“She is. I mean, she’ll tell you when your cleavage is hanging out or your boyfriend is trash, but …” The woman trailed off, staring harder at the small screen. After a moment, more words spilled out: “She doesn’t normally wander off like this? She knows I get really worried about her, because we’re like, the only family we have. It’s this whole, stupid, tragic story that I super don’t want to get into right now, so if you could just …”

Ava shot a helpless look at Tricia, who thankfully took charge.

“Ava, go through the showrooms and see if you can find her. I’ll send a couple of other people up there to look with you. Miss, why don’t you wait with me?”

Ava nodded. As she walked past the young woman, she hesitated. “I’m sure she’s fine,” she said.

The woman’s face cracked into an uncertain smile. “Thanks.”

* * *

The showrooms were eerily empty. The customer service desk was located at the central hub of the store, and even on slow days, it tended to bustle. The rest of the store felt abandoned, besides a few desultory shoppers and a pair of teenagers alternately making out and taking selfies in the Pastel Goth Hideaway. Then again, it was the downseason, a stark contrast to the roiling hell that had been six weeks prior to Christmas. And sure, it was hard to leave the house in February. Ava had suffered enough coming to LitenVärld today, and she was paid to be here. Still, it was odd to see all the fake apartments vacant; it reminded Ava of the haunting feeling of being the last one out of the store. Each showroom was like an empty home, waiting for its ghostly inhabitants to return.

Or maybe the inhabitants had never left, but were just hiding out, watching the interlopers pass through their abodes.

“Get it together,” Ava told herself. Could she blame her paranoia and morbid thoughts on the heartache? Or maybe she should blame it on February. The shortest month, and objectively the worst.

LitenVärld was laid out like a twisting vine, with showrooms branching off a central walkway that wound through the store, curving back on itself before dumping people out into the food court and registers. Ava made her way quietly down the path, peering into the cubes for Ursula Nouri. Each room was alien and strange relative to the one before it. Strung together, they resembled an ugly necklace designed by a child, picking out the most garish beads to thread.

That familiar sense of disorientation came over Ava, that slight queasiness at seeing all these clashing rooms squeezed together. It mixed with her dread and made her stomach churn. She turned a corner, saw a tall figure in the middle of the Nihilist Bachelor Cube, and let out a shriek before she realized it was Jules.