Ellis's hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Three days since canceling Dominic's appointment. Three days of telling Maya to refer Dominic Ashford to another cleanser, someone competent, someone not compromised. Three days of pretending Ellis could return to the carefully controlled life that existed before a man with manufactured grief walked into Mercy General and cracked Ellis's numbness like ice over deep water.
The client sitting across from Ellis—Margaret Brennan, fifty-three, grief-rot from her sister's cancer death spreading across her shoulders—watched Ellis with growing concern.
"Are you alright?" Margaret's voice cut through the fog.
Ellis flexed her fingers, tried to still the tremor. "Fine. Let's begin."
Ellis placed her palms on Margaret's shoulders, pulled.
The grief tasted like nothing.
Not mild. Not weak. Nothing. Margaret's sorrow over her sister flooded Ellis's awareness—genuine loss, deep and aching—but it slid through Ellis like water through a sieve. No purchase. No resonance. The flavor Ellis had spent fifteen years becoming numb to now registered as flat, colorless, wrong.
Ellis pulled harder, forcing Margaret's grief into the spaces where emotion used to live. The rot receded from Margaret's shoulders, pink skin emerging. Professional success. Margaret left grateful, healed, unaware that consuming her pain had left Ellis emptier than before.
After Margaret departed, Ellis sat alone in the treatment room. The salt lamps cast amber shadows across the floor. Ellis stared at her hands—still shaking, still wrong—and felt the ache building in her chest.
Physical pain. Actual bodily pain centered where Ellis's hands had touched Dominic's chest four days ago. The sensation grew stronger when Ellis remembered the taste of Dominic's grief—burnt sugar and copper, alive and evolving, filling Ellis with something that felt like feeling.
Ellis closed her eyes. Saw Dominic's face behind her eyelids. Green eyes blown wide during their last session. The way Dominic's consciousness had merged with Ellis's, boundaries dissolving until Ellis couldn't distinguish where her awareness ended and Dominic's began.
Ellis's phone buzzed. Text from Maya: Client just called asking for earlier appointment. Told her you're booked. You need to eat something.
Ellis hadn't eaten in two days. Food tasted like ash. Sleep proved impossible—every time Ellis closed her eyes, dreams of Dominic flooded in. His grief. His face. His need mirroring Ellis's craving.
Withdrawal. This was withdrawal.
Ellis had researched it obsessively, recognized every symptom. But knowing didn't stop the shaking. Didn't stop the nausea churning in Ellis's stomach. Didn't stop the way Ellis's body screamed for contact with the one source of grief that tasted real.
Maya found Ellis at midnight, still sitting in the treatment room, surrounded by the ghosts of clients whose pain no longer registered.
"You look terrible." Maya flicked on the overhead light. Ellis flinched. "When's the last time you slept?"
"I'm fine."
"You're not even close to fine." Maya crossed her arms, leaned against the doorframe. "You're in withdrawal. You've become dependent on that man's grief, haven't you?"
Ellis opened her mouth to deny it. Closed it. The lie wouldn't come.
"I've been there," Maya said quietly. "Different substance, same spiral. You know what happens if you keep doing this half-measure bullshit? You destroy yourself trying to white-knuckle through something that only gets worse."
"What's the alternative?" Ellis's voice came out hoarse. "Keep seeing him? Let the addiction deepen until I'm manufacturing reasons to keep him suffering?"
"Or you commit to treating him properly. With boundaries. Safeguards. Someone else present during sessions. Strict limits on frequency." Maya moved into the room, sat on the cushion across from Ellis. "But you can't keep doing this—trying to stay away while your body screams for him. That's not recovery. That's just prolonged suffering."
Ellis looked at Maya's face, saw the knowledge there. Maya had fought her own demons, survived them, built a life on the other side. But Maya's addiction had been to chemicals, to substances that could be eliminated. How did someone eliminate craving for a specific person's grief?
"I don't know how to stop," Ellis admitted.
"I know." Maya reached out, squeezed Ellis's shoulder. "That's the problem."
Dominic's hands shook as he inserted the key into the lock of his and Thea's house.
Technically Dominic's house now. Thea was dead. The property transferred to surviving spouses. But Dominic's lawyer—Rebecca Chu, sharp-eyed and perpetually disappointed in Dominic's decisions—had explicitly said: Don't go back there. Don't give the prosecution ammunition.
Dominic turned the key anyway.
The door swung open on darkness. Dominic's hand found the light switch, and their entryway materialized—hardwood floors Thea had insisted on refinishing, the small table where she'd left her keys every evening, the mirror where she'd checked her lipstick before leaving for work.
Everything smelled like Thea.
Her shampoo—something floral and expensive. Her perfume—vanilla and sandalwood. The particular scent of her skin cream, the one she'd used every morning for the six years of their marriage. The smell hit Dominic like fists, drove the breath from Dominic's lungs.
Dominic moved through the house like walking through a museum of a life that no longer made sense. Living room where they'd watched movies on Friday nights. Kitchen where Thea made pasta—was making pasta the night she died, maybe, in the memory Dominic couldn't quite grasp. Dining room where they'd hosted dinner parties, Thea laughing at something a guest said, her hand on Dominic's arm.
The bedroom sat at the end of the hall. Door closed. Dominic's hand froze on the handle.
Behind this door, Thea died. Behind this door, Dominic woke at one AM with blood on his hands and six hours gone from his memory. Behind this door, everything changed.
Dominic opened it.
The room looked normal. Too normal. Police had released the scene after collecting evidence—blood samples, photographs, measurements. Someone had cleaned. Removed the bloodstains. The white tile in the attached bathroom gleamed under fluorescent light.
Dominic stood where Thea had fallen, closed his eyes, tried to force memory.
Nothing. Just void. The space where six hours should exist remained empty, blank, absolute.
"Come on," Dominic whispered to the emptiness. "Show me. What happened? What did I do?"
Silence answered.
Frustrated, angry at the blankness in Dominic's head, Dominic started searching. Methodically. Every drawer, every closet, every space police might have missed. Looking for something—anything—that explained why Thea was dead and Dominic couldn't remember killing her.
In Thea's home office, a small room she'd claimed for her nursing paperwork, Dominic found the false bottom drawer.
Not hidden. Not exactly. Just a drawer whose depth didn't match the exterior measurements. Dominic pulled it fully out, felt along the base. Something shifted. A panel came loose.
Thea's laptop sat nestled in the hollow space.
Dominic's pulse hammered as Dominic opened the laptop. Why hide it? What was on here that Thea didn't want found?
The browser history hadn't been fully deleted. Just pushed to archived data, recoverable with basic technical knowledge. Dominic scrolled through Thea's searches from the six months before her death:
Artificial grief induction
Cleanser addiction patterns
Lazarus Syndrome medical cases
Psychic bonding through repeated consumption
How to make grief-rot persistent
Dominic's blood went cold. These searches made no sense. Thea wasn't grieving. Thea was healthy, happy, working at the pediatric ward she loved. Why would she research artificial grief induction? Why would she study cleanser addiction?
Unless she was planning something.
Dominic dug deeper, found Thea's journal files. The entry from six months ago stopped Dominic's breathing:
If I'm going to do this, I need to understand how it works. How to make the grief potent enough, persistent enough. How to create the dependency. D won't know what's happening until it's too late. And when he realizes... god, will he realize what he's lost? What he threw away?
D. Dominic. The entry was about Dominic.
Thea had been planning to do something to Dominic. Something involving artificial grief, cleanser addiction, creating dependency. Something Dominic wouldn't know was happening "until it's too late."
What did Dominic throw away? What had Dominic lost that Thea wanted him to realize?
Dominic stared at the screen until the words blurred. Thea had been researching how to manipulate grief-rot. How to make it addictive. How to create bonds through repeated cleansing.
Ellis. Thea had been planning something involving Ellis, or someone like Ellis. A cleanser. Creating dependency.
But why? What was Thea's endgame?
And if Thea was orchestrating this manipulation, how did Thea end up dead on their bathroom floor?
Detective Marcus Rivera's office smelled like burnt coffee and bureaucracy.
Ellis sat across from Rivera, hands folded to hide the tremor, and tried to focus on the detective's questions instead of the ache spreading through Ellis's chest. Day four of separation from Dominic. Four days of withdrawal symptoms escalating until Ellis could barely function.
"You've been treating Mr. Ashford's grief-rot?" Rivera's pen hovered over his notepad.
"Yes." Ellis's voice came out steadier than expected.
"In your professional opinion, could someone fake grief-rot? Manufacture it artificially?"
Ellis frowned. "Why do you ask?"
Rivera set down his pen, leaned back. "The medical examiner found something odd in Mr. Ashford's blood work. Trace amounts of a chemical compound used in experimental grief research. It can induce symptoms similar to grief-rot without actual emotional trauma."
Ellis's mind raced. The manufactured quality of Dominic's grief. The way it evolved and fed on itself. The unnatural persistence, returning faster than grief-rot should. "Someone's been dosing him?"
"That's what I'm trying to determine." Rivera pulled out a file, slid it across the desk. Chemical composition reports, medical terminology Ellis half-understood. "Could Mrs. Ashford have been doing it? As a form of... I don't know, Munchausen by proxy?"
Ellis thought about Dominic's laptop findings—the searches, the journal entry, Thea's calculated planning. "It's possible. But why?"
"That's what I can't figure out." Rivera rubbed his face, exhaustion showing through professional composure. "If she was poisoning him, manufacturing his condition, why would she end up dead?"
Ellis stared at the chemical reports. Artificial grief induction. Thea researching how to create persistent, addictive grief-rot. Dosing Dominic with compounds that mimicked emotional trauma.
"Unless she didn't," Ellis said slowly.
Rivera looked up. "Didn't what?"
"End up dead."
Before Rivera could respond, Ellis's phone buzzed. Text from unknown number. Ellis glanced down, blood turning to ice.
He's getting too close to the truth. If you care about him at all, you'll keep him away from our house. —T
Ellis stared at the screen. T. Thea.
Thea Ashford was alive.