The kitchen explosion had sent shockwaves through Drennin that lasted for three days. Rickus and Sheree were no longer speaking in passive-aggressive whispers; they were communicating in low, vibrating silence, their bodies radiating tension like high-voltage wires.
For the girls, this tension was like fertilizer. They didn't need to speak to the tenants anymore; they simply needed to leave evidence.
On the afternoon of the fourth day, Sheree went out to the communal clothesline, located between the main house and Apartment 3B. She stopped dead. Her laundry was dry, but the items had been subtly rearranged. Her delicate, intimate pieces had been placed strategically, intertwined with Rickus's thick, institutional work shirts. It was suggestive, humiliating, and strangely accusatory.
But it was what she found tucked inside the pocket of her favorite sweater that made her hands tremble. It was a receipt—a professionally printed, itemized, and perfectly detailed receipt for a small, personalized offshore account in Rickus's name. It dated back to the year he first left her, and the amount was exactly the sum she had always suspected he'd stolen.
Sheree didn't pause to consider how the girls—or anyone—could have fabricated or found this information. The evidence, presented in such a calculatedly cruel way, bypassed logic and went straight to the molten core of her deepest fear.
"RICKUS!"
Her scream tore through the mid-day quiet of Drennin, pulling Rickus out onto the porch. He found her standing by the clothesline, holding the paper like a piece of burning coal.
"What is this? What is this lie?" she shrieked, tears of pure fury streaming down her face.
Rickus stared at the receipt, his jaw slackening. "Sheree, I swear on everything, I've never seen this. This is—this is a fake, a total fake! They're doing this!"
But Sheree saw his shock not as innocence, but as a reaction to being expertly caught. The subsequent fight wasn't a quarrel; it was the final, screaming destruction of their shared history, broadcast for every corner of the house to hear. The words the girls had whispered earlier—money, hoarding, life without her—were now being yelled back and forth, brutal and undeniable.
The demons, watching from the window of 3B, smiled. The noise was glorious.
The torment of Shane and James was far more intricate. They were not driven by resentment; they were driven by stealth and the thrill of the acquisition. They used their back apartment as a high-security lock-up for the valuable objects they lifted from unsuspecting targets across the city. They valued control and secrecy above all else.
A week after the fight, James unlocked their triple-bolted apartment door. The living room was meticulous, cold, and entirely secure.
Until he glanced at the central display cabinet.
Shane, sipping coffee, didn't notice James's sudden stillness. "What is it?"
James didn't answer. He walked slowly to the antique mahogany cabinet containing their most prized possessions—objects only the two of them ever touched. Everything seemed to be in its correct place.
Then, James's eyes fixed on the small, silver statue of a chess pawn he had lifted from an auction house last month. It was an exceptionally rare piece, solid sterling.
Now, instead of the silver pawn, sitting exactly where the pawn should have been, was a cheap, plastic, pink My Little Pony figure.
"Shane," James whispered, his voice catching.
Shane saw it. He looked from the children's toy, utterly out of place and jarringly wrong, to the steel lock he had personally installed on the cabinet the previous night.
"It's a joke," Shane tried to rationalize, grabbing his lock-picking kit. "Someone's being funny. We leave the door unlocked sometimes."
But as he opened the kit, the contents made the blood drain from his face. His precise, custom-made lock picks—tools they handled constantly—were laid out on the velvet lining of the case. They were meticulously arranged, bent into the shape of a perfect, miniature crucifix.
The girls hadn't stolen anything, yet they had invaded the most secure sanctuary the thieves possessed. They had left a message: We know what you are. And your secrets are worthless to us.
The true chilling message came two hours later. Gigi walked into the main house and stopped by the mantelpiece—the traditional hearth of her crumbling throne. Resting right in the center, glinting innocently, was the silver chess pawn, back where it was before Shane and James had even moved into Drennin.
Gigi picked it up, her mind racing. She hadn't put it there. Rickus hadn't.
She looked out the window toward the back apartment, then up toward 3B. Gigi didn't understand the how, but she was finally, terrifyingly certain of the who. The new girls weren't just trouble; they were a malignant force, and they were not going to stop until every lie Drennin was built on had been exposed and destroyed.