had ever been neat or ordered. She slammed through the world, a tornado in the form of a girl, and left a trail of destruction behind her. That’s what she’d been like at seventeen, anyway. Maybe becoming a supermodel and fashion designer had changed that, but it seemed as impossible as switching out the bones of your skeleton.
Vivi and I moved through the apartment in eerie silence, trailing our fingertips over Grey’s possessions. The couches, the mirrors, the clocks and cabinets. It felt clandestine to be in someone else’s personal space like this. Like I could open any drawer or door or cupboard and there find my sister’s bare-naked soul, neatly folded. A thrill settled over me.
Suddenly I was ten years old again and obsessed with my big sister. Back then, Grey’s bedroom had been a temple in wartime, a place of worship I had to sneak into when its guardian was unawares. Whenever I knew she’d be out of the house for a couple of hours, I’d push open the door and start exploring. I only did it when I knew I could take my time, savor the experience. Her makeup bag was a favorite, a seemingly bottomless chest of treasure filled with glosses and glitters that left my skin sticky and shellacked. I wanted to live in her skin, to know what it was like to be as beautiful and mysterious as Grey Hollow.
But the apartment was not the home of the sister I knew. When Grey daydreamed about running away, it hadn’t been to a place like this. It had been to some rich, dark hidey-hole in Budapest or Prague, a place swaddled in velvet and brass. Vivi’s request to Grey was that the place have a library. All I wanted was black-and-white chessboard floors in the kitchen and bathrooms, like I had in all my houses in Sims 4 whenever I played. At thirteen, I’d considered it the height of opulence.
We found neither of those things here.
“It’s like an interior designer masturbated in here,” Vivi said, tapping her fingernails against a vase, “and came on everything.”
“Gross.”
“But true. None of this is Grey. She must’ve paid someone to do it. Either that or a reptilian shape-shifter is wearing her skin.”
“I didn’t know reptilian shape-shifters were renowned for their interior decorating skills.”
“And that’s why you’ll never be part of the Illuminati.”
The master bedroom was something out of a luxury hotel—chic, modern, soulless. The bed was made with neat hospital corners and there were no personal items on display, not so much as a hairbrush or photograph. I opened the walk-in closet. Here, too, it was painstakingly ordered. Rows and rows of unworn heels, bright as beetle backs. I ran my fingers over the clothes. Sequins and braided velvet and silk, all heavy and expensive. Oscar de la Renta, Vivienne Westwood, Elie Saab, Grey Hollow.
Vivi held up a pair of snakeskin pants. “The reptilian shape-shifter theory is starting to check out.”
“It doesn’t look like anyone has been here for weeks,” I said.
“It doesn’t look like anyone has been here ever.”
“I suppose she has a cleaner or something?”
Vivi trailed a finger over a shelf in the closet; there was no dust. “Has to be, right? Grey is not this tidy.”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
Vivi shrugged. “I don’t know if we need to worry. Maybe she never even made it home from Paris.”
I looked back at Grey’s closet. The green tulle gown she’d worn to Cuckoo Club in her Instagram post from five days ago was wedged in there, pressed and lifeless now that it didn’t have her body to animate it. “If she’s in London, I think I know where she might be.”
* * *
It felt like some holy ritual. Something I had waited my whole life for. To sit where she sat, to paint my face with her makeup, to slip my body into her clothes. To become Grey.
We thumbed through her wardrobe and draped ourselves in her vestments. Even Vivi, who was generally unimpressed by fashion unless it was ripped or studded, was breathless and giddy at the prospect of unlimited access to Grey’s wardrobe. We tried on piece after piece. Eventually, I settled on a gold minidress and a green silk coat that drifted over my skin like cobwebs. Vivi chose a cardinal-red power suit with cigarette pants and lipstick to match, her peach fuzz slicked flat to her skull with shimmery gel.
I called Grey again and again during the cab ride to Cuckoo Club,