It was warm inside, because Jules tended to run cold. Ava let herself in, toeing off her shoes and dropping her coat onto an empty hook. Jules’s studio should have looked different; so much had changed since Ava had been here last, though that had only been about a week ago. But no, there was the same rickety bed pushed up against the wall. Same dresser, half the drawers hanging open, spare change and half-empty water glasses and mugs littering the top. Same bulletin board covered with pictures of places that Jules planned to travel to someday, or that they’d traveled to already. They had left their dishes from breakfast in the sink, which could do with a good scrub, and there were papers and stuff all over the kitchen counters.

Ava absentmindedly tidied up the papers, automatic as breathing. She’d always been picking up Jules’s apartment, since the mess made her itch. She wasn’t really looking at what she was picking up, not really, until she noticed her own name at the top of a page.

Dear Ava,

You once told me that

Nothing else was written below it.

Ava dropped the paper back on the counter, then sat on the bed. Her mind felt … blank. Heavy. Like it had been filled with the same epoxy that had been poured into the crack in Tricia’s desk.

Ava pulled off the clothes she’d bought in that market—had it only been a couple hours ago? It felt like months—kicked them onto the floor, and curled up under Jules’s duvet. She was asleep almost instantly, and stayed that way for nearly fifteen hours, dreaming that she had traveled to other worlds, dreaming that she had never left, dreaming that Jules had just stepped out for coffee.

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

Two days later, a taxi dropped Ava off in front of Saint Joseph’s. The enormous edifice reminded her of the L. V. Anahita when it had surfaced beneath them: too big to understand, to hold entirely in her mind. She almost got back in the car, the request to take her home on her lips. Then she shook herself and went inside, following the complicated directions to Ursula Nouri’s room in the recovery unit. She’d timed her arrival to coincide with the beginning of visiting hours, but it took her nearly half an hour to find the correct floor, and then the correct room. Customers at LitenVärld complained about getting lost in the store, unable to find their bearings. Ava had felt the same when she’d first been hired, but it was even worse at the hospital, which felt like a labyrinth by comparison.