Room 12. Bring your own lock.

The knob was unscrewed. I keep saying that to myself in the dark and it doesn't get smaller. Someone reached for that mic stand while I wasn't looking — while I was at the makeup mirror, or in the loo, or laughing with Heena's assistant about Sunday's mehendi — and turned it until the boom was loose enough to fall on the first forehead that passed under. Mine.

Concealer held. The woman in pista green didn't. "Are you safe at home, beta?" She didn't even lower her voice. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to ask her which home — the one with the lock I haven't changed since June, or the one I've been sleeping in with one eye open since the last note. I smiled instead. Took her card. Turned her concern into a December sangeet booking before the gulab jamun came. That is what I do — I take the thing aimed at my chest and I invoice it.

But the note.

Room 12. Bring your own lock.

I have been staring at it on my dresser for an hour. The handwriting is not Niharika's — Niharika dictates, we covered that. It is not Heena's either. Heena writes in caps like a WhatsApp forward from her mother. This is someone else. Someone who knows my flat number (twelve — I am laughing now, the way you laugh when the universe stops being subtle) or is mocking me with the language of an Airbnb listing. Or both.