Page 112 of Boardroom Mask

I’ve spent five years runningfrom.

This is runningtoward.

I round a corner and nearly collide with an actress in a blood-soaked wedding dress. She reaches for me with outstretched fingers and I duck under her arm and keep going.

Another staircase. I grab the railing and race down the steps. I feel like a hunting dog, because I could almost swear that it’s Kir’s cinnamon scent I catch on the drafty breeze wafting in my face. Overhead, taxidermied birds have their wings spread wide like they were frozen in the middle of swooping down to peck out my eyeballs.

The cinnamon is getting stronger. He’s this way; I know he is. I redouble my pace even though my feet are aching and protesting.

He doesn’t have to carry this alone. Neither of us do. That’s the whole point of whatever this is. The right two broken pieces can make something whole if you just take the time to line up the jagged edges.

So if I can justfindhim, if I can get my hands on him before the spiral drags him under, I can show him that. I’ll press my palm against his chest the way I did in the confessional and say,I’m here, I see it all, and I’m not leaving.That might not fix a single thing. After all, his father will still be a monster and the kill order will still be hanging over both our heads and the article will still be inching its way closer to front page news.

But we’ll face those thingstogether, shoulder to shoulder, and together is not nothing.

Together is, in fact, everything.

So fuck the fear. I’m going to find my masked man, grab him by that ridiculous jaw, and tell him that whatever he saw on that stage is not our future. The darkness only gets the last word if you let it.

There’s a fire door waiting at the bottom of the stairs. The push bar is crooked, not seated flush in its housing, the way it would be if someone had just hit it hard. I slam into it without breaking stride.

I burst into an alley. It’s cold enough to shock tears into my eyes, but when I blink them away, I see a huddled mass at the foot of the wall, and I see that he’s…

… not here.

It’s a bag of trash, nothing more. I walk up to it unsteadily, my vision still blurry from the cold. I don’t know what I’m looking for until my gaze falls to my feet and I see it.

Kir’s mask is on the ground, right at the base of the wall, sitting on the concrete where he left it behind. It’s staring up through empty eyeholes at the equally empty sky above. The elastic strap is stretched and twisted, like it was yanked off in a hurry.

I pick it up. It’s still warm, but somehow, I know he’s gone.

I want to scream, but then that word flares bright in my head again.

No.

Fuck no!

I won’t let him run. No, goddammit, no, no,no.

I spin on my heel and yank the fire door back open, plunging into the stairwell. I flash a double-bird to the taxidermied birds just because I don’t like the way they’re looking at me.

Back on the main floor, the fog is thicker than before. A new scene must be starting somewhere, because most of the masked audience members have migrated toward the far end of the building, leaving this corridor half-empty. I scan every figure I pass. Too short. Too stocky. Wrong coat.

Then I see him.

Two rooms ahead, moving through a doorway. It’s him, it has to be. He’s walking fast, head down, and he’s about to disappear around the corner.

I break into a run. My heels snag on a cable taped to the floor and I stumble, catch myself on a doorframe, then keep going. Through the first room, some kind of apothecary, shelves lined with brown glass bottles and murky, indescribable contents, and into the second, a grim detective’s office with typewriters and fedoras hanging from hooks on the wall.

He’s right there. Ten feet away, his back to me, about to disappear again.

I lunge forward and grab his hand. He stops.

And I know immediately:

It’s not Kir.

The hand is wrong. The fingers are too thick, the palm too wide, the skin too soft. Kir’s hands are large but lean, long-fingered, and I know every ridge and knuckle of them by now. This hand belongs to someone else entirely.