Sunday, February 21, 10:55 p.m.

“Lindsay?” Liza Barkley locked the front door. No one answered. She so hoped Lin would come tonight. It was only a high school play, but she’d worked hard on her role.

But Liza knew her sister was working her ass off to pay the rent. And the gas and the groceries, all the while insisting Liza spend her time studying. Keep your grades up. Get a scholarship. They had no savings left for college, every dime gone to doctors who hadn’t been able to save their mother anyway. After a year, it still hurt. I still miss her.

Now Lindsay had cleaned office building toilets all night, every night so they could survive. One day it’ll be my turn to pay the bills.

She shivered. It was so cold in their apartment she could see her breath. But heat cost money, so she pulled on two more sweaters and snuggled under a pile of blankets, setting the alarm for five-thirty. She still had a little homework to finish and Lindsay would just be getting home by then, tired and hungry. I can do trig and fry eggs at the same time, she thought sleepily and drifted off.

Sunday, February 21, 11:30 p.m.

Eve curled up in her favorite chair, grateful Sal had let her off early. She’d come home, logged into Shadowland, and sent her avatar straight to Ninth Circle, the bar and social center. It was, as usual, dark, smoky, and teeming with avatars.

Desiree, be there. Be in your normal spot, doing whatever it is you do. Or did. It had been a week since Martha Brisbane’s avatar had been seen in Ninth Circle. Maybe Martha was on a real-world vacation, but Eve didn’t think so.

If Martha didn’t show up soon… I’ll have to do something. But what?

Eve could see herself now, filing a missing person report on an imaginary person who dwelt in a Fantasy Island computer game. The cops would think she was nuts.

For now, she could only keep a virtual eye on Martha and the others, and she wasn’t supposed to be doing even that. She wasn’t supposed to know the names of her subjects. Double-blind tests were not to be broken. But she had, and wasn’t sorry.

Just worried. And wincing from the cacophony blasting from Ninth Circle’s stage where a computer-animated band “performed.” Ninth Circle’s “band” was probably one middle-aged man with a synthesizer, but he wasn’t hurting anyone. Some objected to his cover of AC/DC, but those snobby rock purists could turn down the volume.

Eve muted the sound. She was one of those purists. When did I become… old?

Five years, eleven months, and seven days ago. That she’d remembered it twice in one night made her angry. But she’d put it behind her. Mostly. Sometimes.

No, you haven’t, Evie, whispered the voice in the back of her mind, annoyingly logical. Smug bitch. And she wasn’t Evie anymore. She’d left Evie behind in Chicago.

“I’m Eve now,” she said aloud, just to hear the sound of her own voice. It was too quiet in her apartment tonight. With the Ninth Circle band muted, the only sound was the constant dripping of water into the pots she’d placed below the leaks in her roof.

I’ve gotta get that fixed before I lose my mind. But her scum-sucking landlord ignored her repeated requests for roof repair. Myron Daulton had inherited the house from his mother, but none of her responsibility for her tenants, all of whom had finally had enough and left. Eve was the last holdout.

If Myron forced her out, he’d be able to sell. Developers were buying these old houses, refurbing them, then flipping them for big bucks. Myron didn’t deserve a dime. He’d never visited his mother. Never called on her birthday. Sometimes made her cry.

Eve had loved old Mrs. Daulton dearly and she’d be damned before she let Myron make even one penny off his mother. Eve had fixed the plumbing, dealt with the mice problem, and even replaced the garbage disposal. But a roof was a much bigger deal.

I’m not going to move. So she’d have to figure out how to fix the roof herself, too. She turned the volume of the band back up to drown out the constant dripping. Get to work, Eve. Find Desiree and Gwenivere so you can concentrate on your day job.

Sal’s filled her evenings, but her day job was not failing grad school. She had a ten-page Abnormal Psych paper due in ten hours. I shouldn’t be in Shadowland, spying on my test subjects. But she felt a responsibility to Desiree, Gwenivere, and all the others.

Many of them were older than she. Chronologically, anyway. All had signed releases before participating in her study, but Eve felt compelled to keep them safe. She figured she came by the compulsion honestly. It wasn’t possible to grow up with a bevy of meddling social workers without some of their nurturing overprotectiveness rubbing off.

Eve guided her own avatar through the virtual dancers, searching for the ones she’d come to find. Her heart sank when, once again, she saw Desiree’s corner table. Empty.

She moved to the next “red-zone” case-slinky, sexy Gwenivere, aka Christy Lewis, real-world secretary by day, dancer extraordinaire by night. Hours and hours every night and lately, during the day as well. Christy had been escaping into the game from her computer at work. Christy had confessed it last week, on one of her frequent visits to Pandora’s shop. If her boss found out, Christy Lewis would be fired.

Eve did not want that on her head. She was worried enough about Martha Brisbane. Martha’s Desiree had been a regular both at Ninth Circle and at Pandora’s Façades Face Emporium, Eve’s virtual avatar shop. Desiree had come every week to check Eve’s inventory of “Ready-to-Walk” avatars as well as her assorted mix-and-match body parts. Martha had upgraded her avatar’s face six times in the last three months.

Up until a week ago, Martha Brisbane had been a resident of Shadowland an average of eighteen hours a day. Eighteen. Considering the woman had to sleep sometime, that didn’t leave much time for anything else. Martha was an ultra-user, one of the many who comprised the negative control group of Eve’s study.

They’d had so many applicants they’d had to turn gamers away. Too many people lived their lives in Shadowland. Like I did, Eve thought. She desperately wanted to bring those people back to the real world. Into the sunlight. Like I did.

Hey, honey, can I buy you a drink?

Eve stopped scanning the crowd and frowned at the message at the bottom of her screen. She maneuvered her camera, staring into a nice face. Quality merchandise, if she did say so herself, and she did. She had, after all, designed it herself.

But the gamer wouldn’t know that. Tonight she wasn’t Pandora, the avatar designer who only hung out at Façades. Tonight she was her new character, Greer, the private investigator. Tonight Greer was searching for Christy Lewis and had no time to play.

Sorry, but I’m not interested, she typed back.

Then why are you here? he asked logically. This was, after all, the place to hook up.

Really not interested. Good night, she typed. She turned away and resumed scanning the crowd, hoping rudeness was a language he better understood.

Ah, there she was, Gwenivere, aka Christy Lewis. Christy was five-two, and while her real-world face was pleasant, she wasn’t gorgeous. Not true for Gwenivere, a six-foot blonde with a very expensive face. One of Eve’s, or Pandora’s, finest designs.

Gwenivere was dancing with a very handsome avatar, one of Claudio’s designs. Claudio was the best. Which was fine. Eve had started Pandora’s Façades to observe her subjects without them knowing she did so.

Without anyone knowing she did so. Especially Dr. Donner, her graduate advisor.