Georgia’s building materializes through the murky, foggy haze like a mirage. For a terrible moment, I think I’ve hallucinated it. But no. The fire escape is real. The graffiti-tagged dumpster is real. The cracked concrete steps leading up to the entrance are real.
I don’t remember which apartment is hers, but I haul myself up the stairs anyway, leaving bloody handprints on the railing like breadcrumbs for the Grim Reaper to follow. Second floor. Third. Is this it? I don’t know, and being wrong will kill me. Each step is costing me something I can’t afford to lose. My vision strobes between too-bright and pitch-black, and somewhere in the middle, I catch glimpses of doors. Peeling paint. Brass numbers that swim and blur.
One of them looks familiar. Maybe. Or maybe I’m just dying and my br
