Chapter 4

  Like The Mechanicals

  The elevator reached the ground floor. I barely waited for the doors to finish opening before slipping out and bursting through the front door of the apartment building.

  The cool night air hit my face, I took a left down the sidewalk and I walked.

  And walked.

  I didn’t have a destination so much as momentum. Choosing a direction the way I always did when my head got too loud. This time it was left down the sidewalk and forward. Away. Anywhere that wasn’t here.

  The city was still awake, at least this was familiar. Awake in a way where everything looks slightly staged. Streetlights making puddles shine like coins. Cars passing with their windows up, drivers and passengers sealed inside their own little worlds. Laughter spilling out of bars and restaurants in bursts, then snapping shut again when their doors closed.

  And somewhere in all of it, my mind did the thing I hated most. It took inventory.

  Clocking the nearest places to get a fix without me even asking it to.

  Like an animal that knows where the water is. My faithful needle on a compass.

  I didn’t think, I just ended up here—the corner store I’d seen earlier when we drove back from graduation.

  The electronic bell rang out when I pushed the door open. The inside smelled like hot air and cheap detergent. I hit the counter and stared at the cigarettes behind it..

  “Can I get, uh, a pack of…” I started, then stalled because the words didn’t attach to anything. It was all foreign. The labels meant nothing. I didn’t recognize any of them.

  “Ah, shit…” I panicked with a mutter. The clerk’s face didn’t change. He’d seen worse than indecision. Surely he did.

  “Menthols? Just—Can I get two packs, please?”

  He reached up without looking, grabbed them like he’d pulled that exact choice a thousand times from other people’s mouths, and set them down.

  “ID.” He said plainly.

  I handed over the new card. It still felt wrong in my hand, like I’d stolen my own name.

  He glanced at it, then at me like he was doing the math. Whatever he saw must’ve checked out. He slid it back.

  “Sorry, I need a lighter too.”

  He rang it all up. I paid. The whole exchange took seconds, and yet it felt like I’d just crossed a border.

  Outside, the air was colder and cleaner and somehow worse because of it. I flicked the lighter. The flame caught. The cigarette burned. I took a deep drag.

  Relief hit instantly—sharp and immediate—like a pressure valve opening.

  My eyes stung. I wiped at the edge of them with the back of my hand and pretended it was just the smoke.

  I took another drag. Held it, then let it out slow.

  I knew it was a bottomless pit. I wasn’t stupid. Most cravings and addictions were.

  I just walked. The cigarette guided me like a glowing leash.

  My thoughts chasing me in circles.

  ‘You do have a problem.’

  Something I’d been told hundreds of different ways by different people, just with new packaging now. My voice. My thoughts.

  My eyes tracked the night life as I moved. People in couples and groups laughing too loud. Shops still open because someone somewhere was always desperate for something, even at midnight.

  The sights and sounds were familiar but unfamiliar. Like I was walking through a city I’d seen in a dream. Only it’s not a dream. It’s the same thing, just a different world now.

  I passed a club, catching the hint of a beat through the door—bass punching the air. Then a diner, catching a glimpse of someone crying into a napkin at a booth. Little ways on, I saw a couple arguing on a stoop in hushed, brutal voices. I then passed a man sitting on milk crates behind a dumpster, feeding a cat some scraps.

  I just kept wandering.

  Conversations and cars bleeding into a blur.

  Before I knew it, I was down to the filter. I tossed it and lit another without thinking. The flame flared for a second,my hands already felt steadier.

  I glanced up to take stock of my surroundings and realized I had no idea where I was anymore.

  I turned slowly, scanning the street until I saw it.

  A neon sign with a hooded mage pouring the contents of an orb into a cauldron.

  THE MAGELITE

  At least it looked like a bar.

  The sign buzzed. The mage’s hood flickered like it couldn’t commit to existing. The orb pulsed sickly blue. There was something about it that felt almost like a joke someone had played on the universe.

  So I crossed the street.

  A clustered group of guys and girls in uniform were huddled by the crosswalk, laughing loudly about something. I couldn’t help noticing the patches on their shoulders. When I got close enough to actually see, I caught the design: a portcullis with mountains in the background. Words were threaded on its edge: ‘Frontier Charter’. It meant nothing to me.

  I slipped past them and pushed into The Magelite.

  Inside, the air hit me like a wall.

  Smoke, stale beer and old wood.

  A metallic odor lingered underneath it all, faint enough that I couldn’t place it; yet sharp enough that it made me think of old pennies and blood.

  The bar wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t trying to be. Low ceiling, dim lights, booths along one wall, tables in the back, and a long wooden counter that had absorbed years of elbows and spilled liquor and secrets.

  A few TVs were mounted near the ceiling—sports on one, a news channel on another captions scrolling endlessly.

  Some things don’t change.

  I walked up to the bar and grabbed an isolated stool near the edge, by the door. The seat was sticky. The wood had dents in it like it had taken punches over the years.

  I glanced up at the wall of alcohol—bottles layered on shelves upon shelves, labels shining in the low light like little invitations. A hundred different ways to go numb.

  “What can I get ya?”

  The bartender slid into view like she’d been waiting for the question. She looked young. Maybe a little older than me. Hair pulled back in a pony tail, sleeves rolled up, that tired-but-friendly face you get when you’ve smiled at too many people for too many hours, but her smile was real enough.

  “Beer please,” I said. “Whatever’s on draft.”

  My hands were wringing together without me noticing, fingers twisting as if they were trying to massage the anxiety out of my skin.

  She nodded, grabbed a glass, and turned away.

  “Name’s Blake,” she said over her shoulder, voice light. “Just holler if you need something."

  “Thanks.”

  I tossed a twenty on the bar more out of habit than intention. She scooped it up and tucked it away like it was nothing, replacing the bill with a beer.

  It looked innocent enough.

  Golden and cold, little bubbles crawling up the inside of the glass trying to escape. A light foam around the rim. The glass sweating on the wood the same way that soda had earlier on the dinner table—same ring, different poison.

  I didn’t touch it.

  I just sat there, watching the foam settle.

  Why shouldn't I touch it?

  ‘You do have a problem.’

  The words returned, along with everything else he’d said—blemish, unwanted mistake, drunk. All labels that other people had already slapped on me. It was like he read them aloud like facts.

  I clenched my jaw and leaned forward, elbows on the bar, and just stared down at the glass like it had started all this.

  I wanted to leave, just walk out, go back to the apartment.

  Shove the phone, the keys and his stupid fucking money into his chest and tell him to take his “Institute” and his “draft” and his plans and rules and shove them—

  My fingers twitched.

  I wrapped my hand around the glass anyway.

  It was cold enough to bite.

  The smell rose up. It never smelled good, but it was familiar in a way that made my throat tighten. I’m thirsty. I need a drink.

  Need.

  It wasn’t about him anymore.

  It's about me.

  Because this wasn’t the first time I’d stared at a drink like it could answer questions.

  I’d done it at parties with people I didn’t like. I’d done it alone in parking lots. I’d done it in kitchens at three in the morning with nothing but fridges and a head full of noise. I’d done it because it was there, because it worked, because it was simple, because it would make me forget.

  The world gets complicated and alcohol and nicotine makes it less so.

  At least for a little while.

  I didn’t lift the glass, I just held it.

  My fingers getting cold.

  Why do I drink?

  The question landed in my chest like a stone.

  Not in a poetic way. In a blunt, ugly way something heavy settles when you finally stop pretending it isn’t there.

  Why?

  To have fun? Maybe. Sometimes. Back when “fun” meant a few beers with the crew and the night ending in laughter instead of blackouts and stumbling down sidewalks.

  To be social? Kinda. Being sober around drunk people feels like being the only one awake at a sleepover. It’s easier to loosen up than to explain why you’re stiff.

  To take the edge off? Yeah.

  That’s the one.

  Because my life has always had an edge.

  An edge to every room, conversation. An edge to every silence.

  There’s this constant feeling that if I relax, something bad will happen. That if I let myself hope, somebody will snatch it away just to prove a point. They’ve done it before. They will do it again. They always do.

  So I drink to numb the blade. Silence the thoughts.

  I drink because it makes my thoughts slow down enough that I can stand them.

  I drink because it makes my chest loosen, makes my shoulders drop, makes the world stop feeling like it’s leaning in on me.

  I drink because sometimes I’m so tired of being myself I need a break.

  The bar’s noise swelled around me—laughter, glass clinking, someone calling a name across the room. A pool ball cracked against another. A song played faintly from a jukebox in the corner, something with a low beat that sounded like a heartbeat if you didn’t listen too close.

  I just kept staring at it. It's just a drink.

  The bubbles kept rising.

  It occurred to me, in a way that made my stomach twist, that Alaric wasn’t wrong about the stakes.

  Not because the “story” mattered more than me, but because he was right about one thing: There is no reset button.

  There never had been.

  Not for me.

  If there was, I'd have pressed it. Many times. I’d press it.

  Not for the things I’ve said while drunk or the long nights where I don’t remember what I did or who I’d hurt. Not for the mornings I’ve woken up and had to piece together who I was from the wreckage around me. Those are all consequences of actions I chose.

  No, I’d press it for the version of me that was. The boy who couldn’t choose. Because he needed a home. A family. He was just a kid. Just a victim running from hurt he couldn’t even name.

  He needed a second chance, not me.

  I squeezed the glass harder.

  My knuckles whitened.

  I don’t want to be an addict, I told myself immediately, like a prayer.

  Because addicts are other people. People passed out on benches. Cautionary tales used to scare kids straight.

  I’m just… stressed. I’m just coping. I’m just trying to breathe.

  But then my mind did that cruel, honest thing it does when you corner it.

  Okay, it said. Then don’t drink it.

  I stared at the beer like it had challenged me.

  My hand shook slightly, and I hated that more than anything.

  I set the glass down. The base hit the bar with a soft thud.

  Blake passed by again, wiping down a section of counter. Her eyes flicked to my untouched drink, then to me. She didn’t say anything at first. Just kept wiping, giving me the kind of space bartenders learn to give to people who look like they’re mid-argument with themselves.

  Then she leaned in slightly, voice casual.

  “You alright, hon?”

  The question shouldn’t have hit me. It was nothing. A script line. Polite.

  But my throat tightened anyway.

  “Yeah,” I said too fast. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  She nodded like she didn’t believe me but wasn’t going to make it her problem.

  “Food’s decent if you need somethin’ solid,” she offered. “Helps.”

  “Sure. I’m good for now, thank you.”

  She moved away again.

  I watched her go, and I realized how insane my situation was.

  I’m sitting in a bar under a neon mage sign, a new phone in my pocket, a new ID in my wallet, keys that aren’t really mine, in a city that feels like my world but isn’t, because apparently I’ve been drafted into some cosmic editorial job by a Deity with a sense of humor and an old man with control issues.

  And the thing I’m most focused on?

  A beer.

  Because the beer is normal.

  The beer makes sense.

  The beer doesn’t demand I accept that my blood is tied to a book or that I save the world.

  The beer only asks one thing: drink me and feel less for a while.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  I looked at it again.

  And in that suspended moment, I realized something I hated:

  This wasn’t about whether I could handle a drink.

  This was about the fact that when I felt hurt, my first instinct was to reach for something that would numb pain.

  I swallowed.

  Now I’m mad again.

  Because Alaric didn’t get to decide what I was.

  If he was going to call me a drunk, I’d rather spite him than satisfy him.

  I sat there, breathing slow, staring at the beer like it was a loaded gun I’d set down on purpose.

  My fingers tapped once against the glass.

  Once.

  Then my hand slid away.

  And for the first time that night, in the middle of the noise and the smoke and the neon sign humming above me, I asked myself the question again—quieter, more honest this time, like it hurt to say it out loud: Why do I need to?

  No answer came.

  Not yet.

  But the fact that I was asking felt like progress.

  The first crack in a pattern.

  I sat on the stool.

  The beer on the bar.

  And somewhere behind all the bitterness and defiance, a smaller thought flickered.

  Maybe Alaric was wrong about a lot of things, but maybe he wasn’t wrong about the stakes.

  And maybe the scariest part isn’t saving the story. Maybe the scariest part is that I might have to work on saving myself first.

  ~~~~

  He came to a halt just outside the bar. The car engine idling as if it, too, couldn’t decide whether to commit, but there was no room for inaction.

  The neon sign above the entrance flickered in a tired loop—hooded mage, glowing orb, cauldron brimmed with impossible light—as if someone had tried to make a joke out of magic and then got bored halfway through.

  THE MAGELITE.

  Alaric sat there, his hands fixed on the wheel, eyes pinned to the sign..

  He had half expected to find Jesse drunk in an alley. Or loud in the street. Or vanished entirely—phone lost, wallet gone, a mess he’d have to collect piece by piece like broken glass.

  Instead, a small blue dot on his phone had led him here.

  Steady. Stationary. Irritatingly calm.

  “Find My,” the little map read.

  Alaric’s thumb hovered over the screen, then pressed it off like dimming a guilty thought. He didn’t like that he’d used it. He didn’t like that he’d set it up in the first place.

  But he had done it anyway—because control was his first language, and fear always made him speak it fluently.

  He put the car in park and stepped out. Cool air bit his cheeks. He locked the doors out of habit and sighed, eyes lifting once more to the mage in the neon.

  He adjusted his coat as he walked, placed his hat on his head, then opened the door.

  The room met him with smoke, stale beer, and old wood. The light was dim enough to hide faces but bright enough to show you your drink. Laughter rose and fell. Glasses clinked. A pool ball cracked across a table.

  Alaric scanned the bar once, quickly.

  And there—near the end, close to the door—Jesse sat alone. A cigarette in hand and a beer in front of him. Untouched.

  Alaric stopped just inside the threshold. Not because he was hesitating, but because something in his chest tightened, then loosened the moment his eyes confirmed it.

  The boy wasn’t drunk.

  He wasn’t even pretending to enjoy himself.

  He looked pinned. Elbows on the bar, shoulders slightly hunched, gaze fixed on the glass like it was a question he couldn’t answer without choking on it.

  Even the seat he’d chosen was telling, whether he was conscious of it or not: near the exit, angled for a quick escape.

  Alaric exhaled slowly.

  Then he moved.

  He didn’t stride, but also didn’t loom.

  The bartender noticed him before Jesse did.

  Alaric slid onto the stool beside Jesse, leaving a respectful gap—close enough to be present, far enough not to corner.

  She approached. “Evening. What can I get you?”

  “What he’s having,” Alaric answered. Motioning to Jesse with his head. “Thank you.”

  Jesse’s head tilted a fraction. He didn’t look fully over, but Alaric saw the recognition land—heard it in the shift of Jesse’s breathing, the subtle tightening in his shoulders.

  The bartender’s eyes flicked between them. Her voice softened, the way bartenders do when they sense a need for privacy. “Coming right up.”

  She poured the beer and set it down in front of Alaric.

  Then, gently, she looked at Jesse. “Not a fan of the taste? I can get you something else. No charge.”

  Jesse glanced up, then shrugged, a motion that tried to be casual and failed. “That’s okay, honestly. This is fine.”

  The bartender nodded like she understood that “fine” meant I’m holding myself together with my fingernails. She tapped the bar twice—an odd little gesture, almost like a check-in—and slipped away with a nod and smile.

  Alaric stared at his beer, then lifted it and took a sip.

  Jesse watched him, chewing the inside of his cheek.

  It was bitter. Not unpleasant—just plain. A blunt taste that didn’t flatter anyone.

  That’s beer for you.

  Alaric set it down without comment.

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. The bar filled the silence for them: sports murmuring from a TV, laughter popping in the background, the bartender cleaning glassware and fixing drinks.

  Alaric removed his hat and placed it in front of him—a small act of disarming. His posture shifted with it, less formal, less armored.

  “Jesse,” he said, and his voice was quieter than it had any right to be.

  Jesse stared forward. Smoke drifted from his cigarette in a thin line, wavering toward the ceiling like it couldn’t decide where to go either.

  Alaric didn’t rush. He had rushed all evening. He had pushed facts and protocols and fear until the boy became a cornered animal.

  He wouldn’t do that again.

  “I, uh, used the Find My app,” Alaric said plainly. “The application on the phone I gave you. It locates the device.”

  Jesse’s eyes flicked over—not offended or mad, just watching.

  “You left in a hurry and I… reacted in panic. I wanted to know you were not hurt. Or lost. Or—”

  “Drunk?” Jesse finished.

  Alaric stopped himself and just sighed. He had almost said that too. Almost let the old contempt leak back in like poison.

  He swallowed.

  “You may disable it,” Alaric said. “If you wish. I will understand.”

  That landed.

  Jesse didn’t reply, but his jaw flexed. His fingers tightened around the cigarette and then loosened again.

  Alaric let another few seconds pass.

  Then he did the thing he had not done in the apartment.

  He apologized.

  “I was wrong,” Alaric said.

  Three simple words. They seemed to cost him more than anything in a long time.

  “Thus far, I’ve treated you more akin to a risk that needs to be managed rather than an individual,” He continued. “I spoke with cruelty. I accused you. I insulted you.” His voice faltered for a fraction—the smallest fracture in his control. “And I used your past as leverage. That isn’t teaching. It is cowardice. Inexcusable.”

  Jesse finally looked at him—fully, this time. The look wasn’t gratitude. It wasn’t forgiveness.

  Say it right, the look demanded. Or don’t say it.

  Alaric met it.

  “You were taken,” Alaric said, and the word tasted like iron. “Dragged out of your life and brought here. No matter the stakes, no matter the necessity… you did not fully consent to this.”

  He paused, jaw tightening. His eyes flicked once around the bar, ensuring no one was listening closely enough to stitch meaning together.

  “Essentially,” he finished quietly, “kidnapped.”

  Jesse snorted, the delivery was rather funny to him.

  Alaric matched his snort with an awkward chuckle and then sighed. Thankfully the temperature seemed to be improving between them.

  “I had no right to be angry at you for… being human,” he continued. “Especially considering your past, a young man who has been—” he searched for the least insulting truth, “—more handled by the world rather than held by it.”

  Jesse’s throat bobbed. He looked away again, back to the beer he still hadn’t touched.

  Alaric noticed the untouched glass again and understood why Jesse had not touched it: It was not really sobriety or virtue on display—rather its choice. A decision was being made minute by minute, as if with each passing second he is choosing not to consume. With anger still hot in the blood and shame waiting in the wings, even Alaric would have thought he’d give in. Yet he hasn’t.

  Alaric slid his own beer a little farther away. Not as a show, but as a removal—one less temptation hanging between them.

  “I’ve been attempting to do this all with maps and structure,” Alaric said, eyes dropping to the bar top as if it were safer than Jesse’s face. “All of my boxes, arrows, and protocols. Contingencies. All because if I don’t quantify it, I cannot pretend that I am not also terrified.”

  Jesse gave a small, humorless breath—almost a laugh, almost not. The truth of the matter was finally revealed. He hides behind preparedness.

  Alaric continued anyway, because this was the point where he would usually retreat into authority.

  And he wasn’t allowed to do that anymore.

  “Yet, the truth of the matter is that this is not a ledger or an equation.”

  He looked at Jesse, careful.

  “Rather, it is more akin to theatre.”

  Jesse’s brow furrowed. “Theatre?”

  “Yes,” Alaric said, and his voice steadied—not with superiority, but with conviction. “A play. A performance unfolding in real time. Scenes and cues and entrances and exits. And if we barrel onto the stage waving our arms and shouting at the actors, we will not correct the story.” He let the words settle. “We will only ruin the scene.”

  Jesse stared at him like he was waiting for the punchline.

  “You’re… serious?”

  Alaric nodded once, conceding how ridiculous it sounded, and went on anyway.

  “In theatre,” he said, “appearance matters. Not because it is shallow, but because it is how the audience understands what is real. Reality versus appearance. Order versus disorder. Those aren’t just themes in stories—they are mechanisms. Levers.”

  Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “Okay, well, I’m not a theatre kid. I don’t really understand all that.”

  Alaric’s mouth twitched, almost a smile.

  “Fine,” he admitted, looking down for a moment and then looking back. “Do you know Shakespeare? Specifically A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”

  Jesse’s expression went blanker. “I know of Shakespeare. Never read his stuff though.”

  “I assumed,” Alaric said, without cruelty. “Most have not, and that’s okay.”

  He hesitated, then leaned into the explanation, weighing each sentence as if it had to carry them somewhere important. Important for Jesse to understand the meaning.

  “In that particular play,” Alaric said, “there is a group called ‘the Mechanicals.’ They are tradesmen; there is a carpenter, a weaver, a bellows-mender and so on—working men. Not nobles or heroes, not the beautiful lovers or the magical beings who drive the grand madness of the story. They are very simple in how they are presented.”

  Jesse pulled his cigarette to his mouth and took a drag, eyes staying on Alaric now, he was listening.

  “These men decide to put on a play,” Alaric continued. “A small, earnest tragedy—Pyramus and Thisbe. They rehearse it poorly. They worry about all the wrong things. They are terrified the audience will misunderstand their stagecraft—think the lion is real, think the sword is real, think the death is real.”

  Jesse exhaled smoke, tapped ash into the tray. A faint smirk formed. “That’s… kind of stupid.”

  “Oh, it is, absolutely.” Alaric agreed immediately. “And yet it is also so incredibly vital.”

  Jesse glanced at him again, more curious now.

  “The Mechanicals are the bridge,” Alaric explained. “They show you the artifice. They remind you that what you are watching is not reality—yet it can move reality. Their performance is ridiculous, yes, but it becomes the thing that restores order at the very end. The Duke laughs, everyone laughs, and the night’s chaos, all the magical and mystical uncertainty, everything is put back into a social box: weddings, harmony… resolution.”

  Alaric tapped the bar lightly with two fingers, as if marking beats in a script.

  “Order versus disorder,” he said. “In that play, disorder reigns in the forest—mistaken identities, enchantments, people behaving like strangers inside their own bodies. Reality is warped by appearance.”

  He paused.

  “Then order returns—not because someone drew the perfect plan, but because the story reaches its cue and the players perform it.”

  Jesse stared at his beer again.

  “What does that have to do with us?” Jesse asked, voice low.

  Alaric didn’t answer with authority. He answered with honesty.

  “It means we are not the Duke and we are not the fairies, the main attractions.” He said. “We are not above the story, either. We are simply within it. And the only way to intervene without shattering it is to act with it. To understand what the scene, essentially, demands of us. What the audience expects. What appearances must be preserved so reality does not collapse in on itself.”

  He glanced at Jesse, careful, then took a breath before continuing.

  “And it means I cannot keep treating you like a tool,” Alaric said plainly. Honestly. “A tool gets used. It does not have a role. And you have a very important role to fulfill. At least, where we Mechanicals are concerned.”

  Jesse chuckled, fingers tightened around his cigarette. A long inhale. A slow exhale.

  Alaric took that as permission to keep going.

  “You see the branches of this narrative,” he said. “You see what might happen. That is the one advantage we have against a narrative that would otherwise steamroll us.”

  He shifted in his seat and put his hands together.

  “I know the story as it was intended,” he added. “But intention is not destiny—not once free will enters the stage, as it already has.”

  “So here is what I propose,” Alaric said. “Not commands. Not protocols. Instead, we must be a partnership.”

  Jesse’s eyes flicked up.

  Alaric held his gaze.

  “We decide together when to step in,” he said. “You tell me what you see. I tell you what I know. We argue, if we must, but we do not override one another. We do not drag each other by the collar and call it leadership.”

  A pause.

  Jesse’s face shifted—a smile on his face now.

  “And what,” Jesse asked, “you’re just gonna… stop being like that? Like at the apartment.”

  Alaric’s throat worked.

  “No,” he said. “I will fail again. But I will fail differently. And when I fail, I will apologize again and correct myself. That is all I can honestly promise without insulting you.”

  Jesse stared at him for a long moment. The bar’s noise swelled and receded like a tide.

  Finally, Jesse looked down at the beer again.

  “I didn’t drink it, you know.” Jesse said—almost like a confession he hadn’t meant to make. “I really wanted to, when I first came in.”

  Alaric’s chest tightened, not with triumph but with an aching respect.

  “I know,” Alaric said softly. “I saw.”

  Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “From your little spy app?”

  Alaric nodded once, no defensiveness. A faint, rueful chuckle slipped out.

  “Indeed… no, of course not. But as I said, you can turn it off.”

  Jesse smiled at him, then reached into his pocket and pulled out the phone. The screen lit his face faintly. He unlocked it and several notifications greeted him.

  There was a message from Yvette.

  A picture with a small heart emoji in the text.

  It was the picture Alaric had taken of them—standing there in graduation gowns, all smiles. Yvette made a ‘V’ with her right hand, her left arm was around Jesse’s shoulder. You would have thought you were looking at close friends. The whole thing looked like a normal day if you didn’t know the truth.

  Jesse’s mouth twitched into a soft chuckle. Then the chuckle died into something quieter.

  He stared at the photo for a beat too long.

  “I don’t actually have a graduation photo of myself,” Jesse said softly. “At all.”

  Alaric blinked, caught off guard by the confession.

  “Sorry?” he asked.

  “Yvette,” Jesse said, turning the phone slightly as if Alaric could see the meaning in it without needing the screen. “She sent that photo you took. And I realized… I’ve never kept any of my graduation photos from when I was younger.”

  His voice tried to make it casual. It wasn’t.

  Alaric nodded slowly, the weight of it settling. “Well,” he said, gentle, “now you do.”

  He hesitated, then chose his words carefully.

  “Though you were never here during the classes,” Alaric added, “you still took them.”

  Jesse gave a small, strange laugh—half disbelief, half grief. He set the phone down.

  “So that’s how this worked?” Jesse asked. “There was a version of me living here before I arrived today.”

  Alaric nodded once. “Yes. I cannot derive much beyond that, but… yes.”

  Jesse’s eyes held a dozen questions. He swallowed them back like medicine.

  Alaric sat still beside him, hands folded, hat on the bar like a surrendered weapon. He didn’t fill the silence. He waited, and then when he spoke again, he made the connection he’d come here to make.

  “Like the Mechanicals,” Alaric said quietly, “tonight was rehearsal. We stepped on each other’s lines. Missed our cues. Feared we would frighten the audience.”

  Jesse gave a small, bitter huff, still not fully comfortable in the metaphor. “Audience being…?”

  Alaric’s eyes flicked toward the TV for a second, then toward the door, then inward to somewhere Jesse couldn’t see. A faint, tired smile touched his mouth.

  “The story,” he said. “The world. And that which watches—though it wears no face, only shadows.”

  Jesse’s gaze sharpened. Then, oddly, understanding surfaced.

  “Our… ‘employer,’” Jesse said.

  Alaric’s chuckle was quiet, almost appreciative. “Yes.”

  He let that sit, then anchored them back to the human, the immediate.

  “Finish your cigarette,” Alaric said. “Leave the beer—if you wish. Or do not. That decision is yours.”

  He paused, then added the hardest part, the part that required him to not sound like a command.

  “And then come home… when you are ready. We must speak again in the morning—when we are not bleeding.”

  Jesse stared at the untouched beer.

  Then, slowly, he slid it a few inches away from himself, like moving a loaded gun out of reach.

  He didn’t look at Alaric when he spoke.

  “Okay,” Jesse said. “But you don’t get to call me your student.”

  Alaric’s mouth twitched—almost a smile.

  “Very well,” he said. “Then do not call me your father.”

  Jesse’s head turned sharply, a flash of a grin cutting through the tension like a blade catching light.

  “That won’t be hard to do,” Jesse answered, quickly.

  Then the grin faltered as another thought arrived.

  “Unless…” Jesse started, then stopped himself, eyes narrowing. “Wait—is the story that you adopted me? Or am I actually your—”

  He didn’t finish.

  He didn’t have to.

  Alaric’s expression—quiet, careful, unreadable—answered too much by answering nothing.

  He only smiled, paid for his drink, and slid off the stool as if he hadn’t just dropped a trapdoor under Jesse’s question.

  He put his hat on with a coy smile.

  “Good evening, Mr. Parks,” Alaric said.

  Then he turned toward the exit.

  “You gotta answer that. Hey!” Jesse’s voice sharpened, half laugh, half panic. He mashed his cigarette into the ashtray and stood too fast. “Hey—hold on a second, c’mon, don’t do that to me.”

  He thanked the bartender out of reflex, grabbed his phone, and hurried after Alaric—caught between irritation and curiosity, anger and something else he didn’t want to name.

  And as the bar door swung open and the cold night air rushed in, it felt less like Jesse was being dragged this time…

  and more like he was choosing to follow.