Chapter 21

• I studied the phone, trying to decide if I wanted to turn it on. I knew there would be messages waiting for me as there had been when I’d checked the last few times. Knowing others were upset or worried didn’t sit well, but I needed time before I could think of them. It had been three days since Daxx had taken me back to the apartment. She’d left me saying she would be back in a few hours. I wasn’t there when she came back. I told myself I hadn’t done anything wrong by leaving, she hadn’t asked me to be there when she came back.
• Hugging the phone to my chest, I looked over the part of the city I could see. It was dark, but the lights were pretty from up here, and it was quiet. I needed the quiet right now. Since I came back, I was having one flash that came back many times. I had to figure out what it meant, or I wouldn’t get peace. If it weren’t for all the other flickers, I may have been able to catch it. It never appeared long enough so I could study it, I just tried to write down as much as I could from memory after it disappeared again. There were three faces in it, and one I knew was Alona and the other that I knew was Emil. For the first few times I thought it might be Arius, but it was definitely his brother. I didn’t know the third face, but it held a bad feeling. My mind wouldn’t give me a moment’s pause so I could be sure, but somehow the lost brother and found woman were part of it.
• I don’t know what this building used to be or what it was now, but I spent a lot of time up here. It was ten stories high, I knew that from having counted the floors as I navigated the fire escape, even where I had to jump to reach the next section. There were never lights on in the building, so I suppose it was just some old broken space, long forgotten. There was a small awning that could have had a purpose when the structure was younger, but I didn’t know what that could have been. I used it when I stayed here to shelter from the rain, or sun.