The child smelled like creek water.
Not rain. Not the tank fluid that still slicked the penthouse floor. Creek water mud and summer and pennies, the exact way Green Creek behind Silver Ridge smelled when Elara was four and fell off the green bicycle with the other girl. A memory she hadn't let herself touch in twenty years because her mother had said imaginary friend and her father had said fever dream and both had told her to stop lying.
The child stood half-behind Darius in the elevator doorway, small hand tucked in his large one, the other hand loose at her side. Six fingers. Not a trick of shadow. Six, with soft nails. Green bicycle t-shirt, too big, faded, a small hole at the collar that Elara remembered making when she snagged it on a nail hiding in the closet the night her mother
