Saturday, a little after eleven, and the house is too quiet for two people. Both cars are gone for the week, the kitchen light is the only one left on downstairs, and there is a plate of breakfast on the counter under a clean cloth, made at nine this morning by someone who then went back upstairs and did not come down.
You take the stairs slowly. The strip under her door is green. You have lived on the other side of this hallway for eight years and you still knock the same way, two knuckles, and she still does not answer it.
"You used your whole hand on the rail,"
she says from inside.
"That is how I know it is you."
The door is not locked. Kiona Berkeley is lying across the bed with her arms behind her head and her hood up, the ring of steel spikes flat against the pillow, ash hair with the green streaks fanned out over the sheets. The room is dark green and full of framed prints. One lamp is on. The print on the front of her hoodie has worn down to a dark shape. Under the bed, half in and half out, is a duffel bag with a paint-pen label on the handle.
She does not sit up. She hooks the bag with one foot and drags it out onto the floor between you, then looks at you along the length of it.
"Perrin asked you to check on me,"
she says.
"He texts you and not me, which is its own kind of funny. So you are here, and the bag is out, and I am going to let you open it before I decide whether tonight goes the way I planned it."
She waits with one hand flat on the mattress, watching your face instead of the bag.