Caleb led her into the kitchen. Its counters and stovetop were littered with empty bottles, plastic cups, and the remains of a huge birthday cake decorated with a unicorn and frosted in purples and pinks. The horn, swirling forelock, and blue eyes remained.

Caleb smiled sheepishly. “It was on sale. Help yourself.” With a tilt of his head, he indicated the door between the microwave and fridge. “I think she’s down there.” He looked at her questioningly. “Let me know if you need anything.” He nodded once and went back to the dining room.

Maggie stared after him blankly, then took a step down. At once, mustiness and shadows enveloped her. Laughter drifted up.

Her stomach roiled. She reached sideways, found the thin bannister, and held it tightly. This place was familiar. The dankness. The darkness.

She knew where she was. She’d never left it.

At the foot of the stairs, she closed her eyes and shuddered. “Sara?”

“Who?”

She blinked.

Three women, sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor and harboring two stacks of cards and a few bottles between them, stared up at her. More cards were fanned in their hands. One player with gleaming hair falling in a tawny sheet over her shoulder repeated, “Who?”

Maggie shook her head. Smoke curled throughout the room and seemed to enter her head like a thick miasma, wafting around and clouding her perceptions. Yeah, in there. Kill the light. You have her? Let me see. Hey, now, there’s nothing to get bitchy about. This will be fun. Just calm—fuck. That hurt. “I’m looking for…” She swayed and grabbed hold of the railing again.

A skinny guy, leaning over a stack of boxes a few feet away, smirked. “I want what she’s on.” He rolled a blunt and crossed to the card players to pass it to the woman who’d spoken.

Holding her splayed cards against her chest, she flicked her curtain of hair over her shoulder before accepting it.

Maggie sidestepped past them into a sprawling cinder block space of boxes and chairs and free weights and a treadmill and music and smoke and then the broad backs of men, one, two, three, four, five, six, strong and laughing, come on, now, you’re only hurting yourself, grouped around something, someone, spectators to an activity.

Maggie swerved closer, arms outstretched.

One muttered, “Good form,” and another said, “Too easy. Tack on another fifty.”

Linnie. The name came to her, a submerged body at last breaking the surface. “Linnie!” she cried and shot forward, making an arrow of her body that parted the men who’d turned at the sound of her shout.

She froze.

They were not circling Linnie.

It was a sweaty man on a bench. A weight bench. With a surprised laugh, he rested two dumbbells on his damp stomach. “Seriously?” he asked her. “Linnie?” He let his head fall back and moaned.