I set the Harrow bug in the middle of the table like a centerpiece from hell and open my laptop.
Laundry thuds through the floorboards, sending little tremors up my chair legs. The apartment carries its usual mix of smells—detergent, frying oil from the corner place, the faint chemical tang of the lemon cleaner I used after CPS left. Outside, somewhere near the waterfront, bass pulses under the night like a distant heartbeat.
I don’t speak out loud. The vent in Theo’s room isn’t the only metal mouth in this building.
I open Signal and start a new encrypted chat with Sadie. My fingers shake for one second, then remember the keys.
Me: You at your computer? Need to talk without… acoustics.
Her typing dots pop up fast, then disappear, then reappear. I picture her in her tiny apartment two towns over, surrounded by open tabs and printouts, chewing her thumbnail.
Sadie: Yeah. Are you okay?
I glance at the black rectangle on the table. “Define okay,” I murmur, then type instead:
Me: Found hardware in Theo’s vent. Branded Harrow Home. Audio. It was on.
The reply takes longer this time. Long enough for the dryers downstairs to switch cycles and for a draft of cool, salt-heavy air to slide under the kitchen window and raise goosebumps along my arms.
Sadie: Jesus. In his ROOM?
Me: In his duct. Not talking about it out loud yet. Assuming they’re listening or have friends.
More dots. Stop. Start.
Sadie: I’m so sorry, Mara.
I stare at that line. Sorry for which part—leaking the tape hint, kicking the hornet nest, or for the fact that our favorite case study turned out to be a live experiment and I’m the lab rat?
I type anyway.
Me: We can’t change what you already did. We can decide what we do now.
Sadie: Does that mean you’re…
She doesn’t finish the sentence. I do, in my head: forgiving me, cutting me off, suing me. My thumb hovers over the keyboard, then lands.
Me: I’m not interested in being alone in this while Harrow-branded spy toys watch my kid sleep.
Sadie: I won’t screw it up again. Tell me what you need and I’m in.
I lean back and look at the bug. Its tiny waveform logo catches the light like a wink.
Luz told me to record everything. Elliot told me to be a “responsible storyteller.” Oracle told me stories have endings. Everyone keeps talking about control.
“Okay,” I whisper, more to myself than to her. I straighten in my chair and crack my knuckles.
Me: Ground rules first. Non-negotiable.
Sadie: Hit me.
I type them out one by one, feeling my pulse settle with each line.
Me: 1. No doxxing. Ever. Even if you think it’s him.
2. No solo “fan meetups,” no surprise confrontations. You loop me in AND we clear with Luz when she’s back.
3. You treat the subreddit/Discord like evidence control, not a vigilante army. You cool things down, you don’t whip them up.
4. If we set a trap, we do it on my channels, my timing. Nothing leaks without my explicit OK.
I sit with that list for a beat, watching the words glow. The list doesn’t magically make me safe, but it draws a line where my spine used to be.
Sadie replies in bursts.
Sadie: Yes.
Yes.
Agreed.
Agreed.
Then:
Sadie: You’re still thinking trap? Even with the bug?
My hand tightens around the coffee mug. The sludge at the bottom has gone cold and bitter.
Me: Because of the bug. He thinks I’m broadcast-only prey. He listens, I react. We flip it.
Sadie: How?
I picture the cliffs, the postcard view framed in a million prom photos, and the knife-edge of rock below where kids used to sneak out to smoke between slow dances. A drop that looks pretty from the PTA meeting slideshow and lethal from the wrong angle.
The microphone used to be my safe distance. Now it’s the edge.
Me: We give him something he can’t resist: a stage.
Sadie: Another live? After what happened with Mr. Cooke?
My stomach lurches at the memory of the teacher’s white-knuckled hands gripping the hospital sheet, the heart monitor outpacing his words. I type slower.
Me: Not a free-for-all. Small. Controlled. “Listener appreciation night.” Limited call slots, RSVP-only.
We tell them I want to hear how the case is affecting them. Private stories. Safe space.
Sadie: You’re baiting him with intimacy.
Me: I’m baiting him with control. He loves steering the narrative. Calls, voicemails, scripts. This lets him think he’ll get me alone in his favorite format.
Sadie: We’ll need tech. I can get a friend to help trace connections. On the record, we’re “testing a new call software.” Off the record, we’re spiderwebbing.
I hesitate.
Me: Friend trustworthy? No cops, no brand-hungry influencers. I am done being somebody’s case study.
Sadie: She’s queer, hates cops, works in IT, and thinks regattas are a tax dodge. You’d like her. I’ll brief her under your rules.
I snort; the sound startles me. It feels good, in a jagged way.
Me: Okay. One more thing.
Sadie: Yeah?
Me: He knows more than the average troll. CPS. Internal Affairs. The bug. If he thinks I know about all of that, he goes to ground.
So on mic, I play scared but clueless. I hint we “suspect” listening, but I don’t say Harrow Home. I don’t say vent. I don’t say bug.
A long pause. Then:
Sadie: You’re weaponizing your own vulnerability.
I glance at the glass rose image taped to the wall above my desk—the old 1997 centerpiece recreated for my cover art. Frozen petals, pretty and breakable. I remember Calder telling me Crescent Bay likes its stories under glass, not in court.
“Yeah,” I type. “For once, it’s on purpose.”
I don’t tell Theo I’m turning the mic on. He does homework at the café across the street, the smell of espresso and pastry buffering him from whatever I say in our kitchen. I text the barista fifty bucks and a heart emoji to keep extra eyes on him.
In the apartment, I clear the table. The Harrow bug goes in a ceramic bowl next to the laptop. I don’t know if it still transmits with the switch off, but I don’t intend to give it a clean feed tonight.
I drape a thrift-store quilt over the window to muffle street noise. The neon liquor store sign paints the fabric a faint red. Downstairs, someone starts a dryer full of plastic snaps and buttons; they rattle like distant shells on the treacherous rock shelf beneath the cliffs.
I set up the mic, pop filter exactly three fingers from my mouth, and slide my headphones on. The world narrows to the soft hiss of the room in my ears and the tiny blinking light on my recording interface.
My hands want to shake. I plant my elbows on the table to pin them and take one slow breath that tastes like dust, laundry, and salt.
“Okay,” I say, mostly to myself. “You wanted a show.”
I hit record.
The familiar red dot blooms on my laptop. My broadcast voice rises up like muscle memory, a version of me trimmed and sharpened.
“This is Mara Lane,” I say into the mic. “And tonight’s episode of Glass Roses is going to sound different.”
I let the silence stretch for a heartbeat. I imagine thousands of listeners leaning closer to their phones, earbuds snug, dishwater cooling on their hands.
“I’ve spent a lot of this season talking about control,” I continue. “Who controlled Juliet’s last hours. Who controlled the story afterward. Who still controls what gets written on plaques, what names show up on regatta rosters and school board minutes, and which mothers get labeled ‘unstable’ for asking questions.”
The words are steady. My leg bounces under the table hard enough to make the mic cable quiver.
“What I haven’t talked about much is fear,” I say. “Not Juliet’s. Mine.”
I keep my sentences short, refusing to drift into that long, confessional sprawl that dragged me into trouble before. I slice my story into beats.
“I am scared,” I tell the mic. “I’m scared when my son walks past the cliffs where the railing rotted out. I’m scared when PTA meetings turn into power summits for people who own half this town. I’m scared when anonymous emails tell me to stop recording or they’ll ‘put my kid first’ for me.”
My throat tightens on that last line; I swallow it down.
“And lately,” I add, “I’ve been hearing things that make me wonder how private my own walls really are.”
I don’t mention the vent. I don’t mention the logo pressed into the bug’s plastic.
“Maybe you know the feeling,” I say, pitching my voice toward one listener and all of them at once. “You set your phone down, and later you’re sure it moved. You swear you put your notes in one pile, and they’re in another. You wake up at three a.m. certain that you heard a click in the hallway.”
I sit with the next line in my head for a full breath before I give it shape.
“To whoever likes listening to me when I’m not on air,” I say softly, “I want you to know I’m thinking about you tonight.”
The hair on my arms lifts. I can feel the bug on the table without looking at it, a tiny black eye in a ceramic bowl.
“Because here’s the thing about fear,” I go on. “It makes people predictable. You know my schedule by now. You know I sit at this kitchen table above the laundromat and talk into a microphone about a dead girl while my kid does homework down the hall. You know I’ll chase a lead to Harrow Island or the old gym or the country club if I think it might give Juliet one more sentence of truth.”
I let a humorless little huff of breath slip out.
“You’re counting on that,” I say. “You’re counting on me being prey with a podcast—too loud to be safe, too small to be believed.”
My fingers uncurl on the tabletop. The steadiness in my voice belongs to a version of me I have been trying to become all season.
“So I’m going to do something predictable tonight,” I announce. “I’m going to give my listeners more access to me.”
I picture Sadie at her keyboard, watching the levels on some test server, waiting for this line.
“Next week,” I say, “I’m hosting a one-night-only, listener-exclusive Glass Roses Appreciation Night. No sponsors. No live chat circus. Just me and a small number of you, talking one-on-one.”
I lean closer to the mic, letting my breath brush the pop filter.
“If this case has changed you,” I say, “if you were there in 1997 and you’ve never told anyone, if you’ve been watching from the shadows—this is your invitation. Tell me your story. Tell Juliet your story.”
I let that sit.
“Slots are limited,” I add. “I’m keeping it small for safety reasons, mine and yours. If you want in, you’ll need to RSVP through the link in the show notes or on the subreddit pinned post. You’ll pick a pseudonym. You’ll get a private time slot and a private line.”
I let the next sentence sharpen in my mouth.
“No one will know you’re on the call except you and me,” I promise. “And anyone else who’s been listening this closely all along.”
I stop there. That’s the only hint I let slip. The only acknowledgment that I know someone has been breathing my air through the vents.
“We’ll talk about Juliet,” I say, threading warmth back into my tone. “About Crescent Bay’s cliffs and gyms and glossy fundraisers. About what happens when our stories get turned into décor at the Prom Throwback, into glass roses under museum lighting. About what it means to live in a town where reputation is the life raft and some of us were never handed one.”
I wrap the segment before I can overshare.
“I’m Mara Lane,” I finish softly. “This is Glass Roses. And next week, I’ll be listening.”
I let three beats of room tone flow, then tap stop. The red dot disappears. Silence rushes in so hard my ears ring.
I peel my headphones off. Without the monitored version of my own voice in my ears, the apartment sounds bigger, emptier. The dryers downstairs have stopped. Through the thin window glass, I can hear the distant crash of waves against rock, warped by the wind sliding along the cliffs.
A notification pops up on my laptop before I even export the audio.
Sadie: That last line. Jesus. Goosebumps. Link is ready. Form is live. We’ll filter signups by IP and timestamps.
I drag the bug closer with one finger, watching its dead LED eye.
Another ping.
Sadie: First RSVP just came in.
I click the shared spreadsheet. A new row sits at the top, timestamp only seconds old. The chosen pseudonym stares back at me: ORACLE-WAS-HERE.
My pulse slams into my throat.
I know anyone can type that name. I know a troll might grab it for fun, or a fan might think it’s edgy cosplay. The rational part of my brain whispers statistics, probabilities, patterns.
The rest of me sees Juliet’s glass rose spinning through dark water and hears Elliot’s voice on the island tape, promising to make everything disappear.
My fingers hover over the trackpad. I don’t delete the RSVP. I don’t move it.
I just breathe in the salt-heavy air of my kitchen studio and ask the only question that matters before appreciation night:
when that voice comes through my headphones, will I recognize the person who’s been living in my walls?