His expression darkened. For a moment, his true self looked out through his eyes. Shadows. Flame. Vast and old and hungry.
“Then you leave.” His voice was very soft. “But you’ve seen too much. The restricted archives. This room. That knowledge makes you a liability.”
“You’d kill me?”
“Kill you?” The shadows receded. Almost a smile. “We’re lawyers, Ms. Feng. Not barbarians. I’d make you forget. Every moment since you walked into this building, erased. You’d wake up Monday with a separation letter, a severance check, and no memory that any of this happened.”
Part of her wanted that so badly it hurt.
“And if I stay?”
“Then you come to work Monday knowing the truth. Continue with Henderson, learn our laws, represent our interests. Your loans are forgiven within six months. Salary doubles after that.” He gestured, and the room showed her glimpses: contracts written in fire, courtrooms outside normal space, beings of terrible beauty arguing cases that shaped reality itself. “You become one of perhaps a dozen people in the world who can navigate both realms.”
“Both realms?”
“The mundane and the infernal. The seen and the hidden.” His eyes held hers. “Your world and ours.”
Around them, books whispered secrets in languages that predated humanity.
“I need time to think.”
“You have the weekend.”
He snapped his fingers.
The archives dissolved.
She was standing in the lobby. The normal lobby, with its crystal chandelier and marble floors. The elevator display showed they’d never left the ground floor. The security guard nodded at them, checking something off his clipboard like this was any other Friday night.
“How—”
“Monday morning. Nine AM.” Victor held the door open. September air rushed in, ordinary and cool. “If you’re not here, I’ll know your decision.”
She stepped onto the sidewalk.
Manhattan continued around her like nothing had happened. Taxis honked. People walked dogs. A couple argued about dinner reservations.
But it all looked different now.
That woman’s reflection in the store window, was it moving wrong? That man standing in the shadows, did he have too many limbs? The couple arguing about dinner, were their voices coming from the right direction?
Ava walked to the subway on legs that didn’t feel like hers. Every shadow seemed deeper than it should be. Every flickering streetlight felt like a warning. The faces she passed in the crowd looked almost human, but now she couldn’t stop looking for the seams, the places where the masks didn’t quite fit.
The world had shifted and she hadn’t caught up yet.
On the subway platform, she stood apart from the other commuters. Watched them from the corner of her eye. That teenage boy with headphones, his shadow’s fingers seemed to multiply when she looked away. That businesswoman checking her phone, her reflection blinked a half-second after she did.
Stop it, Ava told herself.You’re being paranoid.
But was she? Or was she finally seeing clearly?
The train came. She got on. Sat in the corner and watched the car fill with people who might or might not be people.
A man sat across from her. Normal-looking. Suit, briefcase, tired eyes. But when the train lurched, his briefcase fell open, and for just a second, she could have sworn she saw something moving inside. Something with legs that kept unfolding.
She looked away. Looked back.
Just papers. Normal papers.
