Ellis found Dominic sitting up.
Three days since their first encounter, and Dominic Ashford no longer thrashed against restraints. The man sat upright in the hospital bed, back pressed to the raised mattress, hands folded in his lap like a penitent. The rot had returned—black tendrils creeping up from Dominic's collarbone toward his jaw—but less aggressively than before. Manageable. Almost.
Dominic's eyes tracked Ellis as she entered the quarantine room. Green, sharp, too aware.
"You came back." Dominic's voice had cleared since their first session, no longer garbled by fever and decay.
"I said I would." Ellis set her bag on the medical cart, pulled out fresh gloves. The ritual of preparation gave Ellis something to do with her hands besides acknowledge the way Dominic watched her—like Ellis was salvation or damnation, possibly both.
"I didn't kill her."
Ellis's hands stilled on the glove box. Every accused person said those words. Every client who'd lost someone to their own hands spoke the same refrain. Ellis had learned to let the claims slide past without catching, like rain on glass.
"I know how that sounds." Dominic leaned forward slightly, and the rot on his neck pulsed. "Every murderer says that. But I loved Thea. I would never—" Dominic's voice cracked on the last word, splintering into something raw.
Ellis pulled on the gloves with sharp, efficient movements. "My job isn't to judge. It's to keep you alive."
"That's it? You don't wonder? You touch me, you see—" Dominic gestured vaguely at his chest, where Ellis would soon place her palms. "You see everything. And you don't have questions?"
Ellis had questions. Too many. The kind that kept Ellis awake at four in the morning surrounded by printouts and crime scene details. But asking meant involvement. Asking meant caring beyond the clinical transaction.
"Tell me about your blackouts," Ellis said, betraying herself. "When did they start?"
Dominic's expression shifted—surprise, then something like relief. "Three years ago. Car accident on Route 9. Minor head trauma, or so they said. Since then, I lose time sometimes. Minutes. Occasionally hours."
Ellis moved to the bedside, close enough to smell the antiseptic failing to mask decay. "Dissociative amnesia?"
"That's what my neurologist called it. Stress triggers it. Big presentations at work, arguments with—" Dominic stopped. "Arguments with Thea. I'd lose ten minutes, find myself in a different room with no memory of walking there."
"And the night she died?"
"Six hours." Dominic met Ellis's eyes, and Ellis saw something she hadn't expected—genuine confusion. Not guilt trying to hide. Confusion. "I remember coming home from work at seven. Thea was in the kitchen, making dinner. Pasta, I think. We talked about something mundane. Grocery list? I don't—it's hazy. Next clear memory is one AM. Waking up. Blood on my hands. Thea beneath me on the bathroom floor."
Ellis placed her palms on Dominic's chest, felt the rot pulse beneath her hands like a second heart. "The police said you called 911."
"I don't remember doing it." Dominic's voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't remember anything between seven and one. Six hours just—gone."
Ellis pulled.
The grief slammed into Ellis with less violence than before but more clarity. Dominic's memories flooded Ellis's awareness, sharper now, more complete.
Thea in white, spinning in her wedding dress, laughing at something Dominic said off-camera. The way sunlight caught her red hair, turned it copper and gold. Pure joy radiating from every gesture.
The memory felt genuine. Untainted by resentment or hidden anger.
An argument in their living room. Something about Dominic working late again, missing dinner with Thea's parents. Thea's frustration palpable but proportional. Normal couple friction, not rage. Dominic apologizing, meaning it. Thea accepting, moving on.
Ellis searched the memory for warning signs—escalating tension, controlling behavior, the small cruelties that preceded violence. Found nothing.
Thea in their bedroom, evening light painting everything amber. She turned toward Dominic, mouth moving, saying something Ellis couldn't hear. The audio cut out like corrupted footage. Just Thea's lips forming words, her expression—what? Sad? Afraid? Determined?
Then darkness.
Complete void where memory should exist. Not black like closing your eyes. Absence. The space where six hours used to live, now just—nothing.
Waking. Bathroom tiles cold against Dominic's knees. Something wet and warm coating Dominic's hands. Looking down. Blood. Too much blood. Thea's body—
Ellis gasped and pulled harder, dragging the rot into herself. Ellis's veins darkened, visible through the skin of her forearms. The grief tasted the same as before—sweet and bitter, burnt sugar and copper—but Ellis detected something new underneath. Confusion. Genuine bewilderment mixed with the horror.
Ellis broke contact, staggered back. Dominic's chest heaved, his rot receded by forty percent, maybe more. The black tendrils retreated toward Dominic's heart, coiling tighter.
"What do you see?" Dominic watched Ellis with desperate intensity. "When you touch me, what do you see?"
Ellis stripped off the gloves, tossed them in the biohazard bin. Professional distance. Maintain professional distance. "Fragments. Memory isn't linear during cleansing. I get pieces."
"Do you see me killing her?"
"I see what you remember. You don't remember killing her."
"Because I didn't."
Ellis turned toward the door, needing space, needing air not thick with Dominic's grief and Ellis's own dangerous curiosity. "The blackout leaves a gap. I can't see what isn't there."
"Then you believe me." Not a question. A plea.
Ellis's hand froze on the door handle. Belief was irrelevant. Belief meant investment. "I believe you experienced a six-hour dissociative episode. What happened during that episode—" Ellis stopped. "That's not my job to determine."
"But you have doubt." Dominic sat forward, chains rattling. "I can see it. You're wondering."
Ellis left without answering.
The brownstone's second floor smelled like coffee gone cold and printer ink. Ellis sat cross-legged on the hardwood, surrounded by paper—news articles printed from the hospital's provided files, screenshots of social media posts, timeline reconstructions Ellis had built at two in the morning when sleep proved impossible.
Thea Ashford stared up from a dozen photos. Beautiful. Red hair, bright smile, the kind of face that cameras loved. Every image showed vitality, warmth, the glow of someone comfortable in her own skin.
Ellis picked up a photo from Thea's Instagram—Thea at a fundraiser for the pediatric ward where she worked, wearing blue scrubs and holding a toy elephant. The caption read: Grateful for every moment with these amazing kids. #blessed #livingmybestlife
Six weeks before her death.
Ellis shuffled through the timeline. Three months before Thea died, the couple photos dwindled. Thea alone at a coffee shop. Thea alone on a hiking trail. Thea alone at the beach. Where previous posts featured Dominic prominently—anniversary dinners, weekend trips, casual home photos—the final months showed erasure. Not absence. Erasure.
The captions shifted too. Less specific, more generic. Trust the process. Everything happens for a reason. New beginnings.
Ellis had spent fifteen years avoiding exactly this—the deep dive, the investigation, the caring about context beyond rot severity. Clients came, Ellis cleansed them, clients left. Clean transactions. No contamination.
Now Ellis sat on her floor at 4 AM, analyzing a dead woman's social media for clues to—what? Proof of Dominic's innocence? Evidence of his guilt? Something to explain why his grief tasted different, why Ellis craved another session, why doubt had taken root where professional detachment used to live?
"This isn't healthy."
Ellis looked up. Maya stood in the doorway, backlit by hallway light, expression caught between concern and frustration.
"I'm trying to understand the case." Ellis gestured at the papers surrounding her like evidence in a murder investigation. Wrong comparison. This was a murder investigation.
"You've never tried to understand before." Maya stepped into the room, surveyed the chaos. "You cleanse and move on. What's different about him?"
Ellis opened her mouth. Closed it. Couldn't articulate the difference because naming it meant admitting vulnerability. Dominic's grief made Ellis feel. Made the numbness crack. Made Ellis want things—sensation, connection, the taste of being alive even if that aliveness came secondhand through someone else's trauma.
"The case is complicated," Ellis said finally.
"The case." Maya crouched beside Ellis, picked up a photo of Dominic and Thea from their wedding day—both radiant, both certain. "You're researching him. Not just his grief. Him."
"Professional thoroughness."
"Professional obsession." Maya set the photo down carefully. "Ellis, you haven't taken personal interest in a client in the entire time I've known you. Now you're building crime boards in your living room. What happened during that first cleansing?"
Ellis tasted burnt sugar. Tasted copper and something darker. "His grief is different."
"Different how?"
"Alive. Evolving. And underneath—" Ellis stopped, uncertain how to explain the presence she'd felt, the watching consciousness embedded in Dominic's sorrow. "There's something wrong with it."
"Then refer him to another cleanser." Maya's voice carried the flat logic of someone stating the obvious. "If the case is this complicated, if his grief is this unusual, pass it to someone else. Maintain your boundaries."
Ellis looked at the photos scattered across the floor. Thea's smile. Dominic's haunted green eyes. The six-hour void where memory should exist. "I can't."
"Can't or won't?"
"Does it matter?"
Maya stood, brushed dust from her knees. "When's the last time you went out? Saw friends? Had fun?"
"Maya—"
"You're disappearing into this case. Into him. And I don't think it's about professional concern anymore." Maya moved toward the door, paused. "Be careful, Ellis. Whatever you're chasing—make sure it's worth what you're risking."
After Maya left, Ellis sat alone in the wreckage of her boundaries. Photos stared up at Ellis from the floor. Thea's changing captions mocked Ellis with their studied positivity. Trust the process. What process? Leaving? Planning something?
Ellis picked up the final photo Thea posted before her death—solo shot, Thea on a park bench, looking away from the camera toward something out of frame. The caption read simply: Soon.
Soon what?
Ellis's phone buzzed. Text from Dr. Simmons: Dominic's lawyer requesting accelerated cleansing schedule. DA pushing for plea deal. Can you come tomorrow instead of waiting 48 hours?
Ellis should say no. Should maintain the standard treatment interval. Should not rush back to consume more of Dominic's grief before Ellis had fully metabolized what she'd already taken.
Ellis typed: What time?
The response came immediately: 8 AM.
Ellis stared at Thea's final post. Soon. Ellis would see Dominic again soon. Would taste his grief again, would search those fragmented memories for something to explain the void, would let his sorrow fill the empty spaces inside Ellis where feeling used to live.
Maya was right. Ellis was chasing something. And Ellis had no idea if it was worth the cost.
But Ellis couldn't stop.