Red Tea by Meg Mezeske

Author:Meg Mezeske [Mezeske, Meg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-944728-84-7
Publisher: City Owl Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Two

The winter sun was setting early. Jordan noted the lowering light with a melancholy that sometimes came upon her when she got wrapped up in thinking about the case. She had spent all day fixating on the storeroom and what she had found there, or didn’t find.

This stoked a familiar sense of uselessness, one that led her thoughts back to Aiden yet again. She sighed as she shut the door to her apartment, toeing off her shoes in the sunken entryway.

With the reflexive, thoughtless movements born of routine, Jordan placed her shoes in the in-wall rack and shrugged off her jacket. As she tossed the jacket over the back of a chair, something fluttered out of its side pocket and landed on the floor softly.

Curious, Jordan bent to inspect the item. It was an envelope—one she had not placed in the jacket herself. The envelope was unaddressed and sealed. Jordan was surprised that she hadn’t noticed it upon putting on the jacket and was now eager to open it, running her finger under the flap.

The envelope gaped open, and a dusting of red specks drifted out onto her hand and the floor. She plucked one from her cuff: a flower petal, dried and strawlike. With a tilt of the envelope, she saw hundreds more petals piled inside and a folded slip of paper poking out from the mound. Jordan felt a shiver of inexplicable nervousness as she removed and unfolded the paper. In its center was a single typed word: STOP.

A cold numbness embraced her as the message’s meaning found purchase. The dried petals were hibiscus petals. Hibiscus tea.

The envelope slipped from her fingers, falling to the ground in a spray of red.

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