Damon stopped his eyes widening.
A man sat in his chair as if he'd paid for it. One ankle rested on a knee, hands folded loosely, posture too at ease for a stranger in someone else's home. Pale golden blonde hair caught the weak lamplight. His light blue eyes were the only bright thing in the room—cool, attentive, unblinking.
By the window, a woman turned toward him. She stood very straight. Her long coat fell like a blade to the floor. Nothing in her face moved.
Damon's mouth went dry. "Get out."
The man didn't answer. The woman didn't blink.
"Out," he snarled, voice breaking. The bandage on his throat tugged when he spoke. He felt the sting and the memory with it—cold fingers, a crushing grip, a grin that hadn't belonged on a human face. His stomach lurched.
He needed something in his hand. Anything.
He grabbed the nearest glass from the counter and threw it hard enough to sting his fingers. The glass spun once.
It never reached the man.
The woman lifted a hand. The glass burst in the air with a sharp pop, fragments scattering across the carpet and skittering under the table. Her hand fell again. She didn't look impressed. She didn't look anything.
Damon's heart slammed against his ribs. He sprinted for the door, fumbling with the lock and chain. If he could get into the hall, he could scream, wake a neighbor, draw attention—do something.
A hand closed around his wrist.
He hadn't heard a step. He hadn't seen anyone cross the room. But the man stood there now, close enough that Damon could see the precise shape of his pupils.
"Calm down," the man said.
It wasn't a threat and it wasn't kind. It was a push that pressed straight through Damon's skin.
"Let go," Damon hissed. He jerked his arm. The hand didn't shift. He kicked, wildly, heel thudding into the door. The chain rattled, the frame shook, nothing else changed.
The woman spoke for the first time. "You can't run from it."
Her voice was low, edged. It made the room feel smaller.
Damon yanked again. His wrist burned beneath the man's grip. Panic frayed his thoughts into strips. "It wasn't real," he said, too fast, words tripping. "I hit my head, I passed out, I—"
"No." The man's voice cut cleanly through the spiral. "You didn't."
Damon's legs wanted to fold. He forced himself upright and glared even as his vision tightened at the edges. "Who are you? How did you get in here? What do you want?"
The man released his wrist. Damon staggered back a step and caught himself on the wall. The skin there felt cool and damp against his palm. He couldn't stop staring at the strangers. He didn't dare look away.
The man returned to the chair, unhurried, as if time moved for him differently. "What you saw happened," he said. "Pretending otherwise won't change it."
"What was it?" Damon asked. The question came out like a scrape. He hated the sound of it—small, begging—but he couldn't swallow it back. "In the alley. That thing."
The man's eyes thinned. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. A beat passed. Something unspoken moved between the two strangers.
"It shouldn't have been here," he said at last.
Damon waited for more. None came. The room hummed with the refrigerator, with the distant building pipes, with the sound of his own breath.
"What does that mean?" he asked. "Shouldn't have been where?"
Silence. The woman watched him without flinching. If she breathed, he couldn't see it.
The man leaned forward and rested an elbow on his knee. "You survived," he said. "That matters."
Damon let out a bitter laugh that didn't sound like him. "It matters to who? I almost died. A man actually—" The memory hit like a door slamming. White skin stretched wrong. Light drawn out of a mouth like steam. Damon swallowed hard enough to hurt. "I almost died," he repeated, smaller.
"You lived," the man said. "Most don't."
"So what?" Damon spat. "You break into my place to say congratulations?"
"You needed to hear it," the woman said. "And you needed to see us."
Damon's throat pulsed under the bandage. He resisted the urge to claw at it. "I don't need anything from you."
"Need isn't the word," the man said. "Reality is."
Damon stared. The word hit like cold water. "Reality? My reality is a job I hate and an apartment that smells like burnt dust. Not—" He stopped. The thing in the alley rose up in his mind like it had been waiting. He shut his eyes. The dark behind his lids wasn't empty anymore.
"You can go back to work," the woman said. "You can pretend this didn't happen. For a day. Maybe two."
His eyes snapped open. "Is that a threat?"
"A fact," she said.
Heat rose under his skin, a desperate, useless heat. He wanted to fight. He wanted to run his fist into the man's face, into the wall, into anything. He wanted to rewind the last twenty-four hours to the second before he'd chosen the alley over the street. He wanted to be stupid and safe again.
"What do you want from me?" he asked.
The man held his gaze. "For you to stop arguing with what is," he said. "For you to understand there's more. And then, when you can stand to hear it, the truth."
"About what that thing was," Damon said. He heard the hunger in his voice and hated it.
"About why it found you," the man said.
The room went very quiet. Even the refrigerator seemed to take a breath.
Damon's fingers curled against the wall until his knuckles ached. "Why me?"
The man's mouth tightened by a fraction. "Not tonight."
Damon took a step forward despite himself. "Then why are you here?"
"To give you a choice," the woman said.
He laughed again because the alternative was either screaming or crying, and he would die before he did either in front of them. "Choice? You show up in my apartment and teach me a magic trick with a glass and I'm supposed to feel grateful for choices?"
The man stood. He didn't need to raise his voice. "We'll come back tomorrow," he said. "If you want the truth, be ready to leave with us."
"And if I don't?"
The woman's eyes didn't soften. "Then lock your door. Turn off your light try to sleep. "You won't get much."
The words dropped into him and sat there like stones.
"I'm not going anywhere with people who won't tell me who they are," Damon said. It was the last fence he could build, flimsy and rattling, but it was still a fence.
"For now," the man said, "know that we were there. We saw you. That's more than anyone else can say."
Damon's skin prickled. He thought of the alley wall, of shapes above him he'd taken for tricks of the light. "You watched me."
"We made sure you lived," the woman said.
The anger flared hot. "You could have helped."
"Consider it done," the man said. The answer was so clean it stole Damon's next breath.
He moved in a instant. She followed. Neither looked back to see if Damon would do something stupid.
At the door, the man paused with his hand on the knob and glanced over his shoulder. His expression didn't change. His voice stayed level. It still managed to find the space in Damon's chest that hurt most.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Decide what kind of life you want to keep."
The latch clicked. The door swung open, then shut. Footsteps did not echo in the hall.
Damon stayed where he was, hands braced on the wall, waiting for the rush of adrenaline to crash and leave him cold. It didn't. It crawled around his ribs and settled there, restless.
He forced himself to move. The apartment felt wrong at the edges, as if someone had nudged the furniture while he'd been out. He crossed to the door because he needed to do something concrete and human and small. He needed to throw the deadbolt and slide the chain and hear the metal set.
The deadbolt was already turned.
He stared at it. Then at the chain. The chain still lay in its bracket, hooked.
He hadn't unhooked it when he came in. He hadn't opened the door for them. He hadn't opened the door just now when they left.
Damon lifted a shaking hand and touched the chain. It was cool. Solid. Unbroken.
He stepped back. The room seemed to lurch an inch to the left, like a ship in a slow swell.
In the corner, a shard of glass from the shattered tumbler caught the lamplight and flashed once. He stared at it too long.
He turned the lamp off and the apartment didn't get darker—it just changed the shade of its quiet.
On the other side of the wood and metal, the hallway stayed silent.
He didn't move for a long time.
When he finally did, it was only to whisper into the stillness, to no one, to himself, "Tomorrow."
The word felt like a door he hadn't opened yet.
And the chain didn't move.