The guard at the building’s entrance found her name on a list and admitted her. It was an uninteresting side entrance. Once inside, Janet found herself jostled by frantic assistant directors and grips hauling apple crates and coils of cable. She passed a row of glassed-in offices where she glimpsed cameras and actors (dressed in white lab coats). A few of the crewmembers eyed her curiously, but something about her—some indefinable aura of confidence, status—kept them from approaching her.

  She moved past the crew, and the hallway she was in emptied out into the Examiner’s front lobby. She stopped and gazed around, stunned; here, she could finally commune with O’Greene’s glorious designs. The spacious interior went up three stories to skylights; curving flights of stairs flanked either side. Rich, original tile in burnished earth tones graced the floor; dual Moroccan-style turrets framed the carved oak front doors, locked for decades against the Los Angeles streets. The handrails on the stairs were rich mahogany, rubbed to a deep, nearly decadent finish from a century of use.

  Janet stood unmoving, breathing it in. The sunlight that penetrated through the skylights and turrets was filtered by heavy dust (this building had never been designed for air conditioning); behind her, the sounds of the film crew had sunk to a constant low thrum.

  It was easy to believe this palace was haunted.

  Janet remembered, then, why she was here. Her father wanted her to lay waste to this space, to turn its offices and storage areas into the large single-room apartments he liked to refer to as “artists’ lofts.”

  For a second the idea sickened her. She hated the job. She hated her father. It was a sacrilege.

  But then she reconsidered. She could, after all, keep the lobby; it was functional as well as beautiful. It would provide pleasure to those tenants (“artists,” she reminded herself) with enough soul to appreciate its art.

  She was sweating as she climbed the stairs to the second floor; it was August in Southern California, and she was in a building that kept only part of its ground floor acceptably cooled. Here, on the second floor, the temperature rose sharply. Janet picked her way through ancient offices, most empty, a few strewn with trash. In one back room she found the remains of a party—a bag full of empty bottles of cheap red wine and a used condom. It was hard to tell how long they’d been there. She began to feel better about rededicating the Examiner to a purposeful existence.

  A twisting back staircase led her up to a third floor that had plainly seen even fewer visitors in recent years. From her online study of the Examiner, she knew the third floor had once housed the executive offices; May O’Greene herself had even had a suite up here. Motes glittered in the air, turned opalescent by afternoon sunlight. Later, Janet would come back with a camera and tablet computer and begin planning; today was purely exploratory.

  The heat on the third floor was stifling. Janet was wiping sweat from her brow when she poked her head into a room…and gasped.

  She looked into a sitting room that could have stepped out of a silent film. Low tables, chairs, writing desk, vintage sofa, and cabinets all squatted, as clean as the items in a showroom. On the desk were a shaded lamp, a blotter, pens, and an elaborate Art Deco paperweight. On one gorgeous teak end table was something that looked for all the world like an original Tiffany lamp. Even Janet, who’d grown up with wealth, wondered what the lamp alone was worth.

  She stepped into the space, running her fingers lightly along the fixtures, astonished by the lack of apparent age. Surely they were all reproductions, but…why? Who would install all of this in an unused office on the third floor of a nearly-abandoned building? Some eccentric film exec, maybe? She nearly pulled out her cell phone and called her father’s office to ask if they’d forgotten to tell her that part of the third floor was rented out, but somehow she knew the answer would be “no,” followed by questions she didn’t want to deal with.

  Was it possible that this room was just miraculously forgotten and preserved, a happy accident of time and environmental circumstance?

  Janet reached the desk and picked up one of the items she found there. It was an antique fountain pen with a silver, scaled finish like a metallic lizard. Curious, she pulled the cap off and ran the nib across a sheet of cream-colored paper; it produced a clear, perfect dark line. Janet often made preliminary sketches in pen before rendering them in software; she somehow felt more connection to her work when she used ink instead of pixels. The idea of sketching out her designs for the Examiner’s new artists’ lofts in a pen she’d taken from it appealed to her, and so she replaced the cap and was lowering the pen into her purse when a voice sounded behind her.

  “That’s not yours.”

  Janet jumped and turned, trying to find the source of the words. It was a young man, seated in what looked like a genuine Louis XVI settee. White light streamed in through Venetian blinds behind the man, rendering him into a striped silhouette.

  Janet struggled to make him out as her heart pounded. How could she not have seen him there before? Startled, nervous, she held the pen up, jiggling it. “Oh, I’m so sorry—is this yours?”

  “Yes.” The man rose now and stepped forward, and when his face caught the light, Janet nearly gasped.

  He was the most beautiful man she’d ever seen. Light brown skin, glossy black hair that fell onto his forehead in charmingly unruly locks, golden eyes whose shape hinted at an Asian parent, dazzling white teeth that Janet didn’t even think were capped. He was dressed in an oxford shirt that defined his sculpted, hard surfaces, and simple khaki pants.

  There was also something familiar about him, something that tugged at the back of her mind, tickling. She caught herself before she used the hackneyed, “Have we met before?” Instead, she said, “I…didn’t expect to find anyone up here.”

  “Well, I don’t get many visitors. But the ones that I do are…” He reached out to take the pen from her, and when his fingertips brushed over her skin, Janet shivered—they were impossibly cold, icy. “...always special.”

  He stood there staring at her, a look that caused Janet’s pulse to race.

  Trying to cover her nervousness, she asked, “Just what are you doing here?”

  “This place is mine.”

  Janet laughed, then said, “I’m sorry to disillusion you, but it’s not. My father just bought it. It’s in escrow already. We’ll be turning it into artists’ lofts.”

  “‘We?’”

  “Yes. I’m an architect.” She felt like a fraud saying that, in this place, but it was too late to take it back.

  “Like May O’Greene?”

  “Yes,” Janet said, before blurting out, “I mean, no! May O’Greene was a genius. I take it you’re a fan…?”

  The look that crossed his perfect face then was unexpected, full of fear and regret. “I can’t really say I am.”

  “Oh…then, what…?”

  Abruptly, he grinned again, apparently anxious to move past the mention of the architect. “My name’s Tam—Tam Lane. And you are…?”

  “Janet Carterhaugh,” she said.

  She placed her hand in his…and lost herself. His skin was chilled, but the sensation of it on hers ignited fire. He squeezed her hand, lightly, and it was enough to leave her weak-kneed and desperate. Janet was hardly virginal—her own aristocratic beauty had made many boys seek a place in her bed (when her father wasn’t home), and she’d given it to a few of them—but she’d never experienced a need so all-devouring that it made her forget where, who, what she was.

  “Tam,” she breathed out.

  “You know,” he said, stepping closer to her (and that action alone flooded her with fresh arousal), “I did catch you trying to steal from me. I think I’m owed something.”

  “I already apologized.”

  He placed two fingers beneath her chin and tilted it up. “That’s not what I had in mind.”

  He took his payment as a kiss. Janet returned it; even as she did so, feverishly, some small part of her whispered, Something’s wrong here…walk away. No—RUN.

  But she didn’t listen to that part. All she heard were the soft, moist sounds of their lips and tongues, her own breath, his.

  When, several moments later, he lowered her to the velvet couch as his fingers sought her buttons, she let him.

  * * *

  After, as they lay together, unclothed, her bathed in sweat, his skin only slightly warmed, she turned to him and asked, “Why do I feel like I know you?”

  He answered, “I confess. In a former life, I was an actor. I starred in a television series called Thorn in the Roses –”

  Janet cut him off. “Oh my God—I used to watch that show every week! It ran for—what, four years?”

  “Five.”

  Pictures came together in Janet’s mind, like two etched images lining up to form a moiré pattern. A beautiful boy, with dark skin and eyes the color of certain clouds at sunset. Every girl she’d known had had a crush on the star…Tommy Lynn, she remembered.

  Tam Lane.

  “But your name...” Janet said.

  “The network made me change it.”

  “You were so young on that show…”

  He nodded. “I was only sixteen when it ended.”

  “And what did you do then? I don’t remember any movies, or…”

  His expression darkened, and Janet instantly rued the question; she would, in fact, have rued anything that caused distress to crease that face. “I…well, I’ll tell you some other time.”

  The last ray of light faded; the room plunged into shadow. For a second, Janet had the unsettling thought that all the other furniture had vanished, that the couch beneath her felt old and sprung…but then her eyes adjusted, she made out the shapes of the desk and tables and chairs, and velvet caressed her where Tam didn’t. “I should be getting home,” she said.

  Tam said nothing.

  Janet untangled herself from him, feeling suddenly modest as she sat up, gathering her discarded clothes. She dressed in silence and then turned to look down upon him. In the room’s semi-darkness he looked unreal, like an out-of-focus photograph, or fog.

  “Come with me,” she said, even though she knew Daddy would throw a fit if she walked in with a man.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  “Oh.” The thought struck her: She’d just had unprotected sex with a man she didn’t know. She nearly turned and ran, so strong was her urge to be home, safe, away from…whatever was so wrong here.

  She had nearly reached the doorway when he called after her, “Wait.”

  She turned, saw him rise and walk to the desk, where he picked something up. Even in the room’s darkness, growing stronger with each passing minute, his beauty—freed from clothing now—shone, paralyzing her.

  “Here.” He held something out to her, and, numb, she reached a hand up. He placed the object in her palm. “Your pen.”

  “Will I see you again?”

  “I truthfully don’t know.”

  The last of the day vanished. Janet stumbled out, feeling her way blindly along the walls, shivering as her fingers scraped away chips of paint; something sticky clung to her like a poisonous spider’s web. The floorboards groaned beneath her; she felt their rot and wondered if they’d hold her. The silence was otherwise complete.

  Janet forced herself to remain calm, to find her exit. She had a good memory for layout and located the staircase; she stumbled twice negotiating its creaking turns in the dark, but soon she was on the ground floor, filing out with the last of the film crew. Some of them cast side glances at her, and Janet wondered what they saw: A disheveled woman with a shell-shocked look, perhaps?

  When she reached the sanctuary of her car, she cried.

  After ten minutes she stopped. She wondered, with a turn so complete she couldn’t begin to understand, why she’d been sobbing.

  She started the car and drove home.

  * * *

  On the way, she stopped at a pharmacy and bought two items: A bottle of juice, and a pill that would prevent pregnancy.

  She swallowed the pill with the juice and disposed of the box in the drug store parking lot.

  When she got home, she took a forty-minute shower, let Maria feed her, then fell into bed. Her sleep was black, dreamless.

  * * *

  The next day she asked her father’s secretary, Amy, to find out if anyone was renting part of the Examiner’s third floor. Amy checked. The answer, of course, was no.

  She Googled Tommy Lane. It turned out that his show, Thorn in the Roses, had been canceled because he’d disappeared, not the other way around. His parents claimed they knew where he was and that he was in good hands. Speculation was that he’d run afoul of drugs, been shipped off to a very quiet rehab somewhere. After a time, mentions of him stopped altogether.

  Amy arranged a permanent pass into the building; after all, she was now lead architect. The next day she returned to the Examiner, her heart in her throat as she climbed the spiral staircase to the third floor. She was shaking by the time she reached Tam’s corner; she half-expected to look in and see nothing at all, no furnishings, not even a trace.

  The furnishings were still there. But Tam was not.

  She called his name. She sat on the couch, quivering as she remembered the feel of his icy fingertips on her shoulders, her breasts, between her legs. She jumped to her feet, trying to ward off arousal, calling again, again. “Tam! Are you here? Tam?”

  He didn’t appear.

  As night fell, she left.

  Over the next month, she visited the room as often as she could, working her trips in around classes. When a good-looking PoliSci major named Matt asked her out, she politely declined. The next day she sat on the velvet cushions in Tam’s room and talked to thin air. She told him about Matt. She told him she’d turned down the invitation.

  She told him she wanted him.

  He didn’t appear.

  A month passed, and the memory of their lovemaking became more precious to her, not less. August spilled into September, and one morning Janet woke up sick. As she knelt over the toilet, one hand instinctively clutched at her belly. It was too soon, of course, to show anything there but she knew.

  October arrived, and the sickness continued. Janet tried to be quiet, but she’d never been able to hide anything from Maria. “You sick a lot lately,” the housekeeper said, looking away.

  Janet had no answer.

  Maria came out of the bathroom with a load of towels for the laundry. She stopped before Janet. “You know you’re like family to me, Miss Janet…”

  “Of course. You, too.”

  “So you’d tell Maria if anything was wrong? If you needed help?”

  Janet’s throat was dry, her tongue useless.

  Maria kissed her gently on a cheek and left the room.

  * * *

  A day later, Janet sat on the couch in Tam’s room and cried. “Tam, goddamnit, I really need to see you. I…I think I’m…”

  She couldn’t say the words, not to empty air. And emptiness was all there was.

  * * *

  A home pregnancy test confirmed what she already knew. It shouldn’t have been possible, but it had happened.

  She finally gave up going back to Tam’s room. She grew distracted and missed classes. She wondered what Maria’s offer for help meant. She was afraid of the answer.

  The boy at school, Matt, asked her out again, this time to a Halloween party. Was it really October already? She politely declined. As she walked away from him, she laughed.

  Halloween party? Sure…I could go as Stupid Pregnant Girl. I won’t even need a costume.

  One morning she awoke to a knock on her bedroom door. She was sprawled on her bed, looking at old pictures of a handsome, young television star named Tommy Lane on her tablet. “Yes?”

  The door opened and her father entered. Janet thumbed a tab on the screen to switch to another website, then set the computer aside. “Oh, hi, Daddy.”

  “Hi, sweetie. Listen, I’ve got some bad news. The Examiner failed inspection, and I mean as in epic fail.”

  Dread crashed down on Janet, nearly suffocating her. “So what does that mean?”

  “I’m sorry, I know you’ve put a lot of work into this, and I really liked your ideas, but…the lofts aren’t gonna happen. The building’s just too far gone—it would cost more to bring it up to code than it’s worth.”

  “So…?”

  “It’s going to have to come down.”

  “When?”

  “Demolition starts tomorrow—”

  “You can’t!” Janet leapt from the bed, face flushed, fingers clawed.

  “There’s really no choice.”

  Of course there’s a choice, she wanted to say. Spend the money to bring it up to code. Honor the building.

  Love your daughter more than business.

  Instead, Janet pleaded, “Can’t you at least postpone it?”

  “Why? What difference will that make? There’s nothing left to get out of that building, Janet.”

  Janet strode past him, pausing only long enough to grab a jacket. “Yes, there is.”

  He reached out as she ran by. “Don’t go down there—”

  But she was gone.

  * * *

  The side door she always used was secured with a heavy chain that had been added since the last time she’d been here three days ago. She wouldn’t be getting in that way.

  But she knew the Examiner now; it had become an old and dear friend. She knew its secrets, the hidden ways in and out. She knew about the rickety door next to a loading dock in the back that gave easily when she applied pressure.

  The ground floor was dark, but she’d brought a mag lite. She turned it on, heading for a back stairwell.

  She shivered.

  It wasn’t cold; October in L.A. never was. But something in the Examiner had changed. It was no longer the friend she’d come to know intimately. It felt charged with fear, electrified with dread.