He was staring at Grant and holding a piece of the mirror to his own throat.

“Don? What are you doing?”

Don’s eyes looked so strange—roiling with an incomprehensible intensity.

“Don.”

Don spoke softly, “All your life you believe certain things about the world, only to learn how wrong you were.”

“You went into Paige’s room?”

Don nodded slowly. “I looked under the bed.” He shut his eyes fiercely for a second and tears slipped down the sides of his face. “And now it’s in my head, Grant.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I can feel it pushing me to … do things.”

“What things?”

Don shook his head.

“Put that piece of glass down,” Grant said.

“You don’t understand.”

“I know who you are, Don. I know your kindness. Your strength. I know that you couldn’t walk into a room, see something, and decide to hurt yourself. You’re stronger than this.”

“You believe that, Grant? Really?”

“With all my heart.”

“You don’t know anything. Don’t ever go in there.”

Grant edged toward him. “Don—”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. Now give me the—”

Tension flashed across Don’s face—a burst of sudden resolve—and then he pulled the glass through his neck.

It was like a velvet curtain falling out of his throat, streams and tributaries branching down his plaid button-up and flooding out onto the checkerboard tile.

“No!”

Grant rushed toward him and ripped the triangle of glass out of Don’s hand. He knelt beside him and held his palm across his friend’s throat, trying to stem the tide, but the cut was too deep, too wide, and smiling from ear to ear.

Don’s eyes were still open but settling more and more with every passing second into a permanent vacancy. His chest barely rising and falling.

“Oh God, Don. Oh, God.”

The man’s right leg twitched.

The quantity of blood inching toward Grant was tremendous.

Don’s jaw worked up and down, but no sound issued except for a soft gurgle in his windpipe.

The change in Don’s eyes was both infinitesimal and epic.

His body sagged to the side, his chest fell, and never rose again.

“Don? Don?”

There was so much blood, and he was gone.

Grant sat down on the toilet.

He put his head in his hands and tried to think, but there was too much competition—too many questions, too much fear and sadness, and a part of him still not fully committed to believing that any of this was actually happening.

Grant shut his eyes.

Walking blindly into murder scenes was a part of his job description, and emotional survival depended upon his ability to detach, no matter how horrific the carnage.

But there was no detaching from this. From what his friend had just done to himself.

Grant stood, and as he left the bathroom, he heard Paige calling up to him from the first floor.

He walked out into the dark hallway, his boots tracking blood across the floor.

Paige’s bedroom door was still closed. Not even a scintilla of light sneaking out from beneath it. Nothing to suggest that a man had just killed himself after leaving that room.

There’s something deeply wrong with this brownstone. On some level, he’d known it the moment he set foot inside, but the knowledge was crushing him now, a wellspring of fear expanding inside of him accompanied by a burning, physical need to leave this place, to get outside. Now.

Grant walked past Paige’s room without breaking stride, turned the corner, descended the stairs.

“Where’s your friend?” Paige asked as he emerged from the bottom of the staircase into the living room. She was still sitting on the couch, her legs drawn into her chest, arms wrapped around her knees.

“We’re leaving,” he said.

“What happened?”

“Get your stuff.”

“Where’s Don?”

“Upstairs.”

“What happ— Oh my God, your hands.”

He’d been in too much of a state of shock to notice—they were covered in blood.

“I’ll tell you in the car.”

Paige didn’t move.

He pulled his North Face off the coat rack and shot his arms through the sleeves.

“Paige. Get up. We’re leaving.”

“What happened to your friend?”

“It doesn’t—”

“Is he dead?”

Grant hesitated, gave a short nod, tears misting in the corners of his eyes.

Paige brought her hand to her mouth.

“We’re not staying here,” Grant said.

“I can’t leave.”

Grant crossed to where she sat and grabbed her arm, jerking her up from the couch onto her feet and propelling her through the living room toward the front door.

“Stop! You don’t understand!”

“You’re right. I don’t understand the mindfuck I just witnessed upstairs.”

Grant opened the door and pushed her out onto the front porch.

The temperature had dropped and the steady pinpricks of rain had given way to a rare Seattle torrential.

Paige threw her weight into him, trying to claw her way back inside.

“I can’t be out here!” she screamed.

Grant pulled the door shut and held Paige so tightly by her arms that his knuckles blanched.

“We’re going to walk to my car, get inside, and drive away from this house. While we’re doing that, I’m going to call the station and tell them there’s a dead man in your bathroom. And do you know what you’re going to do while all that’s happening?”

The way she stared at him, her eyes glazing, made him wonder if she was comprehending a word.

He went on, “You’re going to sit there quietly and let me handle this.”

Paige dropped her head.

“All right,” she said.

Grant let go of her and started down the steps.

Halfway to the bottom, he heard a shuffle behind him, swung around to see Paige dashing toward the front door.

He went after her.

Paige grabbed the doorknob as he hooked his arm around her waist.

She bucked against him, jutting the back of her head into his face.

His nose and eyes burned and he tasted blood on the back of his tongue.

For a second he stood there dazed, arm encircling her midsection as she tried to wrench herself loose. He bent down, hoisted her up and over his shoulder.

She felt impossibly light.

“Stop!” she screamed, pounding her fists against his back.

Grant carried her down the steps and onto the hexagonal flagstones that comprised the walkway.

With each step, Paige’s thrashing became more violent.

A throb of pain bubbled up behind his eyes, a pressure more intense than the deepest water he’d ever experienced.

Grant stopped, the pain so sudden and vibrant it wiped his focus.

He was completely disoriented, a dull mud unfolding over his brain.

He looked around, standing in the rain with Paige’s now-limp body slung over his shoulder.

Grant took another step forward.

The pressure in his head intensified, like someone turning a crank.

A core of white-hot agony blooming in his gut.

He managed one more step before his knees buckled and hit concrete, Paige’s body thudding to the ground in front of him.

Everything buzzed, the world electrified.

He wanted to crack his head open right there on the flagstone, let the pain spill out and wash away in the rain.

Grant threw up on the stone—a violent, spewing rope of alcoholic bile—and his forehead came to rest on the wet rock. He’d let one of the beat cops tase him as a result of a bet gone wrong—this was worse by a factor of five.

Was this what Don had felt?

A whisper, barely audible, found its way to him through the downpour.

He lifted his head, saw Paige on her side, staring at him through wild, desperate eyes, her face inexplicably thinner, degenerating right in front of him as she convulsed.

“What?” he groaned.

“Get us … inside.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s gonna kill us.”

Her words cut through the gauze that packed his head and sparked a moment of blinding clarity.