CHAPTER 5: THE OTHERS

Marcus spent the rest of the afternoon in his room, staring at the photograph until the faces blurred into abstraction. Silas hadn't returned. The bed across from his remained perfectly made, untouched, as if no one had slept there in years. Maybe no one had. Maybe ghosts didn't disturb sheets or leave impressions in pillows. Or just maybe they just existed in the spaces between things, half-there and half-gone, waiting for someone to remember them back into solidity.

His hands wouldn't stop shaking.

By the time dusk bled through the windows, turning the fog outside into something bruised and purple, Marcus couldn't stand the silence anymore. He needed people. Real people. Living, breathing humans who existed in mirrors and had pulses and didn't speak in riddles about integration, authenticity and remembering who you really are.

The common room on the second floor was larger than the dining hall, with overstuffed couches arranged around a stone fireplace and bookshelves lining the walls. A handful of patients occupied the space, some reading, others staring into the flames with the vacant expressions of people heavily medicated. The nurse from earlier who'd told him he'd been here three days stood by the window, making notes on a clipboard.

Marcus chose a chair in the corner, far enough from the fire to avoid attention. He pulled a book from the nearest shelf without looking at the title and opened it to a random page, letting his eyes skim over words that refused to form meaning.

"You're the new one."

The voice came from his left. Marcus looked up.

A young person sat cross-legged on the couch beside him, androgynous and striking, with close-cropped silver hair and eyes so pale they were almost colorless. They wore loose linen pants and an oversized sweater that hung off one shoulder, revealing a collarbone sharp enough to cut. Their feet were bare, toenails painted black.

"I'm Juno." They said it without smiling, studying Marcus with the intensity of someone reading fine print. "Room 214. Been here six weeks. You're Marcus Webb, Room 237. Three days."

Marcus closed the book. "How do you know that?"

"Everyone knows. New patients are like blood in the water. We all notice." Juno shifted, tucking their feet beneath them. "Plus, you have that look. The one everyone gets when they first arrive. Like you're trying to figure out if you're in hell or if hell would at least make more sense than this."

"What is this place?" Marcus's voice came out hoarse. "Really?"

Juno's eyes flicked toward the nurse by the window, then back to Marcus. "Depends who you ask. Cross says it's a rehabilitation facility for people with supernatural identity crises. The nurses say it's a psychiatric hospital for the wealthy and disturbed. The patients..." They paused, considering. "The patients say it's a prison for people who don't fit anywhere else."

"Which is true?"

"All of them. None of them." Juno picked at a loose thread on their sweater. "Some people here aren't real. Some people here were real, and some of us are stuck in between."

The words landed strange, their cadence off, like Juno was reciting something they'd rehearsed. Marcus leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "What does that mean?"

"It means not everyone you see is actually here. Some are echoes. Impressions left behind by people who died in this building back when it was the sanatorium." Juno's gaze drifted to the fireplace. "Some are patients like you and me, flesh and blood, trying to figure out what's real and what's the medication. And some..." They trailed off.

"Some what?"

"Some are dead but don't know it yet. Or do know it and are waiting for something before they move on." Juno looked back at Marcus, their pale eyes unsettling in their directness. "Your roommate, for instance."

Marcus's chest constricted. "What about him?"

"Silas Ashford. Beautiful, isn't he? Like something carved from a dream." Juno's expression didn't change, but something in their voice sharpened. "How long did it take you to notice he doesn't show up in mirrors?"

"A day."

"I noticed in an hour. Watched him walk past the hallway mirror and saw nothing but empty space where he should have been." Juno unwound from the couch, standing with liquid grace. They were taller than Marcus expected, willowy and ethereal. "You're not crazy, if that's what you're wondering. Silas is real. Or he was. It's complicated."

"Stop talking in riddles." Marcus stood too, frustration mounting. "If you know something about him, just tell me."

Juno moved to the window, pressing their palm against the glass. The fog outside had thickened, swallowing the redwoods completely. "What do you want to know? That he's been here longer than anyone can remember? That staff members walk past him like he's furniture? That some nights you can hear him playing piano in the music room even though there's no piano there anymore?"

"Is he a ghost?"

"That's the word people use when they don't understand what they're seeing." Juno turned from the window. "He's trapped. Bound to this place by something that happened a long time ago. He can't leave, can't die properly, or do anything except exist in this weird in-between state, waiting."

"Waiting for what?"

"For someone to remember him." Juno moved closer, their voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "For someone to love him enough to set him free, or to stay with him. The rules are fuzzy on that part."

Marcus backed up a step. "That's insane."

"Is it?" Juno smiled, but it didn't reach their eyes. "You've touched him, haven't you? Felt how cold he is? That's not circulation problems, Marcus. That's death. Literal, physical death. He's been dead for a century, give or take. And yet here he is, walking around, talking, looking at you like you're the answer to a question he forgot he asked."

"I don't believe you."

"You do. That's why you're shaking."

Marcus looked down. His hands were trembling, fingers curled into fists to hide it. He forced them open, but the shaking didn't stop. "If what you're saying is true, why would Cross put me in a room with a dead man?"

"Because Cross is a reaper." Juno said it casually, like discussing the weather. "Or something like one. He feeds on souls stuck in the between. The more desperate and confused they are, the stronger he gets. You're not here to heal, Marcus. You're here because Cross needs you for something. And Silas..." They paused, something sad crossing their face. "Silas is the bait."

The room tilted. Marcus grabbed the back of the chair, knuckles going white. "That doesn't make any sense."

"None of this makes sense. That's the point." Juno glanced toward the nurse again. She was still taking notes, oblivious to their conversation, or pretending to be. "I'm half-fae. It took me twenty-six years to figure that out. I thought I was just weird, and sensitive to things other people couldn't see. Then I started phasing through walls when I got stressed and my parents brought me here. Cross said he could help me integrate my fae nature with my human side. What he's actually doing is studying me. Seeing how long it takes before I'm desperate enough to make a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"The kind where you trade freedom for safety, power for control, or even your soul for the promise that you'll finally, finally understand what you are." Juno's eyes hardened. "I haven't taken it. Most don't. But some do, and then they disappear. Into the walls, into the fog, into whatever space Cross keeps his collection."

Marcus's pulse roared in his ears. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to find a window and break through it, to get as far from this place as humanly possible. "You're telling me I'm trapped in a facility run by a soul-eating reaper, rooming with a century-old ghost, surrounded by patients who are either dead, dying, or somewhere in between."

"More or less, yes."

"And you're half-fae."

"Correct."

"And I'm supposed to believe all of this because..."

"Because deep down, you already know it's true." Juno moved past him toward the door. "You felt it the moment you touched Silas. You saw it when his reflection didn't appear. You heard it when Cross threatened to keep you here against your will." They paused at the threshold, looking back. "The question isn't whether you believe me. The question is what you're going to do about it."

Marcus followed them into the hallway. The corridor stretched longer than it should have, doors lining both sides, each one identical. The walls seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat. "What can I do? Cross said I'm under involuntary commitment. The doors are locked."

"For you, maybe. But not for everyone." Juno walked with purpose, leading him away from the common room. "There are ways out. Cracks in the system. People who know how to slip between the spaces. But getting out isn't the hard part. The hard part is deciding if you want to."

"Why wouldn't I want to?"

Juno stopped at a window overlooking the fog-wrapped grounds. "Because of him. Because Silas looks at you like you're the reason he's still here. Because part of you, the part that remembers things you shouldn't remember, that dreams about fires, mirrors and a name that isn't yours knows you belong here."

"I don't—"

"Your roommate died a long time ago." Juno's voice was barely audible now, soft, sad and certain. "In a fire in this building, and he's been waiting ever since for someone to come back. Someone who looks exactly like you, who touches him like he's real, and makes him feel alive again, even though he's been dead for a hundred years."

The words struck Marcus like a physical blow. He stumbled back, hitting the wall, vision tunneling. The photograph. The date. 1924. The man in the picture who looked like him, standing beside Silas with his arm around his shoulders, both of them smiling like they'd found something precious in each other.

"He's waiting for you, Marcus." Juno turned away from the window. "Or he's waiting for Michael. Hard to say if there's a difference anymore."

Marcus couldn't breathe. The hallway spun, walls closing in, the air thick with the scent of smoke, lavender and something older, something that smelled like death preserved in amber.

"Your roommate died a long time ago," Juno repeated, their voice echoing down the corridor as they walked away. "I think maybe you did too."