Page 17 of The Staircase in the Woods

“You’re not proud. You’re jealous.”

Said with the certainty of a hammerblow to the back of the head.

“I am. You know I am. Proud, I mean.”

“Fine. Maybe you are. Alittle. But you’re jealous, too. What I’ve achieved, where I’m at. This was supposed to be you. Or you always thought it would be you. And I think that fucks with you.”

He scoffed. And he was about to say more but then bit his tongue. “No, you know what? We don’t have to do this. Let’s just—let’s change the subject.”

“Too much history between us for weak-ass small talk, Zuikas. Say your piece, speak your mind. Do it.”

He suddenly let go of his end of the bag. It dropped to the ground and Lore jerked backward, overcompensating for the change.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s talk about—what’s the studio calling it?Hellhiker?”

Lore froze. She eased her end of the suitcase into the brush and turned around. The forest seemed to darken. The trees, tightening.

“What about it?” she asked, ice in her voice.

“You know what,” he seethed. “That wasourgame, Lore. We thought that shit up back in college. We had a whole notebook full of it. And you just—you justtookit—”

“Well, not likeyouwere doing anything with it.”

Another hammerblow. To her mind, probably, a mercy kill. But the hit left him reeling. She must’ve seen it on his face, how hard she’d hit him just then.

“Owen…”

“No, you know, yeah, you’re right. It’s probably smart, just leaving me behind.” That’s what she’d done, after all. Moved on without him. And it probably was the smart move, wasn’t it? He was dead weight. Dragging behind her, slowing her down, her having to wade through his mental emotional bullshit all the time. But then again, that’s what friends were supposed to do, wasn’t it?It was all her faultbecameit was all my fault,and round and round that carousel went. It wasn’t a new conversation Owen had with himself. He’d been having it for decades now. Since the end of college. Since…whatever this life of his had become in Lore’s considerable shadow. And at the end of the day, maybe none of it mattered, because she had accomplished what she accomplished.

No matter who she had to climb over to get there.

“Jesus, Owen, come on.”

“You know what?” he said, a little too aggro, maybe, but too late now. “I got this. I can carry my bag just fine. You go on ahead. I’ll see you at the campsite.”

“Fine. Yeah. Okay.”

Lore forged on ahead, leaving him behind. Like always.

—

Lore and Owen had been friends for a long, long time, and now they weren’t. None of them were. She knew why. There were a lot of reasons, but those reasons had one origin point, like the hydra—many heads, one body, one heart. They knew it, too, but they all needed to say it out loud. They needed to get it out, to purge what was in them.

For her fantasy bartender management game—basically, Tom Cruise’sCocktailmeetsD&D’s Forgotten Realms—she did a lot of research into medieval stuff, including the medicine of the Middle Ages, because, you know, of all the potions and draughts and tinctures and shit. One of the things they believed was that you had all these humors—blood, bile, all your bodily fluids. And when you were in good health, that all circulated fine and kept you going. But when you were sick, it meant something had entered you. An ill spirit, a demon, an infection, whatever—and the only way to get it out was:

Bloodletting.

They had a variety of tools for it—lancets and fleams and cups and, of course, leeches. (The practice had a cool name, too:venesection. And you bet your ass she used that in the game. Your character could join the College of Venesection and make a variety of fascinatingblood cocktailsto feed to the most monstrous patrons of your made-up bar. And you can bet your ass she put a ‘u’ in ‘humours’ to make it sound more fantastical.) Did venesection work? No. No fucking way. It was primitive, brutal business, and was as likely to result in further infection or even death—but it was still one of their primary ways of dealing with disease for centuries.

Thing is, though it was a terrible practice for physicians, it served Lore as a very good metaphor for the problems among people.Thesepeople, in particular.

They had a lot of bad blood between them.

And it was building up inside them. The only way to get it out was to cut it out. And that meant Lore showing up with her knives out.

Sure, shecouldcompartmentalize. But here? She didn’t want to.

Not anymore.

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