There was a specific hallucinogen that Ru kept in a bottle on a fine silver chain around her fine, pale neck. An art project, maybe. An obsession, possibly. A rarity, definitely. Tonight she filled it with resolve.

The vial was small, but she didn't need a goblet to catch the tears. She held the glass up beneath one eye and then the next, pressed close to the skin so the liquid would flow inside. Her favorite concoction to induce tears was a mix of sharp spices from her neighbor who swore the recipe would banish nightmares. Irony was one of the few things that made Ru smile.

In a pinch, she could use onions to make her eyes water. But on occasion, the tears were real if she thought too long and too hard about long lost things and the shadows of the past. On more frequent occasions, they were very, very fake. Teaching herself to cry on command helped authenticate the role she played. A fragile society girl, a citybaron's daughter who loved bright lights but couldn't handle the cacophony of attention.

Lies also made Ru smile. Lies that were all the more laughable and impressive if one knew the truth. She took the vial of her own tears and mixed it into her paints, these ones for her nails. The darkest blue, the blue of midnight black, the blue of rivers below ice, the blue of suffocation, the blue of a raging tempest. With methodical strokes, Ru then painted those tears across her nails, each brush of that natural hallucinogen a chance to glimpse that place she could not reach.

Ru screwed the top of the nail polish closed and shook out her hands to dry. The new veneer of deepest blue shown like stars on still water. A cold light. A dead light. The players were set, the night was ripe. It was time to attend a party.

She strode into her father's hotel in sleek dress of icy gray, coils of oil-black hair tumbling down her bare back. Ru's sunglasses played coy with the guests, but mostly hid the constant redness of her eyes from forcing herself to cry often hours at a time. It took a lot of tears to be an effective hallucinogen, leaving Ru wrung out and gaunt-faced. She covered it with mystery and false smiles, the demureness of sable gloves, with powdered cheeks and the mesmerizing sway of a sequined shawl.

Ru was nothing if not determined. She was nothing if not desperate.

"Would you like to dance?" A man held his hand out to her. He was beautiful with long curls of hair and a silvery suit, a beam of moonlight on legs in this dim hollow of tin laughter and too much wine.

"Wouldn't I?" Ru asked, though the answer was no. She took his offer anyway, not for the dance, but for what she'd come here for to begin with. They moved to the middle of the floor, spinning slow, looking smooth, like night melting into dawn.

Ru raised her arms around his neck, removing her gloves behind his back as she kept him trapped with her smile. It was all he could look at since the sunglasses hid her eyes. Gloves held in one hand now, she brought the other to his cheek, brushing the backs of her nails, her tear-painted nails, along his jaw. He shivered against her, slight at first. Then he blinked, watery, and stumbled.

She caught him gracefully and gave the crowd a coquettish grin of embarrassment and led him out of the ballroom. He was leaning heavily into her now as if drunk, motions staggered, heart racing, eyes flicking beneath glazed, half-closed eyes. Ru managed to lead him to an empty room, opening it with her all-access keycard. With one last shrug of effort, she dumped him on the voluminous bed.

He lay there still, sweat prickling his forehead. The man wasn't paralyzed, just caught in the vision. That place. That realm. So real to him right now. So far from her. Ru slid beside him, lying there for a moment in terse anticipation. She'd finish the painting tonight. Tonight she'd complete the picture and the full scope of her haunting would be laid bare.

Ru turned on her side and pressed her forehead gently to the man's. His sweat, his fears, his vision against her skin. Then and only then could she see it.

An austere tower, its outline murky against a flat, yellow-gray sky. A great tree, branches splitting into branches splitting into branches, forever in that dingy yellow light. A woman in an open field, arms open to the world. The shore of a dead sea, skeletal hands reaching out for those on land. And all of it, everything in this madscape of nightmares and fog, was being pulled, withered away into feathers of liquid shadow, streaming off like running ink or a murder of crows before a fire.

Ru pulled back with a gasp, holding her arms. The man beside her shook, crying silently to himself. Ru did not cry. She did enough of that just to get here. No, she replaced her gloves on her cold hands, and left the room to go back to her apartment.

There, as she did every night, she would paint this mystery on to the endless surfaces of canvas scattered around her living space. Searching for meaning, searching for doors, searching for why this vision came from her but could not come to her unless through others. This place, this nightmare realm, called to her, was part of her, but she could not figure out how to go home.