Celeste
The apartment door was unlocked when we arrived, which struck me as wrong before I'd even fully processed why.
The building was an older one, brick, with a narrow lobby that smelled of floor wax and somebody's frying onions. We'd come up four flights in a stairwell lit by one flickering bulb, our footsteps echoing off the concrete, Axel and Lowen a pace behind me like a pair of silent bodyguards. On the fourth-floor landing, a window looked out over a gray rooftop crowded with pigeons. A mat reading WELCOME sat before the third door down, faded and fraying at one corner.
My door. Somehow I knew it was mine, though not a single detail of it rang a bell.
Justine was already waiting outside in the hallway, leaning against the wall with her arms wrapped around herself, and the seco
