Prologue
The room was still locked.
That was the first thing Aadhish Rao checked when he woke up.
The second was the temperature.
He stood barefoot on the cool mosaic tiles of his workshop, staring at the teakwood door as if it might blink. The brass latch was intact. The secondary bolt was slid into place. The small chalk mark he'd drawn near the hinge the night before remained unbroken, a faint white scar against dark wood.
No one had entered.
And yet something had left.
Rao stepped inside.
The air was heavier than it should have been for a sealed room.
Not stale. Not warm. Used. Like a room that had hosted a conversation after midnight and was pretending it hadn't. He paused just inside the threshold, fingers brushing the inside of his wrist out of habit, checking for a pulse that didn't need checking.
The instrument case lay open on the central worktable.
Empty.
The velvet lining was undisturbed, still molded to the shape of the flute it had held for thirty-seven years—no scuff marks. No tears. No sign of a hurried removal. Even the silk cover folded beside it was exactly where Rao remembered placing it, edges aligned, corners neat.
He reached out and stopped short.
The case was warm.
Not sun-warm. Not the slow warmth of a closed room. This was residual, concentrated, the way metal felt after being struck and set down too quickly. Rao pressed his palm to the lining and felt a faint vibration fade beneath his skin, like the last breath of a struck bell.
He pulled his hand back.
The rest of the workshop was untouched.
Other flutes lined the wall rack, bamboo and silver and rosewood, each tagged and catalogued. The tuning bowls sat in their foam cradles. Tools lay where he'd left them. The old ceiling fan creaked once as it completed a lazy rotation, stirring the faint smell of oil and dust.
Nothing else was missing.
Only the flute.
Rao swallowed and forced himself to breathe slowly. He had restored instruments for most of his adult life. He understood theft. He understood carelessness. He even understood superstition, though he had long ago filed it away as a professional hazard.
This was none of those.
He walked the perimeter of the room, fingers tracing walls, windows, and corners. No scratches. No pry marks. The narrow ventilation grate was still bolted shut. The single window overlooked a dead-end alley and had not been opened in weeks.
When he returned to the table, the silence felt heavier.
He listened.
Not for footsteps. Not for voices.
For something else.
There was a pressure in his ears, subtle but persistent, like standing too close to a speaker that hadn't yet made a sound. Rao closed his eyes and tried to remember the last note he'd played on the flute before placing it in the case. A low, careful test tone. Barely audible.
The memory refused to stay still.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. The sound made him flinch.
Rao didn't answer it.
Instead, he picked up the empty case and held it closer, as if it might explain itself.
"It wasn't stolen," he said quietly, to the room.
The room did not disagree.
Later, when he would try to explain it to the police, the words would come out wrong. They always did. He would talk about locks and seals and warmth and vibration, and watch their eyes glaze over.
So he would choose a simpler word.
"It was called," he would say.
And for the first time since entering the workshop, the silence didn't recede when he spoke.