Prologue
The Blackwood Hotel hadn't looked dangerous. That was the thing nobody believed when she tried, in the early years, to explain it. It had looked tired with sagging porch, water-stained wallpaper, a check-in bell nobody rang but not dangerous, not until someone knew what to listen for.
"Woman killed herself in there," the gas station kid had told them, twirling the lip ring between his teeth like it was the best part of the story. "Nineteen ninety-something. People staying on that floor say they still hear her. Crying, mostly. Right through the door."
Mara had lit up like he'd handed her a present.
"Tell me you're not thinking what I'm thinking," Elena said, in the car, watching her best friend grip the wheel two-handed with something close to hunger.
"I'm thinking," Mara said, "that this is the best story we've ever found."
That was Mara. Always reaching past the edge of a thing to find out what was underneath it. Elena had loved her for it and been quietly afraid of her for it, in roughly equal measure, for as long as she'd known her and in twelve years, she had never once managed to sort those two feelings apart.
Mara produced the key on their second night, dangling it in front of Elena like a magic trick.
"Where did you even—"
"Doesn't matter." Mara was already at the stairs. "Coming or not?"
Room 9's door had looked exactly like the others. Elena remembered thinking that, standing in front of it, heart going too fast — that it was just a door. Same tired white paint as the rest of the hallway. Nothing about it should have felt the way it felt.
"Last chance to be boring," Mara said, key in the lock.
"I hate you," Elena said. It wasn't a no.
The lock turned easier than it should have.
"Mara," Elena said, once, into the dark beyond the door. "Mara, wait—"
And then nothing. Not the room. Not whatever came next. Just her own voice saying a name, and after it, a gap in her life shaped exactly like a night and on the other side of that gap, three things waiting for her like they'd been left there on purpose: a locked door behind her that wouldn't open again. Blood, not hers, drying between her fingers. And a voice, not Mara's, low and almost gentle, promising her something had to stay buried.
You promised you wouldn't tell.
She never worked out, not in twelve years, whether the voice had been talking to her or if she had been the one who said it.
"There's no evidence of foul play," the detective had told her, in a room built for closing files, not opening them. "Friends fight. She'll turn up."
Mara never turned up.
