Page 49 of Make Them Bleed
I take my coffee to the living room and drop to my knees in front of the ottoman that doubles as my archives. I pull out the shoebox that saysSPARE CABLESand spill its actual contents: ticket stubs, receipts, thrifted polaroids, a tangle of lanyards from launch parties, and a rubber-banded stack of Arby’s old notebooks I can’t bring myself to throw away. My hands shake as I flip them open.
One is a brand log: ideas, quotes, schedules written in her loopy script. Another is a mess of doodles and product names: HOLO-BURST circled, then crossed out, then scrawled withPAY US, CLOWNS. The third is the one I’m looking for: a compact black Moleskine she used for randoms—lines with hearts, lists of restaurants, a stray lyric that stuck in her head for a day.
Two pages from the back:Nico – Atlas Room / smoked honey / 10:30.No date. The handwriting is frenzied happy. Beneath it:no photos (his rule)and a ridiculous winky face.
Atlas Room. I blink. That’s the cocktail bar down by the river with the velvet booths and the bartenders in suspenders who think they’re in 1927. I’ve been there exactly twice. It’s the kind of place you whisper at.
My heart starts a fast drum loop. I grab my laptop and typeAtlas Room Arby Kateinto the search bar. Nothing obvious. But inmy camera roll, I find a boomerang from the night we celebrated her 500K milestone at Atlas—neon sign flicker, a coupe glass catching light, her forearm sliding into frame to boop the rim of my drink. The photo is mostly wrists and glass, but there’s a reflection in the mirror behind the bar—the suggestion of a man’s shoulder just beyond her elbow, a cuff with thin blue stitching. My stomach flips.
I zoom until the pixels break. The cuff has a tiny emblem stitched near the button—an anchor.
Shipping. Sailing. Traveling. An anchor doesn’t make a sailor, but Arrow’s always talking about patterns.
Arby’s archived stories are locked on her account, but I have backups. I dig in my cloud and find theClose Friendsexport Render helped me pull. I scrub the thumbnails for green-ringed dots, and there—blink and you miss it—a story from months before she died: a two-second shot of a matchbook withATLAS ROOMin gold foil and a scribble under it:you + smoked honey = trouble. The background is dim; the audio is mostly bar noise. Then, muffled, a male voice with the kind of soft Mediterranean consonants movies hire for flirty villains:Bright girl.Arby laughs. Story ends.
Bright girl. The phrase punches me in the sternum. In one of my own voice memos, recorded weeks ago, I had whispered that someone at the cemetery called me bright girl and I hated that it made my stomach flutter. That wasn’t the cemetery man. That was Arby’s man.
I scroll through the rest. One blurry image of a hand with a signet ring holding a coupe glass. The ring has a crest on it—maybe a gryphon? Maybe a lion? Wealthy frat? Secret society? My pulse spikes. I screenshot and tilt the image, boostingcontrast until the crest pops a little. Not a gryphon. A stylized wave under a compass rose.
Marina. My mouth goes dry.
I googleSaint Pierce private marina compass rose crest. A logo pops up that’s so close it makes my skin prickle: and the Marina Club logo pops up. I remember Render mentioning Gray’sbreakfast at the Marina Clubwith Valentino. My heart ricochets. Nico and Gray could be neighbors. Or coworkers.
Okay. So: Nico probably belongs to the Marina Club. Wears a signet ring with their crest. Drinks smoked honey cocktails at Atlas. Calls womenbright girllike it’s a line.
I stand, adrenaline spiking so hard my knees go loose. I yank on jeans and a sweater, stuff pepper spray into my pocket, and cram my feet into boots. The coffee is half-cold and goes down like penance. I don’t text Arrow. If I involve them, they’ll overprotect me until I sit on my hands.
I grab the Moleskine, tuck it into my bag, and tell the quiet apartment, “I’m going to find the man who smiles when he calls people bright.”
Outside, Saint Pierce is all low clouds and puddled sidewalks. The wind tastes like the river. I walk fast to Atlas Room because taxis in my neighborhood pretend I’m invisible. The sign over the door hums faint blue. Inside, it’s all velvet and whisper and the clink of old-fashioned glasses conquered by beautiful ice.
The bartender is a woman with silver hair in a low knot and a tattoo of a honeybee on her wrist. Her name tag says Megan. Her eyebrows askyou okay?the second she clocks my face.
“I know you,” she says gently.
“Nice to meet you.” I hold out my hand and she shakes it. Then she laughs.
“However, I don’t agree that Scream is clever with their commentary on the horror genre.”
My eyes widen. “How can you not? They are depicting classic horror movie tropes while being stalked and murdered by said horror tropes. It’s brilliant.”
“What brings you to the Atlas Room midday?”
“Research,” I say, shimmying onto a stool. I pull Arby’s Moleskine from my bag and lay it on the bar like a talisman. When Megan sees the pages, her expression shifts—recognition, then careful neutrality.
“You knew her,” I say.
Megan nods, lips softening. “She ordered like she was flirting with the menu. Wanted to be surprised and still get what she liked.”
“She wrotesmoked honeynext to this place’s name.” I slide the notebook so Megan can see the line. “Did she come here with a man named Nico?”
Megan’s fingers go still on the bar rag. “Pretty boy,” she says finally. “Older than the crowd. Tailored suits you wanted to touch. Accent that made tips appear in his wake.”
“Accent?”
“Not thick. Just rounded edges, like the vowels were on vacation.” She smiles, then sobers. “Was that…something?”
“I don’t know yet.” My voice wobbles. “Did he say his last name?”
