The Hot Mess Collective, Vol. 2 Ch 16: Going Live

The box sat on Nori's welcome mat, dead center over the O in WELCOME.

She stopped three doors short of it with her keys bunched in one fist and a paper bag from the blood bank on Atlantic Avenue in the other. The hallway smelled of Mr. Okafor's curry and the pine cleaner the super used on Thursdays. Under both, faint and wrong, was something sweet. Lilies left too long in a vase. Honey gone to sugar at the bottom of a jar. The air around her door ran colder than the rest of the corridor, cold enough that the hair along her forearms lifted under her jacket sleeves.

It was a nice box. The wood was dark and close-grained, a kind she couldn't name, carved along the lid with leaves and thorns. Someone had polished it until the hallway bulb showed in the lid. It was the sort of gift a suitor from an old Court left for a woman he meant to marry in the spring. Nori had grown up in the Undercity, and the Undercity taught you early that the prettiest things in the Fold were usually the ones that wanted you dead.

Her foot was already drawn back to kick it down the hall. She stopped with her weight on one leg. Some work broke open when you hit it, and whatever was inside came out angry and stayed in the carpet for a year. She stepped wide around the mat, got the key into the lock on the second try, and slid inside without turning her back on the doorway. She put the paper bag in the fridge without looking at it. In the kitchen drawer, under a fistful of takeout menus and a dead Bic lighter, she found the steak tongs. Stainless steel, one tip bent from the night Maeve used them to fish a phone out of the toilet.

She went back out and picked the box up at arm's length. It weighed less than it should have. She carried it inside and set it in the middle of the coffee table, then cleared everything else away. Two mugs with rings in them, a stack of GlimGlam brand-deal contracts she hadn't signed, the remote, a bowl of hair ties. She stood over the table and kept the tongs raised.

An hour ago she'd been sitting on the floor of Rhys's studio with a legal pad on her knee, crossing out topic after topic for a podcast she was no longer allowed to make. The Cour's lawyers had been very clear about what the podcast could not discuss, and their list had covered most of what the podcast was. Rhys had suggested restaurant reviews. She had suggested the best blood-bank bars in Queens, a history of Undercity diners, a listener call-in about roommates. She'd written VAMPIRE SKINCARE?? and underlined it twice before Rhys took the pen away from her.

There was no lock on the box. A faint pressure sat around the lid, a resistance she could feel in her back teeth when she leaned close. She knew that kind of seal. It opened for one person and stayed shut for everyone else. She put out her index finger and touched the carved thorns, and the pressure let go all at once. Something in the wood sighed. She used the tongs to lift the lid and lay it back on its hinges.

A rose lay on black velvet. Long stem, a single bloom, the red of an old scab. It had been dead a long time, or it had died very fast. Every petal had gone to paper. The leaves had curled into small brown fists against the stem, and when the air from the vent touched them, one flaked loose and drifted down onto the velvet. The sweet smell came off it thick enough to taste at the back of her throat.

She knew what it was for. Not killing her. Killing her would have been loud, and it would have made her into a story. This was slower and cheaper. Whoever opened the box was supposed to dry out a little at a time, until she stopped wanting things. Stopped pitching. Stopped recording. Stopped getting out of bed for anything but blood and sleep. There was no card, and she didn't need one. The Cour du Sang Précieux had sent lawyers first, three letters on cream stock that smelled faintly of iron. This was the fourth letter.

Nori took a step back, and the backs of her knees hit the arm of the sofa. The lawyers had been a game. Humans in pressed suits, conference rooms on high floors, sentences she could argue with. This was on her coffee table, in her apartment, between her dying pothos and the throw blanket Imani had bought her at a stoop sale in Park Slope. Someone had climbed her stairs. Someone had stood on her mat and known which door was hers.

Her head filled up with instructions. Pull the episode. Delete the blog. Post an apology and cry in the right places. Call the landlord about breaking the lease. Go somewhere with no address. She dug the burner phone out of her jacket and dialed Rhys, and her thumb missed the keys twice.

"Nori?" Rhys said. "What's wrong?"

The sound of their voice nearly undid her. "They sent something to the apartment," she said. "A box with a dead rose in it. It's not just dead, Rhys."

She told them the rest. The smell, the cold, the seal that opened for her finger and nobody else's. Rhys didn't interrupt. When she finished, the line was silent long enough that she pulled the burner away from her ear to see if the call had dropped.

"That's it," Rhys said. Their voice had gone flat and tight, none of the studio warmth left in it. "It's done. Don't touch it again. I'm coming over."

They hung up before she could answer. Nori sat down on the sofa and put the burner face-down on her knee. It was over, then. Rhys had said so, and Rhys was usually right about the things that mattered. She could pack the duffel at the back of her closet. She could stay on Sayo's couch for a month, or go upstate, or go anywhere the Cour didn't keep a map of. The podcast could die. There were worse things than being someone who used to have a podcast.

Her personal phone was in her other hand. She didn't remember taking it out. Her thumb moved through GlimGlam out of habit, past a latte, past someone's engagement ring, past an ad for SPF 100 made for the photosensitive community. Then it stopped on a notification from four days ago that she'd seen and never opened. Maeve had posted.

The picture filled the screen. Maeve, straight into the lens, no glamour at all. Purple under her eyes. Hair in a knot held up with a pencil. The points of her ears bare and sharp and not apologizing for anything. She looked cornered, and she also looked ready to bite the next hand that reached for her. The caption read: Here. This is it. No glamour, no filters, no bullshit Fae princess fantasy. Take it or leave it.

Nori scrolled into the comments. Court accounts with crests for avatars, calling Maeve a disgrace, a mongrel, an embarrassment to her mother's line. Under them, outnumbering them, came everyone else. Half-bloods. Unregistered. Kids from the Undercity with no Court at all. A changeling in Ohio who said she'd taken her glamour off at work for the first time in eleven years and nobody had died. Thousands of them. Maeve had taken the thing she was most ashamed of and pinned it to the front of her shirt.

Nori looked up from the phone at the rose. It hadn't moved. Another leaf had come off while she wasn't watching and lay curled on the velvet beside the stem. The vent ticked on again, and the smell crossed the room to her.

They wanted her quiet. That was the whole point of the box. A threat like this worked because it stayed between the person who sent it and the person who got it, and nobody else ever had to know it existed. If she ran, the box had done its job. If she apologized, it had done its job twice, and the next person who asked the Cour a question would get a box of their own.

She thought about what the rose would look like under a ring light.

***

Rhys came through the door twenty minutes later with a go-bag over one shoulder and their keys still hanging in the lock. They stopped two steps in.

The armchair had been dragged to the middle of the room. Nori's phone sat on its tripod six feet away, aimed at the chair. The Cauldron mic stood on its boom arm at mouth height, its silver grille catching the lamp. On the coffee table, turned so the lens could see inside, the box sat open and the rose lay on its velvet. Nori was on her knees beside the table, tilting the reading lamp an inch at a time.

"What are you doing?" Rhys said.

"Lighting." She tilted the lamp another inch, and the shadows of the dead petals sharpened on the velvet. "The red reads brown on camera if it's too warm."

Rhys let the go-bag slide off their shoulder. It hit the floor with a thump. "We said you were leaving."

"I'm going live."

Rhys stared at her. "Live," they said. "On GlimGlam. From your apartment, with your bookshelf in frame, so anyone who wants your address can match the spines." They took a step toward the table and stopped short of it. "Nori. You're poking the nest."

Nori sat back on her heels. "They already know where I live," she said.

Rhys opened their mouth and closed it again. Their eyes went to the box, then the door, then the box. They didn't say anything.

"They walked up my stairs," Nori said. "They stood on my mat. They knew which door." She got up and switched off the overhead so only the lamp was left. "Leo's sleeping on a cot in a storage unit in Red Hook because he talked to me. If I pack a bag tonight, he stays there."

"And if you don't, they send a second box."

"Then I'll film that one too."

Rhys didn't laugh. Their hands hung at their sides. They looked at her for a long time, and she let them. For two weeks there had been a crack running between them, a slow argument about how loud to be and who paid for it, carried on in half sentences and dishes left in the sink. She didn't try to fix it now. She went back to the lamp.

Behind her, she heard Rhys bend and pick up the go-bag. They carried it to the corner by the radiator and stood it upright against the wall. Then they came to the tripod and crouched to look at the screen.

"Your mic's too close," they said. "You'll pop every P. Pull the boom back two fingers." They reached past her and did it themselves. "And kill the reading lamp. Use the floor one and bounce it off the ceiling."

For the next ten minutes Nori did what she was told. Rhys ran her through a level check, made her say "Blood and Boundaries" six times and "Précieux" four, and frowned at the waveform on their own phone until it sat where they wanted it. They moved the floor lamp so the light came down soft from above, then nudged the box a quarter turn so the bloom faced the lens. They pulled a black hoodie off the back of a kitchen chair and draped it over the bookshelf. When they were done, the room on Nori's screen looked like nobody's living room. One chair, one woman, one piece of evidence on a table.

Nori watched the waveform jump each time she spoke. In all the time she'd been doing the show, she had never said the Cour's name into a microphone without reading it back first. Her sponsor contracts had a clause about it. Her blog had a disclaimer at the bottom in eight-point gray. Tonight there would be no read-back and no disclaimer, only the rose and whatever came out of her mouth next to it.

Rhys stepped out of frame and stood behind the tripod and folded their arms. "Whenever you're ready," they said.

Nori sat. The rose was eighteen inches from her left hand. Her mouth had gone dry, and when she ran her tongue along her teeth she found her fangs had come down without being asked. She pressed them back up. She looked into the small black eye of the lens and touched the red button.

LIVE appeared in the corner. The viewer count sat at zero, then eleven, then sixty. Two hundred. Nine hundred and forty. Comments came up the side of the screen too fast to read, hearts and question marks and somebody typing NORI in capitals over and over. She didn't look at them.

"Hi, everyone," she said. Her voice came out level, the studio voice, the one Rhys had spent a year teaching her. "If you listen to Blood and Boundaries, you know we talk about power in the Fold. Who has it. Who it gets used on."

Her hand went into frame and picked up the rose by its stem. She turned it slowly in the light so the camera could see the curled leaves and the petals gone thin as onion skin.

"This was on my doormat an hour ago," she said. "It came in that box." She tipped her head toward the table. "Hand carved. Very nice. It's a desiccation hex, and it isn't built to kill anybody."

She let that sit. The count crossed three thousand.

"It's built to make you dry up," she said. "Stop wanting things. Stop talking. Stop showing up." She laid the rose back on the velvet. "You get a little quieter every week, and one day you're gone, and nobody can prove anyone did anything."

At the edge of her vision, Rhys had a hand over their mouth.

"Three weeks ago I started reporting a story about blood farms," Nori said. "Feeding houses in the outer boroughs, run for the Cour du Sang Précieux. Their lawyers sent me three letters. This is the fourth."

The comments jumped. She saw the Cour's name go past in somebody else's typing, then again, then a crest emoji with a question mark after it.

"I'm not going to tell you how I know who sent it," she said. "You can decide that for yourselves." She leaned toward the Cauldron, and the lamp caught the edge of the grille. "I'll tell you what's in the next episode. It's about this box, who makes them, who pays for them, and how many of you have opened one."

She looked straight into the lens. The comments had stopped scrolling for a second, or she had stopped seeing them.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said. "New episode Thursday."

She reached out and ended the stream.

The apartment was very quiet. The radiator ticked. Downstairs, Mr. Okafor's TV was playing a game show at full volume, and a buzzer went off and a crowd cheered for someone else's new car. Nori's hands had started shaking at some point during the last sentence, and now they wouldn't stop. She put them flat on her knees and pressed down.

Rhys came around the tripod. They crouched in front of her chair so their eyes were level with hers, and for a moment they only looked at her. Then they put their hands over hers on her knees and held them still.

"You peaked twice," they said. "Both on 'Précieux.' Nobody's going to notice."

Nori laughed. It came out wet and too loud, and she didn't care. Rhys was smiling, the crooked one she hadn't seen in two weeks, and they didn't let go of her hands.

Her personal phone buzzed against the arm of the chair. Then it buzzed again. Then it didn't stop, one long rattle against the upholstery, and when she picked it up the screen was solid notifications. Likes. Shares. Maeve in all caps: FUCKING QUEEN. Imani, a row of fire emojis and then I'm coming over, don't argue. Sayo, one word: Good.

Under them, the encrypted inbox showed a number she had never seen on it before. She opened it.

The usernames were new. Strings of letters and digits, default gray avatars, accounts made in the last half hour.

They did something like this to my sister. Not a rose. A comb. We need to talk.

The blood farm story is true. My cousin went into one in Jamaica, Queens, in March. I have the address. I have photos.

The Cour sent me a box in 2019. I closed my shop. I never told anyone. I'm telling you.

My mother kept their books for eleven years. She made copies.

Nori kept scrolling. There were more under those, forty-one, then forty-six while she watched. Rhys leaned in beside her to read over her shoulder, and neither of them said anything. Their breath smelled of the cinnamon gum they chewed in the studio.

On the coffee table, another petal came loose from the rose and settled on the velvet.

Nori opened the first message, put her thumb on the keyboard, and typed: I'm listening.

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