Seraphina
Two days.
Two days of absolute, unmoving silence from the end of the track.
Elias's grey truck hadn't rumbled past my clearing.
No heavy boots crossing his porch. No deep voice calling Max's name through the trees.
Even the gravel road leading to his cabin seemed abandoned, the tire tracks left behind by the last storm drying into pale scars beneath the weak morning light.
I knew he was busy. Blackridge had been restless lately.
Every few hours I would hear the distant cry of county sirens echoing over the mountain ridges before disappearing back into the forest, swallowed whole by the pines.
Still...
Knowing why someone isn't there doesn't make their absence any quieter.
The cottage always sounded different before sunrise.
During the day it settled politely, creaking beneath the mountain wind like every old wooden house eventually learns to do.
But in these early hours, before the birds remembered their songs and before the valley woke, every sound felt amplified.
The floorboards sighed. The pipes clicked softly behind the walls.
Somewhere outside, branches scraped against one another in long, whispering conversations that no human was ever meant to understand.
I liked this version of the morning.
Darkness has never lied to me.
I lay tangled in the center of my bed, one leg wrapped lazily beneath the oversized jersey I'd stolen, borrowed, if we're insisting on technical accuracy from Detective Elias Reed.
The thick blue fabric had long since lost the sharp scent of him, but every now and then, if I buried my face against the collar and convinced myself hard enough, I could still pretend traces of cedar soap and coffee lingered there.
Don't judge me.
If the brooding detective who kissed you like the world was ending disappeared for forty-eight hours without so much as driving past your house, you'd probably sleep in his shirt too. We all cope differently. Some people journal. Some people meditate.
Apparently...
I collect items from a specific detective.
My fingers wandered across the stitching of the jersey, tracing invisible patterns while my mind betrayed me once again. I wondered if he'd slept. I wondered if he'd eaten. I wondered if anyone remembered to remind him that coffee wasn't a food group.
Love or whatever inconvenient biological mutation this was really an administrative nightmare. People write poetry about butterflies and fireworks. Nobody mentions lying awake wondering whether the man next door remembered to take his jacket because it looked cold when he left.
Chime.
The sharp electronic note sliced cleanly through the silence, making me blink toward the nightstand where my phone glowed softly against the wood.
"Don't do it,"
Gerald groaned without opening his painted eyes. He was slumped dramatically beside my jewellery box, one tiny ceramic arm hanging over the edge as though he'd collapsed from emotional exhaustion sometime during the night.
"The municipal grid is closed. Nothing good arrives through a screen at..." He squinted at the alarm clock.
"...six-thirteen in the morning."
Frank, meanwhile, remained half-asleep against the windowsill, his ridiculous fishing hat tipped over his face.
"Let her check," he mumbled.
"We've been sitting in the same emotional chapter for two days. Even I need plot progression."
Gerald frowned.
"You don't even know what plot progression is."
"I absolutely do."
"No, you don't."
"It means something finally happens."
"That's called narrative development."
Frank shrugged.
"I prefer my wording."
"You prefer being wrong."
"You two argue like an elderly married couple."
"We're not married," Gerald said immediately.
Frank sighed.
"Thank God."
Ignoring them both, I reached for my phone, the cool glass lighting my face with its familiar blue glow. There was only one notification.
One reply.
My heart gave an embarrassingly hopeful little flutter before I even opened it.
Looking for Psycho Friends (Female Preferred)
New Reply
I sat up a little straighter beneath the blankets.
Username: Persephone
Location: Hollow City
The message itself was painfully short.
You sound interesting.
Everyone around here is completely exhausting.
That was it. No awkward introduction. No "Hi, tell me about yourself." No questions about hobbies or careers or whether I enjoyed yoga retreats and hiking. Just two beautifully direct sentences.
I read them again. Then a third time. I liked her immediately. It was clean. Efficient. Parallel. Whoever Persephone was, she understood something most people didn't. Conversation didn't need padding.
"She's a lunatic,"
Gerald muttered, finally sitting upright.
"She lives in Hollow City."
"So?"
"So?"
His tiny painted hands flew into the air.
"Seraphina, Hollow City is an entirely different ecosystem. Billionaires. Celebrities. People who own three yachts but still complain about taxes. Their behavioural metrics don't align with ours."
"Ours?"
"The valley."
Frank stretched dramatically.
"I've always wanted to meet rich psychopaths."
Gerald slowly turned toward him.
"Why?"
"They're usually better dressed."
I bit back a laugh.
"Hollow City can't be that bad."
Gerald stared at me.
"It literally has a higher population of private security than public librarians."
Frank nodded thoughtfully.
"That's actually a wonderful statistic."
"They're all pretending,"
Gerald continued.
"Perfect streets. Perfect smiles. Perfect little charity galas."
"Exactly,"
Frank interrupted.
"Which means whatever's underneath has to be spectacular."
I looked back down at Persephone's message.
Somehow… I thought he might be right. My thumb hovered over the reply button, excitement bubbling somewhere beneath my ribs.
Maybe making friends as an adult wasn't impossible after all, maybe everyone else had simply been looking in the wrong places, maybe the secret wasn't finding someone normal and maybe the secret was finding someone who had already stopped pretending to be.
Hollow City wasn't built.
It was curated.
Every inch of it looked as though someone had spent decades polishing reality until it became expensive enough to photograph.
The moment my old sedan rolled off the interstate and crossed beneath the wrought-iron welcome arch, the world shifted so violently it almost felt theatrical, as though I'd accidentally driven onto the wrong movie set.
Blackridge was honest.
Its cracked sidewalks admitted they'd been walked on. Its forests didn't apologize for swallowing sunlight whole. Even the sheriff's station looked tired enough to confess its secrets if you waited long enough.
Hollow City, on the other hand, had perfected the art of lying.
The streets shimmered beneath spotless marble paving stones that reflected the morning sun like polished mirrors.
Every tree had been trimmed into mathematical perfection.
Not a single fallen leaf dared interrupt the symmetry.
Sculptures carved from white stone stood proudly in the center of immaculate roundabouts, each one looking expensive enough to purchase my entire mountain.
Glass towers climbed toward the clouds, throwing shards of light across the streets below where Ferraris, Bentleys, and glossy black town cars drifted past with barely a whisper.
Women wearing tailored silk coats walked tiny designer dogs whose collars glittered with enough diamonds to feed a village for a year.
Men discussed investments over tiny porcelain cups of coffee that somehow cost more than my weekly grocery bill.
Everything gleamed, smiled and performed.
It was beautiful in the same way a porcelain doll was beautiful. Perfect, cold and one hard fall away from shattering.
People assume money removes monsters.
It doesn't.
It simply teaches them which fork to use during dinner.
I rolled slowly through the city center, watching waiters polish already spotless windows while gardeners trimmed roses that hadn't yet dared to wilt. Somewhere beneath the polished marble, billion-dollar charities, and carefully rehearsed smiles, I could almost smell the rot.
Disappearing scandals, purchased judges, families wealthy enough to erase names from newspapers before the ink finished drying, the monsters were still here. They simply wore Italian suits.
I parked beside the central square and stepped out into air that smelled faintly of expensive perfume, fountain water, and freshly baked pastries drifting from cafés where nobody looked like they'd ever eaten carbohydrates.
My leather handbag bumped lightly against my hip.
"You're squeezing my hat again,"
Gerald complained from somewhere deep inside the bag.
"You don't have circulation,"
Frank replied lazily from beneath my wallet.
"I have feelings."
"No,"
Frank sighed.
"You have opinions."
"They're practically the same thing."
Ignoring the inevitable domestic dispute happening inside my handbag, I made my way toward the enormous stone fountain dominating the center of the plaza. Water spilled elegantly from carved marble bowls while wealthy strangers wandered between flower displays like beautifully dressed ghosts.
I almost missed her, not because she blended in but because she absolutely refused to. She stood beside the fountain as though the city had been constructed around her rather than the other way around. While everyone else tossed breadcrumbs to pigeons, Persephone fed ravens.
Massive birds with feathers blacker than spilled ink perched comfortably along her forearms, tearing strips of raw steak from between her pale fingers with unsettling familiarity. The meat came from a designer handbag that probably cost more than my cottage roof.
Only one woman in Hollow City would carry fresh raw meat inside a luxury handbag.
I liked her immediately.
She turned before I reached her and every coherent thought quietly packed its suitcase and left my brain. She was breathtaking, not beautiful in the soft, predictable way magazines insisted women should be.
No.