Chapter 5: Guinevere
The apartment building's address led me to a property management website with a list of available units. Not helpful—I needed current residents, not vacancies.
I switched tactics. Social media.
NYU's creative writing program had a public page. Faculty, events, student spotlights. If the blonde was connected to the university—and her route suggested she was—she might appear somewhere.
Two hours of scrolling. Coffee going cold beside the laptop. My neck cramping from Fin's cheap desk chair.
Then—her face.
"MFA candidate Guinevere Beck will be reading from her work at the Fall Showcase..."
The photo matched. Same blonde hair, same uncertain smile. Guinevere Beck. I said it out loud, testing the name.
Her personal social media was semi-private, but the public portions told me plenty. Instagram curated for aesthetic—coffee shops, sunset views, stacks of books arranged just so. Twitter for writerly thoughts and literary opinions. A personal website with a bio, publication credits, and a professional headshot.
Aspiring writer. Teaching assistant at NYU. Originally from somewhere in the suburbs—Long Island maybe, based on old tagged photos. Complicated relationship status suggested by cryptic posts about love and disappointment.
I built her profile in my Memory Palace. Room dedicated. Walls filling with data.
By noon, I knew her schedule well enough to predict where she'd be.
The coffee shop near campus was packed with students. I grabbed a corner table, ordered something I didn't want, and waited.
She arrived at 12:47 PM. Not alone—three women trailing behind her, laughing at something one of them had said.
I positioned myself two tables away. Earbuds in, book open, the picture of a guy studying alone. Close enough to catch fragments of conversation but not close enough to seem interested.
Beck sat with her back to me. Good. Made surveillance easier.
The friends arranged themselves around a small table. Four women total. Beck and three others.
One dominated the conversation immediately. Dark hair, expensive clothes, posture like she owned the room and everyone in it. When she touched Beck's arm—which happened often—her fingers lingered half a second too long.
"Peach, seriously, it wasn't that bad."
Beck's voice. Soft, a little self-deprecating.
"It was mortifying." Peach. The expensive one. "You can't just read a piece about sex in front of Professor Keller. He's like eighty years old. He probably had a heart attack."
"He's fifty-seven," one of the other women said. Annika, based on the name drop later. "And I'm pretty sure he's read worse."
"The point," Peach continued, "is that Beck needs better boundaries. Don't you, sweetheart?"
The endearment landed strangely. Possessive. Intimate. Beck shifted in her seat.
"I think it was brave," the third woman offered. Lynn—I caught the name when Annika addressed her directly.
They talked for an hour. I listened to approximately forty percent of it. Enough to map dynamics.
Peach Salinger—wealthy, controlling, obsessed with Beck in a way that made my Detection flicker uncertainly. Not cold like Joe. Not predatory in the same way. Something else. Possessive love, maybe. The kind that smothered.
Annika and Lynn were satellites. Nice enough, but orbiting Peach's gravity.
Beck was the center. Uncertain, seeking approval, talented but unconfident. Exactly the type Joe would target.
When they left, I let them go. Followed at a distance only far enough to confirm Beck was heading to campus. Then I broke off and redirected.
I needed to see the boyfriend.
Benji wasn't hard to find.
Beck's social media had tagged him in enough photos to establish his identity: Benji Donovan, co-founder of some artisanal soda company, Instagram influencer in the bro-entrepreneur space. His posts were all product shots and "hustle culture" quotes.
They were meeting at a bar in the Village at seven. Beck had mentioned it to Peach during lunch—dinner with Benji, already dreading the conversation.
I arrived at 6:45, took a seat at the bar with sightlines to the door, ordered a beer I planned to nurse for hours.
Beck came in at 7:10. Benji was already there, booth in the corner, phone in hand, barely looking up when she approached.
The Detection stayed quiet. Benji wasn't a predator—just an asshole. Self-absorbed, dismissive, treating Beck like an inconvenience rather than a person.
They ordered drinks. Talked without connecting. I watched his attention drift to his phone every thirty seconds, watched her try to recapture it with increasingly desperate conversation.
When they kissed goodbye—brief, perfunctory—there was no warmth in it.
Beck left first. Benji stayed, ordered another drink, started texting someone.
I filed him in the Memory Palace: Benji Donovan. Boyfriend. Obstacle. Joe will want him gone.
The logic was clear. Joe saw Beck as his perfect woman. Benji stood between them. In Joe's mind, that made Benji a problem to solve.
And Joe solved problems permanently.
If Benji died, I'd weaken. The cosmic rules were absolute. Every kill Joe completed drained my power.
Benji couldn't die. Which meant Benji had to leave—voluntarily or otherwise—before Joe made that choice for him.
I finished my beer and left the bar. The evening air was cool, autumn settling into the city.
Tomorrow, I'd research Benji's company. Find leverage. Something I could use to extract him from Beck's orbit without Joe needing to kill anyone.
But first—a test.
Mooney's Rare Books was still open when I arrived. The sign said 7 PM close; it was 6:42.
This was stupid. Risky. Potentially mission-ending if it went wrong.
I pushed through the door anyway.
The bell chimed. Joe looked up from the counter.
The Detection slammed into me like a physical force. Cold pressure against my skull, my chest, my spine. Not aggressive—just present. The constant background radiation of a killer at rest.
"Can I help you find something?"
His voice was warm. Practiced. The same tone he'd used on Beck yesterday.
I made my expression vague. Uninterested. Let my posture slump into "browser who won't buy anything."
"Just looking."
The Social Invisibility wasn't a conscious thing—more like letting myself fade. Not making eye contact. Not engaging. Becoming background noise in Joe's mental landscape.
He nodded once and went back to whatever he'd been reading.
I browsed. Let my fingers trail across spines. Picked up a book, examined it, set it down. Moved to another shelf. Standard bookstore behavior. Nothing memorable.
Joe glanced at me once more. A reflexive check—who's in my space?—and then away.
I didn't register. Whatever predatory calculus ran in his head, I didn't factor. A nobody. A waste of attention.
After ten minutes, I left without purchasing anything.
The bell chimed again. The door closed behind me.
I walked three blocks before my hands stopped shaking.
The power worked. Social Invisibility, Phase 1—weak, fragile, but functional. Joe had looked right at me and seen nothing worth remembering.
One more tool in the arsenal.
The evening stretched ahead. I bought tacos from a cart vendor—good ones this time, lime and cilantro and perfectly seasoned meat—and ate them on a park bench while the city moved around me.
Beck in the center. Joe circling. Benji floating unaware.
I needed to move fast. Joe's obsession was already building. Another week and Benji would be in real danger.
The tacos were gone too quickly. I licked salsa from my fingers and started walking home.
Tomorrow, the Benji problem.
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