If she chose not to explicitly point the fact out, Alexa reckoned that the number of people who even realised her house had an attic could be counted on one hand. To its credit, it was unusually small, and the ladder up was designed specifically to conceal it flush against the ceiling. Alexa wasn’t sure if the intent there was simply aesthetic or to appeal to some subset of the market, but it worked for her. While her personal works were nowhere near Guernica-sized, the space they took up quickly became apparent once inspiration hit her, whether they be victims of trial and error or the odd piece that just wouldn’t sell. There was, however, novelty in the way it was accessed, and in the way those few people experienced just that.

The upstairs hallway just outside her bedroom was a bit wider than what was on the ground floor, having space for a long wooden cabinet along one wall, facing the large floor-to-ceiling windows that opened out into the small rooftop terrace, surrounded by the first tier of roof tiles.

“That’s so cute.” Aerin went up to the glass. “You ever use any of that space?”

“I have a pool chair I bring out in the winter. Summer is way too hot to read outside.” She began to move some of the books until she found a little brass slot in the wall. “You might wanna move out of the way a bit.”

Aerin took several steps back towards the little square area where the curved staircase ended, trying not to knock over a large potted plant. Her hand brushed against it, and she looked at it. “Plastic?”

“Do I look like I have time to care for a real plant?” Alexa got a key out of her trouser pocket, one she had picked up off the messy counter behind the living room canvases. It was made from the same brass, with rather simple teeth, but it had been machined to a suitable enough degree for its task. She slipped it into the gap in the wall, and turned it upside down, with the handle sticking out like a level. She pushed it up, feeling the gears in the wall turn as the level lifted into unseen locks, and with each one, the ceiling began to fold down, revealing steps on the opposite side.

“Whoa.” Now that she knew where to stand, Aerin stood just out of its swing, trying to peer into the dark room above. “That’s so sick! You can’t even tell it’s there when it’s closed.”

Alexa continued moving the lever until it was at the end of its range, with the last turn of the gear causing the bottom of the ladder to touch the wooden flooring. “Let me go up first, it might be a bit messy up there.”

Aerin stood to the side, arms crossed but watching intently as her friend took the steps up one by one.

Luckily for Alexa, she had just been up there the previous day, shortly after Steven had taken his leave. That evening had been dedicated to rearranging all the old unsold works so that she could shelve the new one, and that spiralled into at least an hour of dusting and vacuuming. The tradeoff was that, of course, it was in a rather perfect condition to showcase to someone who might have just conveniently re-entered her life. For all the things she’d said downstairs by the front door, Alexa was not blind. Perhaps several years ago she might have paid it no mind, but the timing was suspicious. Whatever Kurt Armitage was up to, he wanted it quick.

Her hands found the cord and its plastic handle, and she pulled, turning on the lone lamp in one corner. The attic was a little cramped, and most of that space was taken up by shelves and the canvases placed on them, stacked with only thin sheets of dust cover between them. The sound of rain was muted against the roof. It was, as she expected, exactly how it had been yesterday. And yet her eyes were inevitably drawn to the corner behind the ladder, furthest from the light, where a single canvas laid against the side of a shelf, almost obscured by another.

“No you don’t,” she whispered, and grabbed the frame through the rag draped over it, moving it further into the shadow, then stepped fully up into the attic. “Come on up!”

Aerin hurried up the ladder like a monkey, first poking her head past the threshold to find where she could stand, and then hopping up beside Alexa, grinning almost like a kid in a candy shop. “Oh you’ve been busy!”

“Yeah…turns out it wasn't just a hobby.”

“Can I?” Her eyes darted from shelf to shelf.

“These are the oldest, right after graduation.” Alexa patted the shelf in front of the ladder.

“Including that hilltop one I never saw?”

“...uh, yeah.” She felt a lump in her throat as she remembered that day. She had been angry, so angry that entire weekend that she couldn’t stay at the dorm. Too many bad memories, some so raw that she just had to find somewhere, anywhere, to clear it. And then on the hill in the upper Xiphe area, after hours of wandering, it had, like every other day in Hecate in the monsoon season, started to rain out of the blue.

But the rain hadn’t reached her.

Instead she stood there agape, under the shade of an olive tree transplanted from one of the more verdant colonies, gazing over the black blotch that consumed the city below. Those clouds had smothered the high gothic towers of the banks and the megacorps and settled like a canopy around the pillar of the space elevator. The rain lashed down in sheets then, soaking through the streets like rivulets of water seeping through a prisoner’s hood. The city was choked through and through, a titan brought to the brink before the clouds parted, and it was bathed once more in blessed sunlight.

Aerin was there now, having looked through all of her familiar early pieces. “It’s beautiful,” she said, in the quietest tone since she’d arrived.

“Well I’m glad you like it.” Alexa scratched at an itch that had manifested behind her right ear.

“How long did it take you?”

“To draw?”

“Three hours.”

“No.” Aerin laughed. “You did it right there.”

“I went to that same spot every single day for almost a month,” Alexa said, her fingers lightly resting on the side of the canvas. “There were a few days when it rained in the city and all the way to the hill, so I just sat there with an umbrella and tried to remember the scene.”

“...did it work?”

Alexa shook her head. “It wasn’t the same. Being inside and outside the storm was like two completely different feelings.”

“Is that when you figured it out?”

“Hmm?”

“That it wasn’t a hobby.”

Alexa sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess after I tallied up the bus and the washing machine fees it was pretty obvious.”

“You ever tried selling this one?”

“How could I?”

Aerin put the painting back on the stack, and moved to the next shelf. “Now these I’m excited about. Tell me they’re not commissions and all Lexi originals.”

“I wouldn’t keep a commission up here.” Her eyes darkened to that shadowed corner once again, just for a split second, then she was back to Aerin pulling out the first painting of the new stack. “Oh this one…”

“Huh.” She held the canvas at arms length to avoid her own shadow falling over it. “I don’t get it.”

“Ah, this one.” Alexa took the piece from her, bringing it closer to the light source. The colours went well together, but the shapes of the brush strokes were wholly incoherent, even if they suggested some way of coming together. All in all too abstract to say anything on its own. “I think I actually tried using telekinesis to paint this.”

“Oh that explains a lot.”

Alexa felt the frown creep into her face immediately. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I…argh.” Aerin let out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t mean it like that. I’ve seen people paint before and it’s never easy. Have you been practicing?”

No, she wanted to say. What came out instead was: “A little bit. Didn't really get anywhere.”

“Not taking classes?”

“No time,” she said, perhaps a little too quickly. She kept looking at the failed piece, but felt Aerin’s eyes on her, looking for a real answer. “I haven’t found an instructor that’s convenient to go to yet, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s not like I need it for my work,” she added, unsure if the embellishment was too defensive.

“I could teach you.”

Alexa turned to look at her. As much as her mind naturally wanted to leap to Kurt's endgame, whatever that was, she found it hard to deny that the glint in her eyes was real. “How long before you’re offworld?”

“A month, maybe. Might take longer.”

The excavation could take another month, she thought, trying to worm her way out of the paranoia gripping her. “Wait, what are you doing again?”

“Ah, I don’t think I told you.” Aerin looked away. “A company contracted me to look over any old texts they scan. I don’t have most of the details either.”

What company? The question screamed at her from inside her head. As much as she wanted to ask…did it really matter?

In the end, the only thing she could do was steel herself. “It’s the dig, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! So Kurt spilled the beans already?”

Alexa’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. The conspiracy fell apart in her head, the victim of a single, honest line.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Aerin took the painting from her and stuck it back where it belonged, and crouched down to look at the next stack. “You know I could tell you were dying to ask me.”

“I already told him no. Unbelievable.”

“Oh, stop it. I’m not here to recruit you.”

The tension in one of her balled-up fists relaxed. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. Kurt only wanted to hire you because I told him you’re the best art historian I know.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“In my defense I don’t know any other art historians! So it’s true.”

“I’m not going to that dig site.”

“Never asked you to. He had his shot and he blew it. I’m here because I felt bad about dropping the whole transfer program thing on you two weeks before you wanted to go to a concert. Like, Lexi, you really think I’d do that to you?”

The breath caught in her throat. There were no tears welling in her eyes, but they might as well be red. “You don’t know anything about me.”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s why it went down like that. But I know that I fucked up and I should have told you earlier. I have my life too, it’s just intersecting with yours now. I just wanted to see my friend.”

Alexa said nothing.

“Is something wrong?”

“You’re holding it.”

Aerin finally looked down at the painting in her hands. It was placed inside of a pub of some sort, with wooden fittings and a stuffed swordfish on one wall. The wallpaper was green where it wasn’t torn to shreds or scorched or pocked with bullet holes, complementing the brown tartan curtains that were missing most of their length, still singed at the ends. The glasses on the bar mostly remained intact, half-empty, their colours playing against the room. There were shards everywhere, from whatever had blown the window wide open, long gone, leaving only the splinters that made up stools and part of a couch, hiding what looked to be a boot that might or might not be connected to a man. The outside was grey, lifeless. She grabbed the next painting, and then one from the last column. A destroyed caravan, surrounded by disheveled people picking up the pieces. Part of a space station burning in an open field, watched from the porch of a rural home.

“I don’t understand.” Alexa's voice trembled. “How we do this to each other, Aerin.”

Aerin put the pieces back on the shelf and got out her phone, tapping at the screen furiously.

“Please don’t call him.”

“I’m not.” She turned the colourful screen towards Alexa. “Do you like noodles or rice?”

“Huh?”

“Well, neither of us have had dinner yet. There was this chain on Trisonius when I was working with a game developer who wanted to make runework in their game historically accurate…I digress, but this shop was right in the office lobby. It was the best damn pickled thing I’ve ever had.”

Alexa just stood there, unsure of how to respond to any of that. “I…I like noodles better. I think?”

“Well good news is there’s a shop here, not even that far away. I’m going to get you this pickled fish with cold buckwheat noodles and galangal soup, and you’re gonna love it. We’re gonna eat right up here, and you can tell me about each and everyone of these.” She patted the shelf closest to her. “Sound good?”

“You really don’t have to.”

“Alexa, I really don’t give a shit if you go to the dig. I just want to know about all the stuff you’ve been up to since I left.”

“O-Okay.” Her eyes went to the corner again, but she forced them back.

Aerin turned to follow her gaze. “Hmm?”

“I thought there was a cockroach,” she lied. “A couple of months ago there was a leak and all sorts of crawlies got in. Had to patch the roof.” She pointed to a part of the ceiling that was newer than the rest, padding the lie with some modicum of truth. “I don’t know what else might still be in here, I’d rather eat downstairs.”

“In that case…” Aerin knelt and snaked her hand under the entire latest stack, carefully lifting the dozen or so paintings in. “I’ll take these to go. I saw an easel in the living room, you can do it presentation-style.”

“Sure.” So long as they were far, far away from that corner.

“Great!” She tucked the whole stack under one arm and began backing her way down the ladder.

The rain had stopped, but Alexa wasn’t sure when. All she heard was the blood rushing to her ears, and the pounding of the heart that drove it. Carefully, she got back down to the second floor, taking the steps one at a time, steadying her breathing.

“Oh you dated everything.” Aerin was standing in front of her bedroom, peeking behind each canvas in her selected pile. “He did say you’re like a big shot conservator now or something.”

“Not really a big shot,” Alexa said, curling her toes inside the fabric of her socks. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she clasped them behind her back. “My boss, though, is kind of a big deal in some circles.”

“You should tell me about that. Jeez, this is hella detailed.”

“I do work in a lab.”

“Touché. Come on! We might be able to do a few before the delivery guy gets here.” She started down the stairs.

Alexa gave the hole in the ceiling one last cautious glance, before she hopped her way down the steps. The image stayed in the back of her mind, like a glob of paint accidentally spilled onto clean, pure cotton. There was no way to shake the feeling.

Something was looking back.