Madison Jae
Angel's Wing book cover: a white gilled mushroom fan cut by a red slash, on black

Madison Jae

Angel's Wing

Out now

The soup was made with love.
The love was the problem.

Literary thriller 98,000 words Portland, Oregon
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By chapter two you know what Karen is. Isla takes until January.

Karen remembers Isla's coffee order after hearing it once, and her fears after hearing them once. On Tuesdays she comes over with broth she made herself. She texts to see how Isla is doing, then texts again. Three to five times a day, every day.

Isla has a word for this: love.

Karen has a word for it too. She keeps a journal in a lockbox and writes in it with a fountain pen, because pencil can be erased. Beside it, a dosing log, in milliliters. A ten-month timeline: integration, weakening, care, permanence. A note that the subject is generous to a fault and will respond well to sustained, dedicated caretaking. Prognosis: Excellent.

When the metallic taste arrives in week three, a week ahead of Karen's schedule, Isla blames the pipes in her old building. Karen adjusts the recipe.

Jeanette, the childhood friend who introduced them, watches Isla thin out in front of her and cannot prove why.

And Karen has been counting on that, too.

3 first-person narrators
39 chapters plus epilogue
4 months of escalation
1 ordinary coffee shop where it begins

In Karen's voice

She comes to me without negotiation, the way a cat does. Her legs don't quite hold her.

I've been running the water for ninety seconds. The temperature has to be right. Her scalp is too thin for hot. Warm enough that her shoulders drop when it hits. I've practiced the temperature on my own wrist. I know the number.

I ease her head forward over the basin, my hand on the back of her neck, the vertebrae through the skin and the occipital ridge small under my palm.

I pour water.

Her whole body goes.

Not collapses. Yields. Her shoulders drop. Her breath goes out in a long sound I've only heard at 3 AM, in the dark, when she's half asleep and I've just adjusted her blanket. The sound a body makes when it stops bracing.

I squeeze shampoo into my palm. Work it through. Roots first. My fingertips find the skull.

From Chapter 26
metallic taste Tuesday nights amber pendant mushroom broth frost on glass Extracto

The pattern is too precise to be kindness.

The right wine, the right supplements, and, eventually, a key to the apartment. Karen writes all of it down and locks it in the same box as the dosing log.

From Karen's journal, Day 1

Subject
Isla Chevalier, 34, graphic designer. Lives alone, apartment on Division.
Assessment
High trust. Generous to a fault. Will respond well to sustained, dedicated caretaking.
Timeline
10 months. Integration. Weakening. Care. Permanence.

Told by three people who disagree about what is happening.

Isla Chevalier

The target

Funny about herself, generous with everyone else. She reads attention as safety, right up until her body starts disagreeing with her.

Karen Peterson

The predator

Precise, and completely sincere. She is not pretending the broth is care. To her it is care, and the dosage is part of the recipe.

Jeanette Marshall

The witness

Practical, and carrying guilt she cannot put down. Childhood taught her to count what other people miss. Proving what she has counted nearly costs her everything.

A friendship measured in attention.

September to January. Ordinary kindness, then too much of it, then a pattern Isla is too tired to see.

  1. Coffee Jeanette introduces Isla to Karen at Extracto. Karen already knows sixty-three things about her.
  2. Attention Tuesday nights become Karen's. She is the friend who always turns up, and Isla is glad of it.
  3. The fork At Thanksgiving dinner Isla's hand opens and the fork falls. Karen is already reaching across to cut her meat.
  4. The jars Jeanette bags Karen's broth, labels it in her own hand, and drives it an hour south to an uncle who used to test things for the state police.
  5. The ice Portland freezes. The bridges close. The friend with a key is on Isla's side of the river.

The case is built out of small things.

Exhibit A

The friendship arrives too complete.

The right wine, the right chocolate, home cooking, check-ins three to five times a day. And a mason jar of broth with a heart drawn on the label.

Read the room

So I take the cup and drink something I don't want because the alternative is hurting someone who's trying. I have never once in my life been able to do that.

Chapter 1: Isla

A thriller built from ordinary rooms.

Extracto. The coffee shop where Jeanette introduces them.

Division Street. Isla's apartment, three blocks from the coffee shop. Jeanette found it for her, to keep her close.

Apartment kitchens. Where the soup gets made, and where it gets eaten.

New Year's ice. The bridges close, east and west Portland become separate cities, and the friend with a key is on Isla's side of the river.

Angel's Wing

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