

Mary does not introduce them. She only says, “Names first.”

Grant nods.

“You.” He looks at the blonde. “Name.”

Her throat works. For a second he thinks she will give him a fake one.

“Paige.”

“Paige.” He steps in, takes her wrist, and feels the old ordinary heat of an unclaimed pulse. No map. No extra anything. Just skin. “I claim you.”

It hits her fast. The fury does not vanish so much as lose its job. Her mouth opens. The lanyard lifts on a caught breath, then settles. Paige’s eyes gloss and then clear on him with that awful new focus.

“Yes,” she says, hoarse. “Paige. I’m—yes.”

Grant waits.

He flexes his hand. Checks the map. Twenty-one points now, Paige blooming in where the tall blank used to be. Strength the same. Sensing the same. No other changes. No second door. The world does not care that he just did it again.

He lets her wrist go.

“You.” The braid. The gold studs. “Name.”

She answers like she has already accepted her fate.

“Noor.”

“Noor.” Her bones feel fine and precise under his fingers. “I claim you.”

Noor’s composure cracks only at the mouth. A small sound. Then her shoulders drop and she looks at him as if the meeting has finally found its chairman.

“I understand,” she says. Soft. Immediate. “What do you need?”

“In a minute.”

Twenty-two. Still nothing in his body but the extra light on the map. Mary’s eyes flick to his face, asking the question without spending the words. Grant shakes his head once.

The girl with the pink in her hair is shaking hard enough that Eve shifts half a step closer.

“Name.”

“Harlow.” It comes out like a confession. “Please don’t— I mean— I...”

“Harlow.” He claims her before the sentence can grow another plea. “I claim you.”

Harlow folds into it with a broken little laugh that turns into a breath against his wrist. The thumb ring goes still. When she looks up, the smeared makeup makes the devotion look almost feverish.

“Hi,” she whispers, helplessly. “Hi.”

Twenty-three.

Grant’s pulse is louder than the room. He keeps waiting for the pay window. Twenty paid. Twenty-one through twenty-three have the manners of a dead account.

The last one has both hands on her cardigan like it might hold her together.

“Name,” Grant says, and gentles it without meaning to, which Mary notices and does not comment on.

She swallows. The glasses slip. She pushes them up.

“Willa.”

“Willa.” Her wrist is cold. “I claim you.”

Willa makes a noise that is almost a sob and then is not. The fear drains, and what replaces it is the same bright, terrible usefulness the others have. She blinks at him through the crooked glasses and nods too many times.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’m here. I’m yours. Okay.”

Twenty-four.

Grant stands in the middle of his own living room with four newly claimed women still wearing the morning on them and waits for his bones to announce a promotion.

Nothing.

The map is fuller. That is all. Paige at his right, tall and newly calm. Noor already looking for a task. Harlow staring at his mouth like she missed a cue. Willa holding the cardigan closed over a body that is no longer trying to leave. Behind them, the original twenty shift through both penthouses as the new four click into place. Four blanks gone. Zero vacancies.

Mary comes to his shoulder.

“Well?”

“Same hands,” Grant says. “Same map. Just more dots.” He looks at Paige’s lanyard, at Noor’s studs, at the pink in Harlow’s hair, at Willa’s glasses. “Twenty did something. Twenty-one through twenty-four did bookkeeping.”

“Then it isn’t every claim.” Mary’s voice is quiet enough for him and not for the room. “Which means we still don’t know the next number. Only that there probably is one.”

Grant nods. The ugly arithmetic sits down inside his chest and gets comfortable.

He addresses the four because leaving them standing there like merchandise will make him hate the sound of his own voice later.

“You live here now. You eat here. You do not go downstairs unless I send you. You do not go near the men in the Ford.” He pauses. “Paige. Noor. Harlow. Willa. That’s still who you are. I don’t need new names. I need you useful.”

“Yes, Grant,” Noor says first, and the other three follow it like a chord.

Paige pulls the lanyard off and sets it on the island without being told. Harlow wipes under her eyes and only makes the makeup worse. Willa fixes her glasses and looks at the cut wall as if she is already measuring where she should stand.

Eve lets out a breath.

Jaz says, “Suite’s secure.”

“Good.” Grant glances toward the glass, toward the Explorer baking in the late morning lot. “Then the house is closed to guests.”

He waits one more second, stupidly, in case twenty-four was shy.

The faucet stays unbent. The terrace door stays merely heavy. The city stays full of other men who may or may not be counting.

Grant turns away before the disappointment can look like hunger.

“Feed them,” he tells Mary. “Then put them on the board with everyone else. I want a watch list by noon. Names. Skills. Who can shoot, who can cook, who can talk a stranger out of our lobby.”

Mary’s mouth ticks.

“And after that?”

Grant looks at twenty-four points of light moving through two penthouses and feels the missing future like a floor that has not been built yet.

“After that,” he says, “we find out how many women it takes before the world pays out again.”