The Last Train
to Blackwell

I buried her over a week ago, but it still feels like yesterday.

The only answer she left me was in an envelope, my name on the front in her careful hand, lying in the drawer of my nightstand. After a few deep breaths, I finally open the letter — a single unlined page, folded in neat thirds — and the tears I’ve been holding win anyway. Through the blur I can only make out a few lines, in her sloping cursive:

Take the midnight train to Blackwell, and wear the dress I bought you. What waits there is yours now. I’m only sorry I couldn’t put it into your hands myself. Be on the platform before twelve — they don’t hold the door for anyone, not even me.

We argued about this black velvet dress for an hour at The Gilded Seam, it was something I would never wear, but for her I gave in. I grab a few days’ worth of clothes from the closet, some toiletries and the velvet dress and fold it neatly on top. She said wear it. I packed it instead. She got the dress on me once, and once was the deal.

It’s past eleven when I reach the station, the platform’s wet and I’m the only thing standing on it. Nothing’s open. Nothing’s lit but the platform itself, and no one knows I’m here — I didn’t tell anyone I was coming, because there was no one left to tell. Grief makes you obedient.

The doors open. The shadows bend and move around a light that doesn’t exist, a glow that dies before it reaches the corners. It smells of leather and bourbon and wilting roses, that sweetness that sits right before rot — and the carpet kicks the scent up with every step, like the carriage exhaled. Then I understand I’m not alone.

A man sits by the far window with a book open in his hands, drenched in shadow, forcing me to take him in pieces. An antique pocket watch lies open on the table at his elbow, its hands stopped at 12:03. His eyes are pale grey, close to no color at all, and they catch on me and stay there, longer than a stranger’s should. As if I’m a page he already knew was coming and dreaded anyway.

“You’re a long way from anywhere,” he says.

“What do I call you, seeing as you’re going to be so useful.”

“Dorian.”

“Is that your name or your warning label?”

“Both.”

“Stay still.”

“Why—why are you helping me?”

“I’m not.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Trying to remember you’re not mine to want.”