Page 23 of Claimed By the Mothman

A long silence stretched between them, heavy with the scent of soil and still-warm bricks. The kind of silence that stretched back to the foundation of the building and forward to the moment when Nell would vanish into its memory.

“You are drawn to her,” Mr. Lyle said suddenly.

Sig looked over at the apartment manager and that feeling rose again—like a thread buried deep in his chest had been tugged hard, sudden and unwelcome.

For a moment, Mr. Lyle’s expression shifted. “I wish it did not have to be this way,” he said. “But you know the pattern.”

Sig closed his eyes. “The Lustrum chooses.” The words tasted bitter. Not because they were untrue, but because he had watched what they meant too many times.

Mr. Lyle nodded. “And it changes. Not all who enter are lost. Some are rewritten. Some are freed. You know this.”

Sig did not respond.

The apartment manager inclined his head respectfully. “Good evening, Sig.” He turned and walked back the way he came, leaving Sig alone beneath the moonlit vines and trembling trellises.

—

Back in his apartment, Sig threw open the balcony doors and walked into the evening air. He curled his claws against the railing, trying to ground himself in the sounds, the scents, the feel of Greymarket Towers.

The others—Margaret, the child in 7D, the family in 7B—they had all carried the scent of endings. Resignation clung to them like wet wool. They moved like echoes long before the Lustrum took them.

But Nell…Nellwas fighting.Even unconsciously, even while drifting toward the Lustrum, some part of her still reached for life. Still believed she deserved to besaved.

He shouldn’t care. Shouldn’t want. Shouldn’t feel. But gods above and below—hedid.

Dusk settled in slowly. The sky turned watercolor blue, then violet, then deeper still. The streetlights blinked on, one by one, soft amber glows holding back the darkness.

“I would save you if I could,” he whispered, the words carried off by the night air like a secret too soft to keep.

Beneath his hand, the iron railing warmed slightly. The vines at the edge of the balcony shifted, curling inward as if to listen. Greymarket had heard him.

And somewhere deep below—beneath floor and root and stone—a draft of cold air unfurled from a long-sealed door.

The Lustrum was listening, too.

Chapter 5

Something was wrong with the hallway light. It flickered, but not in that irritated, attention-seeking way of a bulb that needs changing. It pulsed, slowly and deliberately, like it was breathing.

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.

Nell’s notebook had gone strange. Pages she knew she’d written had faded into soft spirals of graphite. Entire entries were missing. Her handwriting was unfamiliar, with too-tight loops and pressure that vibrated from the barest mark to deep, tearing grooves. Just yesterday she had looked down and the page in front of her had been filled with a single word, scrawled again and again:

wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong

Her opal ring had warmed steadily through the day until it was almost too hot to wear.

At work, she dropped a glass in the staff kitchen. One second it was in her hand, the next it was shattered on the floor. It was like her fingers had forgotten how to hold on.

Ms. Kephra had laid a cool hand on her shoulder. “Take a break,” she said softly. Her voice was kind, but there was a thrum behind it, like the tolling of bells at a funeral.

It wasn’t until Nell entered the Greymarket Towers lobby that she realized she couldn’t remember walking home. She had taken the stairs—the elevator had refused to be called. Dev and Carol from 6C passed her in the stairwell and had given her small, quiet smiles, the kind reserved for hospitals and funerals.

Even Goldie hadn’t texted in days. Not since that weirdly intense conversation about whether ghosts could haunt themselves. Nell had typed out a message three times and deleted it each time.Hey, do I seem weird lately? Like… wrong?

She stood at the window for a long time, staring out over Bellwether as the sun dipped low. The towers across the skyline blurred into apricot and gold, as if they were being painted in real time by an unsteady hand.

There was a precise knock on her apartment door. Nell jumped and moved quietly to the peephole, heart skittering.