Chapter 11 #2
Friends I hadn’t spoken to in months. A life that had felt like wearing clothes two sizes too small.
I looked at David, at his concerned, handsome face.
He was a good man. He was offering me everything I thought I wanted before I came here.
Before I knew what it was to have a man’s hands on me not in clinical curiosity, but in desperate, claiming hunger.
Before I knew what it was to feel a house sigh with pleasure under my touch.
My gaze drifted past him, to the corner where Virgil stood.
Or where he almost stood. He was transparent now, like mist over a pond.
I could see the pattern of the wallpaper through his chest. A sharp, physical pain lanced through me, right beneath my ribs.
Choose. This time, the word in my mind was faint, strained.
A whisper from a long way off. David was watching me, his brow furrowed. “Anna? You’ve gone pale.”
“I…” The word stuck. I was choosing. Every second I sat here, listening to this sane, gentle man, I was choosing.
And my choice was killing Virgil. The realization was a cold flood in my gut.
This wasn’t about what I wanted. It was about what I was.
In this room, with these two men, I was the anchor.
For one, I was a client to be saved from a bad investment.
For the other, I was the only thing tethering him to existence.
The bookshelf shook again, harder. A ledger slid out and thumped to the floor.
David jumped, his head snapping around. “Good lord. This place…”
“It’s not the house,” I said, my voice quiet but suddenly clear. He turned back to me, confusion deepening. “What?”
I stood up. My legs held me. “It’s me.” I looked directly at the fading smudge in the corner. I poured everything I had into that look—every fear, every wild pulse of desire, every stupid, reckless ounce of want I felt for him and his impossible world. “I’m not choosing peace.”
Virgil’s form solidified, just a fraction. The edges sharpened. The darkness gathered. David stood too, his professional calm finally cracking. “Anna, what are you talking about? You’re not making sense.”
“I’m choosing this,” I said, and I didn’t know if I was talking to David or to Virgil or to the shaking walls. “The draft. The chill. The weight.” I took a step away from the chair, from the binder, from my safe, quiet, anxious future. “I’m staying.”
The fire in the grate roared up, not with heat, but with a sudden, silent surge of light, painting the room in sharp, dancing shadows.
David Evans took a step back, his eyes wide behind his glasses.
He looked from me to the fire to the fallen ledger.
He saw nothing in the corner, but he felt it.
The pressure in the room. The presence. He grabbed his satchel, his movements hurried.
“I… I think you need more time. This is clearly a stressful environment. I’ll leave the papers.
Please, review them. Call me when you’re thinking clearly. ”
He was at the door in moments, casting one last, bewildered, almost frightened look at me.
Then he was gone, the heavy front door closing with a final, dull thud that echoed through the too-silent house.
The fire settled back to a glow. The air grew still.
I was alone. And then I wasn’t. Virgil materialized before me, not from the corner, but from the space right in front of me, coalescing out of the shadows cast by the firelight.
He was solid, real, his eyes black and burning.
He looked drained, thinner, as if my hesitation had cost him something vital.
He didn’t speak. He just looked at me, his chest rising and falling with a breath he probably didn’t need.
The choice was made. The safe world had just walked out the door.
And all that was left was him, and me, and the terrifying, thrilling silence of what came next.