Lillyanne Plume's Arc

Chapter 1 of 22

Lillyanne Plume mopped the last hallway of the university's grandest building at two in the morning, and she was already bored. The columns outside Prestige Hall looked important. The floors she cleaned did not. She was twenty-two, a scholarship kid without the scholarship, and she paid rent by pushing a mop through a building full of students who slept while she worked. The mop was job one. Job two started in ten minutes, in the basement, and it paid better. She wrung the mop, killed the lights, and took the service stairs down three floors. A boiler room sat behind an unmarked door. Six students waited inside on folding chairs. She knew their tells before she knew their names. The pre-med bit his lip when he bluffed. The frat boy tapped his chip twice on a good hand. The girl in the red coat only looked at Lillyanne when she was lying. "Deal me in," the frat boy said, already reaching for chips. "Buy-in first," Lillyanne said. She held out her palm. Cash landed in it. She counted without looking. She dealt Texas Hold'em for two hours and won enough to cover rent and the electric. She won because poker was easy. She read faces the way other people read street signs. By the third hand she wanted to scream. She wanted a game she could not solve in an afternoon. She wanted something that would make her think for once. Instead she raked in another pot and smiled like it mattered. At four in the morning she walked home. Her apartment was three flights up over a laundromat. The lock stuck. The radiator clanged. She dropped her keys on the counter, kicked off her shoes, and went to the bedroom to fall face-first into sleep. An envelope sat on her pillow. It was black on one side and white on the other, thick as a wedding invitation, sealed with wax the color of dried blood. Her name was written across the front in silver ink. No stamp. No address. No smudge from a bag or a pocket. Someone had been inside her apartment. She stood very still and listened. The radiator clanged. The fridge hummed. Nothing else. She checked the closet. Empty. She checked behind the shower curtain. Empty. She checked the window. Locked from the inside. She came back to the bed and picked up the envelope. It was heavier than paper should be. Whoever left it wanted her to open it. That alone was enough to make her not want to. She walked to the kitchen and dropped it in the trash. Coffee grounds. Eggshell. Envelope. She tied the bag shut, set it by the door, and went back to bed. Her last thought before sleep was that no one, in twenty-two boring years, had ever bothered to break into her apartment to leave her a gift. Someone had picked her. She hated that a small, awake part of her was already curious.