Chapter 1: The Unintended Muse
The steam in the bathroom was a thick, woolly blanket, clinging to every surface. Darius moved under the spray, the water beating a lazy rhythm against his shoulders. The shower curtain, a sad vinyl thing printed with faded sailboats, swayed in the draft from the hallway door he’d left ajar for air. It was an old habit, born in this same cramped, chipped-linoleum bathroom where the lock had broken when he was fourteen.
He reached for the bar of soap, his movements easy, unhurried. This was the one place he could steal five minutes of peace from the joyous chaos of a full-family gathering. The rumble of overlapping conversations, the clatter of pans, his mother’s laughter—it all muted into a pleasant hum behind the closed door.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.
He didn’t think much of it. Probably someone heading to the other bathroom. He tipped his head back, rinsing the shampoo from his hair.
The creak came again, closer. Right outside the door.
Then a soft, confused rustle of papers. The door, caught by the draft, drifted open another inch. The sailboat curtain billowed inward, its edge parting just enough.
And there was Jamila, frozen in the hallway, her arms clutched around a disordered pile of her art portfolios.
Her eyes, wide and startled, flicked from his face, down, and then snapped back up. A sharp, audible gasp cut through the steam. Her cheeks flooded with a heat that had nothing to do with the bathroom’s humidity.
Darius simply blinked the water from his eyes. “Hey, Jams.”
“D-Darius,” she stammered, her voice a tight squeak. “Close the damn door.”
But she didn’t look away. Not immediately. Her artist’s brain, that detached, observant part of her, had already engaged—memorizing the unexpected lines, the play of shadow and water on skin, the sheer, unguarded anatomy of it. Her fingers, visibly tightening around her pencil where it was tucked behind her ear, twitched.
He didn’t move to cover himself. He just reached out a wet hand and hooked a finger around the edge of the curtain, giving it a gentle tug. It closed most of the gap, leaving just a sliver.
“Looking for something?” he asked, his voice calm, amused. He picked up the soap again.
“My sketchbook. The small moleskine. I left it in here this morning when I was… never mind.” She finally managed to wrench her gaze to the side, staring fixedly at the towel rack. Her face was still scarlet. “Could you not be so… cavalier?”
“Cavalier?” He chuckled, the sound warm and low under the splash of water. “It’s a bathroom, Jams. You’re the one who barged in.”
“I didn’t barge! The door was open. It’s a hazard. A public health hazard.” She was babbling now, flustered. “And Mom sent me to get the vanilla extract from the linen closet, which is, for some deranged reason, in here, and I saw my portfolio leaning against the hamper and—”
“Breathe, Jamila.”
She took a shaky breath. The initial shock was receding, replaced by a familiar, sibling-driven irritation. “Just… hurry up. And for God’s sake, fix that lock.”
“It’s been eleven years. I think it’s a permanent feature.” He turned off the water. The sudden silence was loud, filled only by the drip-drip from the showerhead and the distant sound of a football game from the living room TV. “Your sketchbook’s on the back of the toilet. Under that Home & Garden magazine from 2012.”
She risked a glance. The curtain was mostly closed. She saw his blurred shape moving, a towel being grabbed. She sidled in, keeping her body angled away, and snatched the small black book from beneath the dusty magazine. Her eyes, however, darted once, twice, to the narrow gap between the curtain and the wall. Part professional curiosity, part morbid fascination.
“You’re staring,” his voice came, muffled by the towel.
“I am not!”
“You are. It’s okay. I’m a good subject. All interesting planes and angles, right?” He pushed the curtain back with his shoulder, wrapped securely in a towel around his waist, his hair dripping. He was grinning, completely at ease.
She finally looked at him properly, meeting his eyes. The embarrassment cooled into dry sarcasm. “Your ego is the most interesting angle in this house, Dare. It’s a marvel of structural engineering.” She hugged the sketchbook to her chest. “Now, move. I have extract to find, and you’re blocking the closet.”
He stepped aside, leaning against the sink. He watched her rummage on the high shelf, pushing aside stacks of sheets. The familiarity of the scene—the argument, the teasing, the shared space—settled back over them like a well-worn coat.
She found the little brown bottle and turned, victorious. Her gaze lingered on him for a second, now that the crisis was over. “You know,” she said, her tone shifting to something more genuinely observant, “for a guy who just had an impromptu life-drawing session, you’re remarkably unbothered.”
He shrugged, a droplet of water tracing a path down his collarbone. “Why wouldn’t I be? It’s just a body. We all have one. Yours is currently hoarding the vanilla.”
She smirked, shaking her head as she squeezed past him into the hallway. “Freak.” It was a term of endearment.
“Artist,” he shot back, equally fond.
She paused in the hallway, the steam from the bathroom escaping past her in a cloud. The noise of the family gathering swelled to meet her. She looked back at him, the sketchbook secure in her hand, the image already etching itself into her memory—not in a weird way, but in the way a photographer notes interesting light. “Don’t use all the hot water.”
“No promises.”
She turned toward the kitchen, the fluster gone, replaced by a wry smile. Then her smile faltered. She looked down at the sketchbook in her hands, flipping it open absently. It fell to a recent page, a quick charcoal study of their father reading in his armchair.
Beneath it, on the next sheet, was something else. A series of rapid, agitated sketches she didn’t remember doing. Dark, angular shapes. A figure, blurred, as if running. And in the corner, a symbol that made her blood go cold—a rough, but unmistakable, hourglass with a crack down its middle.
She’d sleep-drawn again. It was happening more often lately. These pages were always a jolt, like finding a stranger’s diary mixed in with her own.
From the bathroom, she heard Darius humming. The normal, comforting sound anchored her. She slammed the book shut, the vanilla extract bottle cool in her other hand. She pushed the eerie sketches from her mind, attributing them to late-night espresso and stress over her final project.
For now, there was cake to bake, and a brother to tease about his lack of door-locking skills. The other thing, the dark shapes in the sketchbook, could wait. It had to.