... And a Debt

Andy watched Sam, made sure he had her full attention, then said, “Laura was conceived and born during Greg’s season. Right here. On the show.”

Sam’s face shifted, something twisting behind her eyes.

“Arabella ran that season,” Andy went on, voice softer now. “She was the Host. She had promised her mother, Sarah, she’d protect Laura, but due to the rules, she couldn’t be there all the time, and so she couldn’t save Laura from the river.”

“After the accident,” Andy said, “Greg became more abusive, Sarah went catatonic, and Arabella… she blamed herself. She’d promised to keep Laura safe. She wasn’t even allowed to interfere, not really, but she still took it as her failure. She’s been carrying it for all this time.”

Sam’s face was almost unreadable, but Andy knew her well enough to see the tiny, careful flicks in her gaze—tracking, storing, building a model before deciding what to feel. She sipped her drink, found it gone, and set the glass down so hard it rattled the salt shaker.

“So she what? Hunted down Greg and threw him into a volcano?”

Andy shook his head. “I honestly don’t know what happened to him. I mean, Arabella did punish him. She stripped the harem bond from him, took away all the power he had, and dropped him into some kind of prison, I guess. But it was done as much for justice as because she didn’t want anyone else to get hurt any further.”

Sam made a little huffing noise, not quite a laugh. “Threw him into the volcano. Got it.”

He couldn’t help it; he smiled, soft and quick. “Yeah, well. The next part’s worse.”

Sam waited. She had that quality, rare even in therapists, of letting a silence do all the heavy lifting.

Andy said, “You want to know the one thing that made Sarah happy, even for a minute? The book she made for Laura. Every day, she wrote a letter, or a poem, or a recipe, or a joke, so that when Laura turned eighteen, she’d know what her mother had really been like, before Greg and all the—” He stopped, not needing to spell it out. “She made a nursery for Laura, where Laura spent her first days of life, before the end of the season. Made Arabella promise to get the book to Laura, when she turned eighteen.”

Sam exhaled, a little sharper this time. “That’s actually beautiful, in a totally fucked-up way.”

“It is,” Andy agreed. “Except Laura died at thirteen, so she never got the book. Never got the letters. Never knew any of it.”

Sam closed her eyes, just for a second, then opened them again. “So what happened to it?”

Andy said, “Arabella hid the nursery, and the book, in the gardens. Some part of her couldn’t let go of the promise. She kept the nursery in perfect condition, in a part of the hotel nobody even goes to. But after Laura’s return, old parts of the hotel began to wake up. Like the Sunroom, which Katherine made. Riley found the nursery. Yesterday, she took Laura there. For the first time, she got to read her real mother’s words.”

He watched Sam process it. She didn’t ask if Laura cried—she wouldn’t ask something that personal. Instead she said, “And now Laura’s here, alive. And Arabella’s still running the show, but it’s her last season, and you’re the Bachelor. And you’re worried about something that hasn’t even happened yet.” She lifted her hands, inviting correction.

Andy let a beat pass before he answered. “The only way for Arabella to keep her promise to Sarah was to bring Laura back.” He felt his own voice thicken a little, but **** it steady. “But there was a complications, or she would have done it the moment she became aware of Laura's ****.”

Sam set her jaw. “So what’s the price?”

He looked at her, tried to gauge if she was ready for the rest of it, and found that he’d been ready to spill it all along. He said, “Laura’s conception and birth in this place made it impossible to bring her back the way other seasons have resurrected people. Something about how time flows here, perhaps. But also, due to the bond she and I share, she never made it all the way to the... the afterlife, I guess. So Arabella had to devise a ritual, and part of it was using the words of Ereshkigal, the Sumerian goddess of the underworld. The Edict of Ereshkigal was written permission to leave the land of the dead, and fell within her purview. So when Laura was brought back, the ritual triggered a Law. A life for a life. Every resurrection comes at the price of another life.”

Sam went very still. Her hands, always moving, stilled on the table.

He waited.

“Who?” she asked. Not “how,” not “why,” not any of the other questions that would have given him a way out. Just: Who.

“It’s… complicated,” Andy said. “Arabella is forbidden to let it fall to me. If I tried to offer myself, she would be required to stop me. And even if I volunteered myself, you would all die because of my Coevality gift. But the debt doesn’t just disappear. It takes Laura back unless someone volunteers, and that someone has to be someone bound to Laura by blood or marriage.”

Sam blinked. “Myra. Riley,” she said.

Andy nodded, then added, “Laura's mother isn't aware, so she can't offer herself. Her sister, Myra's mother, could, though. And if no one is surrendered, Ereshkigal collects Laura by ****. And she can do so at any time, up until the end of the season. The day of the wedding.”

Sam let that percolate. Then she said, “Does anyone else know?”

“Laura, of course. Claire. Emi. We told them about Ereshkigal.”

Sam made a face. “You were going to keep it to yourselves?”

He hesitated. “I thought maybe we could fix it before the others found out. Or that I could, alone. I didn’t want them to have to—” He stopped, unable to finish.

Sam studied him. “You’re a good liar, when you want to be, but you’re an idiot and a terrible martyr.”

He almost laughed. “Guess I’m out of practice.”

“Don’t get back into practice,” Sam said, and she said it so flat, so direct, that he felt the truth of it like a shove.

For a long minute neither of them spoke.

Andy could feel the weight of all the stories that hadn’t been told, all the nightmares still waiting for their turn at the table. He thought about all the times Sam had caught him just before he tipped over the edge; about all the times he’d thought he was protecting her by keeping her out of it, when really she’d just been waiting for him to tell the truth.

Sam drained her glass, let the ice settle, and set it aside with an air of finality. She studied Andy across the tiny square of table, the look on her face neither pity nor challenge, just a careful waiting. If Andy didn’t talk, Sam would wait all night, until the place closed and the waitress started stacking chairs.

“I’m going to say this once,” Sam said. “You don’t get to do the martyr thing. Not with me.”

Andy almost smiled. The impulse was automatic, a tick of wanting to soften everything, but Sam wasn’t here to be softened. He said, “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Sam’s mouth did the tiniest twitch. “So. Tell me how you’re planning to fix this.” She said it like she was checking a list: groceries, dry cleaning, break a cosmic curse. “Or are we going to stand around and hope Ereshkigal loses the paperwork?”

He sipped his bourbon, buying a moment. “We’re not standing around. Claire and Emily have been combing the archives.” He shook his head. “The Law doesn’t break easy.”

Sam nodded once, as if she’d expected nothing less. “What about Arabella? She’s the one who made this deal. She can’t just void it?”

Andy shrugged. “Arabella says her hands are tied. Host rules. The Producers keep her on a very short leash for this one.”

Sam’s gaze flickered. “Producers. Still can’t get over that this whole place is run like a reality show, only the stakes are, you know, **** and eternal cosmic law.”

He didn’t argue. “It’s the only system that makes sense here.”

Sam let that sit a second, then said, “Okay. So the law wants a life. But it doesn’t have to be Laura’s, and it can’t be yours, because of the Gift.” She looked at him, waiting for confirmation.

Andy nodded.

“Why not just… refuse?” Sam said, and the way she said it, he could hear her as a kid, arguing her way out of chores, then later, in college, talking their way out of a bad lease or a campus parking ticket. Sam had always been the expert at refusing things that weren’t fair.

“It’s not a contract,” Andy said. “It’s a Law, and there’s power behind it. If no one’s offered, Ereshkigal just takes Laura back.”

Sam absorbed that. She didn’t get smaller; she got more certain. “So, we find a loophole. Or at least a way to buy time until there’s another option.” She nodded to herself, like she was rehearsing it.

Andy watched her. He’d had this conversation before, with himself, with Arabella, with Claire, with Laura. But saying it to Sam felt different. It felt like plugging a wire into a circuit—suddenly the problem had a live current.

He said, “I’m sorry it had to land on your day. The wedding is the deadline. That’s when the Law comes due, if not earlier. I think she’ll wait, though, until the last moment.”

Sam looked at him, and for a second, all the bravado faded out. “If it was just me and Liesa, I could handle it. But you’re talking about a group wedding, with half the harem. I know what it’s supposed to mean to you. I know what it means to Laura.” She let the thought break apart. “So, what—either someone sacrifices themselves for her, or you walk down the aisle, say your vows, and then what, she disappears?”

“Or worse,” Andy said.

Sam slouched back in the booth, took a long, slow breath, and for a moment Andy saw her as she had looked the night her parents kicked her out, twenty-four, angry and empty and unwilling to show it. She’d come to his apartment at midnight, hands in her pockets, pretending it was nothing. She’d said, “You got a couch?” and that had been the whole story.

She finally said, “If you ever pull this shit again—keeping something this big to yourself—I’m going to bury you in cat hair.”

He smiled, just a little. “Noted.”

Sam let it be a joke, then shook her head, as if waking up. “You should have told everyone. You should have told us.” She held his eyes. “You don’t get to be the only one who hurts. Not anymore.”

Andy nodded, then found himself saying, “You’re my best friend, Sam. I’m done hiding things from you.”

Sam’s gaze got softer, but only for a second. “Good. Because you’re not getting rid of me. Even if you wanted to.”

He nodded. “There is one last thing. It's not related to the debt, but it is big.”

Sam's eyes narrowed as she looked at him.

“I'm sure you've noticed weird occurrences around the other women, or even around you, after Laura's return. Like plants showing off for Erin, or Dawn glowing with her own light... literally.”

Sam frowned. “Like Liesa's paintings sometimes moving as if they were alive.”

Andy blinked, not having heard that one, and filed it away. “Yeah, well. Stuff like that has happened to me too, and Claire is looking into it. She believes I'm becoming some sort of catalyst, and this stuff happens more often when I'm around. But to me... when it happens to me, it's complex. Items made out of thin air. Summoning the ghost of Dawn's grandmother.”

Sam nodded slowly. “So... what is it?”

“Arabella says it's the Hotel listening to me. But these things have been happening away from the Hotel, too. I can't control them; they happen when I want something badly for someone else, usually. Arabella says that to understand them, I have to find a place called the First Gate, which according to her and Claire, no longer exists but can somehow still be reached.”

“First Gate. Ominous.” She studied him. “You realize there's a loophole, right? I'm pretty sure you would really, really want Ereshkigal to fuck off and not take anyone.”

Andy shook his head. “I doubt this thing could stop a goddess, or the Law she represents. She'd probably just swat me away.”

“Then you find this First Gate and see if you can figure out how this works.”

“Sam.” He said quietly. “Do you see where this is going?”

“Andy.” She looked at him. “I know you very well, dude. I know you're worried this would affect everyone. I've seen you struggle with the fear of being corrupted by the power you already have. But guess what?” She pointed a finger at him. “If the choice is between becoming better at wish fulfillment or losing Laura, you and I both know you'll do it. And if you didn't, you'd loathe yourself for the rest of your life.”

Andy didn’t say anything. He just let her have the win.

After a while, Sam checked her phone, then the window, and said, “We should head back. You ready?”

He nodded, and she slid out of the booth, pulling on her jacket as she went. At the register, Andy tried to pay, but Sam snatched the bill and tossed a twenty on top. “For the record, you owe me at least two hundred future coffees,” she said, “and you have to babysit anytime I need it.”

He grinned. “Deal.”

The cold outside bit through their clothes, but neither of them noticed. The walk back to the hotel was quiet, both of them shoving their hands in their pockets, stepping around black patches of ice, neither needing to fill the silence. At the elevator’s entrance, Sam paused, then looked up at Andy.

“I’m going to be honest,” she said. “I have no idea how you’re supposed to plan a wedding with seven brides. And I really hope you thought this through.”

Andy snorted. “I haven’t even thought about the logistics. Not even a little.”

“Who’s even officiating?” she said. “Plus, you need seven different cakes. And seven different sets of opinions about where everyone’s supposed to sit.”

Andy groaned. “Maybe we elope. Just run off and let them figure it out after.”

Sam shook her head, clearly savoring the idea of watching him crash through it. “Nope. You’re going to have to coordinate every minute, and I’m going to enjoy every second of watching you do it.”

He smiled, the real kind, and let her lead the way into the lobby.

As they stepped into the elevator together, Andy felt the old weight in his chest, but it was lighter. Sam was right: he didn’t have to do this alone. Not this time.

The elevator doors shut behind them, sealing them off from the cold and the city and everything that waited above. Sam looked at him, eyebrows up.

“You got this?” she asked.

“Not even close,” Andy said. “But I’ve got you. That’ll do.”

She punched his arm, grinning. “Don’t make it weird,” she said, but there was nothing behind it but hope.

The elevator climbed. When the doors opened, the Hotel was waiting—light and color and all the problems Andy couldn’t fix alone. But as he followed Sam out, Andy had the strange but not unwelcome feeling that they might actually do it.

The elevator spat them out on the Suite’s floor with the same smooth, almost mocking efficiency as always. Andy and Sam entered in companionable silence, each lost in their own version of the same math: how to save a life, and what to do with the world that came after.

Andy stepped through, expecting chaos or at least voices, but the place was deserted. Lights were on in the kitchen, TV on mute in the living area, but no one visible. There was no sign of Laura. He stood a moment in the quiet, looking over the empty Suite, and felt the old emptiness rise up to meet him—the same hollow, formless feeling he’d had months ago in another empty room, the night he’d signed away Aural and wondered where he could possibly go from there. Back then he hadn’t had a clue. He still wasn’t sure he did.

Sam closed the door behind them. She stood in the entryway, hands in her jacket pockets, surveying the room with the wary optimism of someone entering a friend’s house after a bad fight.

“Grab us a couple of cold ones?” Andy asked. “Least I can do.”

Sam shrugged out of her jacket and dropped it over a chair. “Now you're talking like a host.”

He checked the fridge. Three kinds of beer, all some variation on a tropical label and a generic lager, plus an unopened bottle of hotel prosecco and something dark and unlabeled that looked like it might double as rocket fuel. There was also the bottle from Shar's season, still half full.

He pulled two bottles from the door and twisted off the caps—a quiet hiss, the same as every other time they’d done this, on patios, in dorm rooms, on the back steps of the Blue Bean after closing. He handed one to Sam, their fingers brushing briefly. An old, unspoken connection, the kind that made something deep in his chest loosen. There had never been anything romantic between them, and there never would be, and it suited them both just fine.

She raised it. “To family,” she said, softer now. He lifted his bottle toward her, and she met it with a gentle clink—a soft salute that felt more intimate than celebratory, sharp and definite in the empty Suite.

Andy sat first, sinking into the living room couch — the same way he'd sat the night he sold Aural. Sam followed, flopping down at the far end and tucking her feet under herself.

They drank in silence for a minute.

"I meant what I said at dinner," Sam said, eyes fixed on the blank TV screen. "You don't get to carry the Law by yourself. That's not the deal. Not anymore."

He peeled at the corner of the label, working it into a little spiral—a familiar nervous habit, the same one that had always given him away. “I know. Just don’t want to make everyone else carry it, either.”

She watched him do it, the way she always had, the way he’d ruined every label he’d ever held before he was halfway through the beer.

He smiled, a little. “Nice to have you back,” he said. He meant it more than he could say.

She sipped her beer, then gave him a sidelong look. “Now, can we talk about how you went from ‘can’t even ask a girl to prom’ to ‘scheduled for simultaneous marriage to seven women’?”

He groaned.

“No, seriously,” Sam said. “I want to understand the progression. Because, from my perspective, you never even learned to talk to women. You barely survived your first date with Erin, and if I recall correctly, you once spent an entire semester avoiding eye contact with that brunette from the dorm, after you thought she liked you.”

He tried to protest, but she was in motion now. “So how,” Sam said, “does that guy end up with a harem?”

Andy managed, “Maybe the universe likes irony?”

She snorted. “Or maybe it’s because Erin settled.” She grinned, sharp and familiar. “No offense, but I remember her ex, before you. Crossfit fanatic with giant calves. You were a sentimental fallback.”

He tried to glare at her, but failed. “She said yes when I asked her.”

“Probably to keep you from hurting yourself,” Sam said. “You’re like a rescue dog. She felt bad, so she took you home.”

He rolled his eyes. “And what about Claire? She asked me to marry her.”

Sam made a face. “Claire asked you to distract you from the library. The library, Andy. You could have been a lamp post, as long as you let her catalog your books and do calligraphy on the spine.”

He laughed, despite himself. “You don’t believe that.”

Sam shrugged. “I do. But it’s fine. At least she can fix the indexing system at your future house, which, let’s be honest, will be a necessity.”

She kept going, relentless but loving. “Then there’s Dawn. You know she can’t even sit in a normal chair, right? Her ass is basically two exercise balls duct-taped together. You’re going to have to custom-order furniture, and also, she literally cannot function unless she’s sitting on your lap. You factored that into the wedding planning?”

He buried his face in his hands. “She took care of that transformation. Why are you like this?”

Sam didn’t let up. “Then there’s Emi. You’re marrying a woman with six arms, Andy. Six. And she knows exactly what to do with all of them. You’re not going to survive the honeymoon.”

He choked on his beer.

She moved to the next. “And Emily? At least Erin can come to the wedding in her harem outfit, I guess. But Emily? Her hair is the only thing keeping the wedding ceremony PG-13. You realize she can’t even wear a bra? Or anything? What’s your plan for the moment she decides to tie her hair back as she walks down the aisle and just exposes herself to all the guests?”

He started to answer, then realized there was no answer. “She got a Reality Adjustment.” He finally croaked.

“Yeah, but we'll all know. And Myra.” Sam tapped her chin. “She’ll see through you at the altar. You know that, right? Literally. She’ll sense your every emotion and know if you’re nervous, or horny, or—”

He cut her off. “Okay. I get it. You’re saying I’m in over my head.”

“I’m saying,” Sam said, “that you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing, and it’s going to be a car crash, and I can’t wait to watch it.”

Andy let himself laugh. It felt good, better than it had in a while.

Sam finished her beer, then looked at him, suddenly serious. “But Laura,” she said. “That one I understand.”

He nodded, slow. “Yeah. Me too.”

They sat for a moment, neither talking. Sam turned her bottle in both hands, working at the label the same way Andy had. She’d never known thirteen-year-old Laura—only the version Andy had described during the show, haltingly, in pieces, the way you describe something you’re still not sure you’re allowed to say out loud. But she knew what it looked like when a person had organized their whole life around a loss. She’d watched him do it for years without ever knowing what the loss was. And now, she had met the person that was at the center of that loss.

Andy said, “I don’t know how to keep her. Not for real. Not when the universe wants to take her back.”

Sam looked at him. “You find a way. You always do.”

He almost said thanks. For a moment he was somewhere else entirely—another night, another empty room, another conversation with Sam over an invitation, a child’s friendship bracelet tied around his wrist and a dream of dark water closing over a reaching hand. He’d spent sixteen years going to sleep with that grief and waking up to it again, sure it was the one thing he’d never put down.

Then the door opened before he could say anything at all.

It was Laura, both of her, stepping through the door with a synchronized, casual ease that made the impossible seem routine. She wore the same jeans and black t-shirt on each body, but one had her hair down—long, dark, a little tangled at the ends—while the other wore it pulled up in a ponytail, a single lock slipping loose and curling along her cheek. The effect was always undeniably hot, the way she was two-and-one-in-the-same: twin movements converging on a common will, and a gaze—across two sets of eyes—that always seemed to land on him.

She didn’t pause in the foyer, didn’t linger to appraise the room or the silence. One Laura slid onto the couch at Andy’s left, the other at his right, moving with a predatory purpose that was unmistakably her own. He felt the weight and warmth of both bodies press in at once, the bond thrummed, and for the first time since their dinner, his chest loosened, a tension he didn’t know he’d been holding finally giving way. She fit herself into the space beside him, the crown of her head settling against his collarbone, while her twin mirrored the gesture on the other side, using his shoulder as a pillow. The embrace was complete, air-tight, a living shield from everything waiting beyond the Suite’s walls.

Sam nudged over, making room on the far end of the couch. “We were just talking about you,” she said, grinning in that way that could be a joke or an accusation, depending on the minute.

Laura looked at her, both pairs of blue eyes catching Sam’s, and said, “I figured,” in unison. One soft, one almost sardonic.

Andy wrapped an arm around each Laura automatically, not thinking, not asking if he was allowed. One head found the hollow of his shoulder, the other pressed into his side. She closed her eyes, just breathing for a second, and let herself be held. The rhythm of her twin heartbeats, out of phase but steady, sank into him like an antidote.

He was grateful—no, more than that, he was greedy for it. For once, he had no words, and didn’t need them.

Sam watched, not with envy or discomfort, but with something softer. She set her beer down and leaned her elbows on her knees, giving Laura the space to fill the air.

“You want to talk, or you want to just sit a while?” Sam asked.

“Just sit,” Laura said, and it was clear she meant it. The two of her settled deeper into Andy’s sides, limbs tangling, one pair of hands quietly finding his and folding around them. The silence that followed wasn’t tense or lingering. It felt like the negative space around a sculpture: intentional, necessary, the thing that gave it shape.

The three of them sat like that for a few minutes—Andy and Laura's bodies forming a living sandwich, Sam curled up on the next cushion over, her knees drawn up and her feet bare, pale soles pressed against the edge of the sofa. The room’s light was soft, not quite enough to erase the city-glow outside but enough to keep the dark at bay.

Then, a few minutes later, the elevator dinged again. This time it was Liesa, hair wet from a quick shower, skin flushed pink from the steam. She wore dark leggings and a plain white sports bra, and carried two bottles of water under one arm. She saw Sam first, and her whole face ignited—she crossed the room in two loping steps, slid in beside her, and immediately curled into the empty spot on the sofa, knees tucked up so her calves rested across Sam’s lap.

Liesa glanced at the way Laura bracketed around Andy, then at Sam, then at Andy himself. “Laura asked me up,” she said. “What did I miss?”

Sam smiled, all teeth, and slipped her arm around Liesa, drawing her in until their shoulders touched. “Nothing. We’re just hanging out.”

Liesa nodded, eyes still darting to Laura as if she was both the most natural thing in the world and also the axis the room spun on.

For a while, silence held. Only the breathing of four people, the soft hiss of the HVAC, and the occasional creak of the couch padding under shifting weight. Andy could feel the tension in the bodies beside him, but it no longer belonged to him alone. Laura’s presence, doubled, bracketed him in a way that was more than physical. He could feel her pulse in her wrists, hear the slow, measured breaths she took through her nose, and in the settling of her weight, he could sense the exhaustion that had been trailing her since this morning. He had thought she might need to talk, to vent, to rage against the universe’s accounting, but instead she seemed to crave only this: the stillness, the solidarity, the sensation of not being alone in it.

The silence was a relief. Andy felt it as an actual, physical slackening—the way you might after a fever breaks, or when a storm passes without lightning striking the house. He looked at Sam, who caught his eye and, for a fraction of a second, looked like she might get misty. Instead she pulled Liesa in closer and said, “This is okay, isn’t it?”

Andy nodded. “Yeah.”

Liesa, momentarily serious, said, “It’s more than okay.” She reached out, looping a finger around Andy’s pinky and holding it, as if to anchor herself in the moment. “It’s all I really want.”

The quiet returned, but now it felt warm—familiar, even. The four of them sat together, sharing the same air and the same silence, and Andy realized that the suite no longer felt empty, or haunted, or temporary. It felt like home.

Eventually, Laura broke the silence, her voice just a hair above a whisper. “Everyone knows, Andy.” She didn’t specify what, but both faces turned to him, and there was no need.

He didn’t bother pretending. “I figured.”

She said, “We spent all afternoon in the Sky Archive. Even Norah was there. We’re hunting for a loophole.”

He looked over at Sam, who raised her eyebrows and gave him a look that said, See?

Andy sighed. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told everyone sooner.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” said Laura. “We’re going to fix it.” It was so flat, so final, that for a moment he let himself buy it.

Sam clinked her nearly empty bottle against Liesa’s water—no words, just a silent toast. Liesa tipped her head back on Sam’s shoulder, already looking half-asleep, as if she could pass out right there and be perfectly content.

The night outside pressed at the windows, but it stayed on the other side. The suite was bright and warm and full of the people he cared about, and for the first time in a long time, nothing needed to be said.

Andy held Laura—both of her—tight against him. In the dream he had never been able to keep her; the current had always won. But this was not the dream. Her heart beat against his side, twice over, and the hand he’d watched vanish under the river was right there, warm in his. He didn’t let go. He didn’t have to.