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entity again.
    The being can be one of three things. He thinks. An echo from a fractured memory, a hallucination, or a ghost. He has nearly three hundred years of experience with the first two possibilities—and none with the latter. The first pair are figments of his twisted mind. The ghost would be unimagined.
    Can’t determine what’s real or what’s illusion. For the last week the being has returned to his room. He’s begun seeing her again, though not as much as that first night. Only a faint, glowing outline now. But he can scent her presence. Even now, he’s awash in the smell of roses.
    Whenever she comes to him, so do flashes of his lucidity. He doesn’t understand the connection, just knows he’s beginning to crave the focus of his thoughts.
    A mystery. How could a figment of his mind clear his mind? Even as he’s debating her existence—he’s realizing that something is actually making him coherent enough to fucking debate her existence.
    Maybe the shots they keep forcing on him are helping.
    He can’t recall much of what happened the morning he’d tried to escape. But he thinks that she’d been trying to undress him and possibly had attempted to kiss him—before casting him about the room.
    Yet the being never attacked him again. Usually she stays near the window seat. Though he has sensed her at the foot of his bed on more than one unnerving occasion.
    For years, he’s constantly felt as if he was being watched by something unseen—now he actually could be.
    No. He sees shadowy figures every day. Why should he think she’s different? Because she has a scent? Because, for the first time, he wants a hallucination to be real?
    He knows there’s a line between suffering from hallucinations and interacting with them. You can live with the former; the latter means you’re lost.
    Over the last century, he’s held on to the last of his sanity by his fingertips. Acknowledging her might just be the weight around his ankles needed to drag him down.
    Even as he knows this, he speculates about her constantly. If she exists, then she’s a ghost.
    Weren’t ghosts born of violent deaths or murder? So how did she die? And when? Is she even sentient? He’s seen her eyes and her long hair. What does the rest of her look like?
    Why are my goddamned thoughts so lucid around her?
    His brothers sound as if they’re about to come to the room. He doesn’t want this. Each day the entity grows clearer as the sun sets and the room dims. But when his brothers arrive, she fades. He’s realized that the uncovered new bulb above is too bright—the unnatural light obscures her. Darkness would reveal her to him.
    It wasn’t in the lightning bolts that he saw her that first night. It was in the dead black lulls between them.
    Twilight’s coming. Which means if his brothers will stay away, he would be closer with each minute to discovering what she looks like. He’s hungry for the sight of her, hands clenching and unclenching behind his back in anticipation.
    5

    Am I reaching or does he seem much better?” Nikolai asked when the three traced into the room.
    “He doesn’t appear as... disordered,” Sebastian said.
    As if to prove them wrong, Conrad began to mutter unintelligibly in a language Néomi had never heard, his gaze darting to the window.
    “Why don’t you try to talk to him alone?” Murdoch said. When Nikolai nodded, Murdoch and Sebastian left.
    Nikolai set the thermos on the nightstand, then pulled up a folding chair, turning it around to sit astraddle. Néomi loved it when men sat that way. His voice low, he said, “Where have you been, brother?”
    Brother. She was still startled at the idea that Conrad was part of their family. Sebastian seemed determined and studious, Murdoch was quiet and mysterious, and Nikolai was authoritative like the general he was. In contrast, the madman was aggressive and struck her as dishonorable, as if in a stand-up fight between gentlemen, he’d fling dirt in his