Maya's Room

The burner phone felt like a live coal against Elena’s hip as she moved through the upstairs hallway. She had slipped back into the main house during the shift change at six, slipping through the mudroom while the night security team briefed the morning crew near the gate. Now, she was dressed in fresh clothes—a crisp white blouse and trousers—playing the role of the unflappable household manager, even as her hands trembled around a wicker laundry basket.

She couldn't keep the drive on her. If Dr. Thorne executed the psychiatric hold, they would strip-search her. She needed a hiding place that wasn't hers. A place Constance wouldn't look because she respected no one's privacy but her own—except, perhaps, the one person she was grooming for the throne.

Maya.

Elena pushed open the door to her stepdaughter’s room. It was a shrine to teenage indifference: piles of clothes on the floor, a vanity cluttered with expensive makeup, the heavy velvet curtains drawn tight against the morning sun. It smelled of vanilla body spray and stale secrets.

Elena stepped inside, leaving the door cracked. She moved quickly, abandoning the pretense of collecting laundry. She went to the bookshelf, pulling out a heavy Biology textbook. She hollowed out the spine in her mind, imagining slipping the silver drive inside, but it was too obvious.

She moved to the closet. Shoeboxes. Too cliché.

She checked the underside of the desk. Clean.

She needed a place that was permanent. A place that felt structural.

She knelt by the air return vent near the baseboard. It was screwed shut, painted over with the same cream lacquer as the trim. If she could slide the drive through the slats, it would sit in the ductwork, retrievable only with a magnet and a string.

She pulled the drive from her pocket. She brought it to the vent.

"You're doing it wrong."

Elena gasped, dropping the drive. It clattered onto the hardwood floor.

She spun around.

Maya was sitting on the window seat, hidden by the shadows of the drapes. She was wearing her silk pajamas, her knees pulled up to her chest, an unlit cigarette dangling loosely from her fingers. She looked older than sixteen. Her eyes were dark, circled by smudged eyeliner, and they held a terrifying lack of surprise.

"Maya," Elena stammered, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. "I didn't see you. I was just... cleaning."

"You don't clean," Maya said flatly. "You manage. And you're terrible at lying."

Elena stood up, instinctively stepping in front of the drive on the floor. "I knocked. You didn't answer."

"I never answer." Maya took the cigarette out of her mouth and tapped it against the window pane, though there was no ash. "You're looking for a place to put it. Whatever it is you stole from them."

Elena went still. "I didn't steal anything."

"Don't treat me like a child, Elena. It’s insulting." Maya unfolded her legs and stood up. She walked across the room, her bare feet silent on the wood. She stopped three feet away, looking down at the silver drive peeking out from under the toe of Elena’s loafer.

"My dad thinks you're crazy," Maya said. "Grandmother thinks you're a thief. But you're the only one who looks scared."

"I am scared," Elena admitted, the truth slipping out before she could stop it. "And you should be too."

Maya let out a short, sharp laugh. "I've been scared since I was six years old."

She knelt. Elena flinched, expecting her to grab the drive, to run to Constance, to earn her place in the hierarchy by betraying the interloper.

But Maya didn't touch the drive. She reached past it, gripping the edge of the vent cover. She didn't try to open it. She ran her finger along the inside of the slat, coming away with a smudge of gray dust.

"You can't put it in there," Maya said quietly.

"Why not?"

Maya looked up, her eyes wide and suddenly very young.

"Because that's where the camera is," she whispered.