I thought I was done hearing voices that aren't mine.
I am not a do-over girl. I'm a dead girl in a borrowed body. The voice in my head is unambiguous.
COUNTDOWN: TEN SECONDS.
I press my face into the wool over Asher's sternum. The paramedic — Reyes — has her hand on his pulse point and she is saying numbers I do not like.
Whatever was in that syringe is winning.
TEN.
NINE.
Return to minus seven days.
I can stop myself from swallowing the bottle. I can record Lacey's call. I can hand Margot's name to the LASD a week before she has time to torch a file room. I can stop being a cat that does not know how to type.
Then what about Asher.
He'll stay in this timeline, half-poisoned, with whatever is left of his mother's reach still inside Lumen.
EIGHT.
I look at the paw resting on his collarbone.
It is small. It is soft. I hate it.
I hate being carried around. I hate the Mrrp coming out of my mouth instead of words. I hate having grievances I cannot file.
SEVEN.
His brow furrows. He has gone somewhere bad inside the sedative. His mouth moves.
Birdie.
The Post-it word. The first word he said in an ambulance at eighteen.
My chest takes a hit I cannot show.
SIX.
I am not forgiving him.
I am asking what's inside the file room that burned. I am asking who else paid Lacey. I am asking why a woman could be so sure, on a 12:31 a.m. call, that the man on the other line had been done with me for months.
FIVE.
TIMEOUT IMMINENT. DEFAULT: REMAIN AS VESSEL.
I close my eyes.
If I go back, will I ever see this kitten again.
The siren pitch climbs. The driver corners hard. Reyes shouts.
BP dropping —
FOUR.
Asher's hand slips off the gurney rail and his fingers dangle.
I press my forehead to his fingertips.
Cold.
THREE.
I bite his thumb. Hard.
You owe me. Don't you dare die.
TWO.
SELECT.
I lift my head. Through the rear ambulance window the city goes by in a smear of red and amber. We pass a Sunset billboard for L'Oréal Paris. Lacey Monroe is on it in a white dress with the tagline scrolling across her hair.
Pure as the morning. Soft as it started.
Something in my brain comes back online.
Remain a cat and I sit vigil over a half-dead man.
Go back and I make every single one of them pay.
ONE.
Back.
The world goes quiet.
I open my eyes.
The ceiling is yellow. The window is taking a beating from a March atmospheric river. I am on the floor of a studio apartment off Western Avenue. There is no copper taste in my mouth. The pill bottle is upright on the IKEA bedside table, capped.
My phone is lit.
Top trending: Sloane Ashby — escort allegations.
The clock at the top of the screen reads 11:46 p.m. Seven days before I die.
The phone vibrates in my hand.
Incoming call: Lacey Monroe.
I tap green.
She is already laughing.
Sloane. Have you seen the tabs? You're not coming back from this one.
I sit up. I open the Voice Memos app and tap record. I prop the phone next to it on the laminate counter.
Lacey, I say. I smile at the wall.
This time, you take the exit cue.
Lacey is quiet for a second.
In the old timeline this is the part where I am already broken. This is the part where I throw the phone, drive to Lumen's offices in Century City at midnight, and stand in the underground garage screaming the name of the man who won't come down. This is the part where Lacey, tipped off, is in the lobby with a Dunkin' iced coffee she will dump down her own white dress so that the security camera catches the splash. By the next afternoon I am Sloane Ashby Assaults Lumen Talent Group Rising Star Lacey Monroe.
I am not driving anywhere tonight.
Lacey decides to recover the call.
Birdie, she says, soft, I know you're upset. But don't blame Mr. Kane. There's a bigger picture here.
I put the phone on speaker. I set it on the counter next to the Voice Memo.
Tell me about the bigger picture.
She laughs.
Your name is poison. Lumen has to protect one clean girl. As long as you don't step aside, I can't move up. You understand.
The hidden-camera cut was yours.
She doesn't answer immediately.
The rain hammers the single window.
Even if it was, she says. Even if. Do you have anything that says so? A whole industry just watched a deepfake-quality cut of you putting hands on me. Who's going to believe a tabloid girl over the dailies?
The unedited dailies are where, Lacey.
A pause. Then she settles into a smug rhythm.
The post house burned a hard drive last spring. Equipment loss. You shoved me. The whole country agrees. They want you out.
And Calla. Last Light Over Carthage.
She makes a little sound that is almost happy.
Wren Ford likes you. Cute. The producer likes me. The financiers like me. The lead is mine. I saw your callback tape, by the way. You were excellent. It's a shame no one will ever see it.
My fingers go tight around the edge of the counter.
In the old timeline I cried about this for an entire night. Tonight all I say is And?
She is enjoying herself.
Also? Calling Asher won't help. He doesn't have his phone this week. His mother handed it to me at the property.
My eyes narrow.
She has his phone seven days before I die. Seven full days. He doesn't know.
Does he know you have it?
She makes a tiny pleased noise.
Does it matter? He just has to not pick up. You'll get the message.
I tap the Voice Memos icon. The red dot goes still.
Enough.
She's still on the line.
Birdie. Are you sitting there with a pill bottle in your hand right now?
I look at the orange prescription cylinder on the counter. White cap. Twelve milligrams of zolpidem. Six Klonopin. The objects that did the actual killing in the other timeline.
I pick it up. I walk into the bathroom. I pop the cap. I tip the contents into the toilet.
Yes, I say. And before I go, I want to send you a gift.
What kind of gift?
I hang up.
I flush.
I airdrop the Voice Memo to three places. Quinn's Signal — he's at Lumen, he gave me the number for an unrelated paperwork thing six months ago. Wren Ford's manager's office at WME. An anonymous tip address at Deadline.
I exhale.
There is a knock at the door.
Three light taps.
I look through the peephole.
A man in a black baseball cap is on my landing. The brim is pulled low. He has a Postmates bag in his left hand.
I have not ordered Postmates.
A text comes in from an unknown number.
I don't open the door.
I call the building manager.
The man on the landing hears me through the door — the building has paper for walls — and his shoulders shift. He turns and goes down the hall. Before he hits the stairwell I crack the door an inch and snap a photo of his back with my phone.
I zoom in. There is a thick white scar across the web between his thumb and index finger on the left hand.
I have seen this man before.
In the old timeline he stood on the sidewalk outside my building three nights before I died. I thought he was a paparazzo.
He's not.
The building manager comes up the elevator with a flashlight. He stands in the hallway and shrugs at the empty corridor.
Ms. Ashby. You've been in the news a lot. Probably a fan. Take some precautions.
Fan.
That word is going to do so much work this week.
I close the door. I am about to call Quinn when my phone rings. It is him.
Ms. Ashby. The recording you sent. Is it authentic.
Run forensics. I'll wait.
Mr. Kane is unreachable. Per Mrs. Kane he's at Cresthaven with Mr. Kane Sr. but the wellness center is refusing to confirm a guest list to anyone but family.
My stomach drops.
This is earlier than the other timeline. Margot is moving on a different schedule. She has already buried him.
His phone is with Lacey.
Pause.
Are you certain.
She just told me herself. It's on the memo.
A breath in.
Stay put. I'll send a car.
I don't agree.
In the old timeline I sat in a studio apartment waiting for Lumen to issue corrections, for Asher to call, for the press to fact-check itself. What arrived was knives.
I change. Hoodie. AirPods. Beanie pulled low. KF94 mask. Voice recorder zipped into the inner pocket of the jacket along with the phone.
In the mirror over the sink the woman looking back is slate-pale, ashy around the eyes, thin. Twenty-four years old. Looks thirty-three.
Still alive.
That's the only number that matters.
I take the fire stairs.
Three flights down, the door to the underground garage opens to a single fluorescent hum and the smell of motor oil. The lot is mostly empty. A black Suburban is parked across two spaces near the elevator with its parking lights on.
The driver door opens.
Two men in dark jackets step out at me from the Suburban.
I turn and bolt for the exit.
The exit gate's arm starts to come down before I get there.
The security booth is glassed-in. The guy inside has his face down in his phone. He looks up. He sees me running. He looks back at his phone.
I laugh, just one bitter note.
This place is bought too.
A hand closes on my left wrist.
Ms. Ashby. Mrs. Kane wanted to invite you for tea.
I twist, dig my right hand into my pocket, come up with the pepper spray, and put a full burst across his eyes.
He howls. He lets go.
The second one is on me. Tires shriek behind me. Headlights detonate across the concrete and a black SUV — a Cayenne, I will see later — pulls up between me and him, screeching to a stop.
The driver door is open before the engine cuts. Quinn comes out of it like he is operating a tactical clock. The other man takes a punch to the temple and folds.
I am not breathing yet.
The rear window of the Cayenne rolls down.
Asher Kane is sitting in the back seat. His skin is the color of cement. There is a heavy gauze pad through his shirt at the deltoid.
He looks at me through the open window. Whatever is in his eyes, I cannot label it.
Sloane, he says. Get in.