Progress

Abby’s hands were still trembling when she climbed through the window. Not from fear—she’d left that in the alley with the man who’d followed her. Lightning still crackling under her skin.

She stood in the center of her apartment, staring at her palms. Dark with blood. His blood. She’d been too hungry, too angry, and it had been—

She pressed both hands flat against the wall above her writing desk. Left them there. When she pulled them away, the prints remained. Perfect. Damning.

“Admiring your work?”

Abby spun. Celinda stood by the window, still in her traveling coat.

“You’re back.” Abby’s tone came out flat. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

Celinda didn’t answer immediately. Her gaze moved to the wall, the handprints, stayed there too long. When she finally looked at Abby, her expression had shifted.

“Tell me what happened.”

“I killed someone.”

“I gathered that.” Celinda was carefully neutral. “Tell me the rest.”

Abby turned back to the wall. “He was following me. Three blocks. I could hear him breathing, thinking about… I went into the alley near the pier. Waited. When he came in, I didn’t—I just—”

She couldn’t find the words. They kept slipping away from her, the way everything usually slipped away except this hadn’t slipped, it had been sharp and real and there.

“I tore his throat out.” The words tasted like copper. “And I didn’t stop. Even when he was dead I kept—there was so much blood and I could feel it, I could feel everything, I wasn’t—” She flattened her palm against the wall again, next to the prints. “I wasn’t somewhere else. I was right there. The whole time.”

The silence behind her stretched too long.

“Celinda?”

“I’m thinking.” Quiet. Tight. “Give me a moment.”

Abby heard her move. Footsteps to the window, then back. Pause. Back to the window.

“You were present,” Celinda said at last. Not a question.

“Yes.”

“During the violence.”

“Yes.” Abby’s hands curled into fists. “Is that—should I not have—”

“I don’t know.”

Abby turned around. Celinda was standing with her fingertips on the windowsill, head down. Counting under her breath. When she got to ten, she looked up.

“You’ve been numb for three months,” she said slowly. “Going through the motions. Feeding like following a recipe. And now you’ve returned, covered in blood, telling me you finally felt real.” She paused. “That should be good news.”

“But it’s not.”

“I don’t know what it is.” Celinda’s fingers tightened on the sill. “Tell me what you went through. All of it.”

“I—” Abby’s breath caught. “I felt real. Like my body finally made sense. But his eyes—” The words stuck in her throat. “The same look I must have had when Richard—”

I felt real. Like my body finally made sense. But his eyes—the same look I must have had when Richard—

“Stop.”

“I can’t,” Abby cracked. “I made him feel the fear. And I felt alive doing it. What does that make me?”

Celinda moved closer. Stayed just out of reach, like she was afraid to touch. “It makes you someone who was present during violence. That’s not the same as needing violence to be present.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t.” The admission came out raw. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

The room fell silent except for the sound of their breathing. Outside, the heat pressed against the windows.

“I want to keep them,” Abby said, looking at the handprints. “The prints. I want—is that wrong?”

Celinda stared at the wall for a long moment. “Wrong? I don’t know. Concerning? Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it suggests you want to remember how this felt.” She crossed next to Abby, stood close enough that their shoulders brushed. “And if feeling present means tearing someone apart, then we have a problem.”

“What if that’s the only way I can be present?”

“Then we find another way.” Celinda’s hands were shaking against her thighs. “You’ve been present before. With me. Reading. Feeding carefully. It’s harder, quieter, but it’s there.”

“This was different.” Her voice dropped. “This was—I didn’t have to work for it. It just was.”

There. The thing Celinda had been afraid to hear.

“Violence is easier than presence,” she said carefully. “It forces you into your body. But Abby, if you start needing that intensity just to feel real—” She paused. “I’ve seen what happens when someone chases that feeling. It doesn’t end well.”

“For them or for you?”

The question landed like a blow. Celinda’s jaw tightened. “Both.”

Abby turned to face her fully. “You’re afraid I’m going to break.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to think you need to break to feel anything.” Celinda met her eyes. “And I don’t know how to teach you presence without either pushing so hard you shut down or pulling back so far you think I don’t care.”

“So what do we do?”

“I don’t know.” The words came out strained. “I can teach you to hunt. To kill cleanly. To take what you need without excess. But this—” She gestured at the wall. “This wasn’t need. This was something else.”

“It was feeling real.”

“And that terrifies me.”

They stood there in the half-dark, the bloodstained wall between them like evidence at a trial.

“There’s a bathhouse two blocks east. Go wash. Come back in an hour.”

“And then?”

“And then we decide what this means.” Celinda moved to the window, put her back to the room. “Go.”

Abby started toward the door. “Celinda?”

“What.”

“Would you rather I’d stayed numb?”

The words hung between them. When Celinda answered, she was barely audible.

“I don’t know. Ask me again when I figure out what you’re becoming.”

Abby left the apartment with blood still under her nails and a new feeling in her chest. Shame? No. Fear?

Recognition.

She’d felt real tonight. Entirely, viscerally present. And if the only way to feel that way was to make someone else afraid, the way Richard had terrified her—

She pushed the thought away. But it followed her down the stairs, into the summer heat, through the empty streets.

By the time she reached the bathhouse, she wasn’t pushing.

She was starting to understand what she’d become. And she was starting to like it.

Behind her, in the apartment, Celinda stood at the window watching the city. She pressed both palms flat against the glass.

The evidence stayed wet and dark, refusing to dry.