Night Presses Closer

The fire had settled to a low glow, a bed of oranges and dull reds that breathed more than burned. James's last words hung in the room like heat that refused to lift, get some sleep, it is the only easy thing you will have for a while. I tried. The chair was too warm, the sheets in the side room too cool, my body caught between the itch to move and the pull to be still.

I gave up on sleep and counted steps instead. Twelve from the armchair to the hallway. Nine to the end where the paneling changed color, a shade darker, as if a different tree had been cut for that section. Five more to the little kitchen where everything was squared and quiet. I ran the tap until it stopped coughing air and drank from the glass without ice, the water metallic at first, then clean. Somewhere behind the walls a system breathed, an old building's lungs pushing air along hidden tunnels.

On the table, the black phone James had given me sat face down. I did not touch it. My own phone was a dead thing in my pocket, powered off by his hand, not mine. The room was too still, so I opened a cabinet and found a tin of tea. The paper tag on the string smelled faintly of jasmine and dust. I set water to boil and watched the blue flame lick the bottom of the kettle, alcohol sharp on my tongue from the memory of a drink I had not finished.

Footsteps moved in the corridor, soft and unhurried. Not James. He walked like a decision. This was the sound of someone who had learned to become background and then never quite came back. Three knuckles touched the doorframe, a rhythm with a gap in the middle.

"It is open," I said, before I could think better of it.

Richard stepped in, coat over one arm, hair still damp from the street. He had the look of a man carved by patience, eyes that catalogued and then rested, never landing longer than needed. He took in the kettle, the glass, the phone, me in a sweater that was not mine, then closed the door without letting the latch click.

"Could not sleep," he said. It was not a question.

"I tried." I held his gaze and then looked at the kettle again. "Tea?"

He shook his head. "If I drink after midnight, I hear every mouse change its mind."

I smiled in spite of myself. The kettle began to sing, a small sound that filled the room like a throat clearing. I poured water over the leaves and watched them rise, then fold themselves back into the heat.

"You came to see him," I said.

"I came to see the situation," he replied. "He will sleep when he decides he can. You should, if you can."

"I am aware," I said, and the edge in my voice surprised us both. "Someone told a room full of men that my past has a bill I do not remember signing. That is not ideal for rest."

Richard's mouth tilted, not quite a smile. "Rooms like that always speak in invoices. Half of them are fictions. The trick is knowing which half." He looked at the phone on the table. "Has it rung."

"No."

"Good." He reached into his coat and set a small object beside the phone. A thin band, dark metal that was not quite black, smooth on the outside, etched lightly on the inside. "Wear this when you are outside these walls. It tells the right people to look twice and the wrong people to step back."

I did not pick it up. "Everyone keeps handing me things that say I belong to him."

Richard considered that. "It says you belong to his protection. Belong is the wrong verb for the rest." He glanced toward the door as if listening to something only he could hear. "You will find your own words for it."

The tea cooled enough to drink. I held the cup with both hands, happy for the warmth, unhappy for needing it. "Tell me the part you can say without making a new problem."

"Elias will not stop pushing," he said. "A message was sent tonight. Two, if you count the man in the coat who enjoys dramatic entrances. They want pressure, not resolution. They want James to move, then move again, until he has to choose which fire to put out."

"And me," I said.

"You remind them he has something to lose," he answered, and there was no cruelty in the way he said it, only a plainness that left no space for ornament. "That is leverage, if you are holding it. It is a target, if you are not."

I set the cup down. "You think I am a problem."

"I think you are a person inside a problem," he said. "That is different."

Silence layered over us for a moment. The building exhaled. Far below, a door opened and closed, a dull sound that traveled up the bones of the place. Richard's eyes tracked nothing. He studied stillness like other men studied maps.

"Does he tell you everything," I asked.

"No," he said, without pause. "And that is how he keeps me useful."

"What do you tell him," I said.

"What he needs to act," Richard replied. He nodded at the ring. "What you do with that is up to you. Do not wear it if it makes your throat feel smaller. Keep it in your pocket, and touch it when you forget the rules."

"Which rules."

"Yours," he said. "And his. The trick is keeping them from becoming the same set."

He turned toward the door. I thought he would leave, but he stopped with his hand on the frame. "When he says rest, he means be ready," Richard said. "When he says safe, he means not today. Translate him correctly and you will live longer."

"That is a comforting little dictionary," I said.

"It is the one we have," he said, and was gone before the echo reached the end of the hall.

I did not follow. I slid the ring into my palm and felt the weight of it, light but undeniable. The etching inside caught on the pads of my fingers, a pattern that meant nothing to me yet. I tried it on, just to see. It fit, snug, not tight. The metal warmed quickly, as if it had been waiting for skin.

The door at the far end of the corridor opened. No knock. No hurry. James stepped in, shoulders damp, hair darker where the rain had found it. He paused when he saw me, not surprised, just recalculating some distance I could not measure.

"You are awake," he said.

"So are you," I replied.

He hung his coat without looking at it, the movement neat, the habit old. When he came closer, his eyes dropped to my hand. He did not touch the ring. He did not need to.

"Richard," he said.

"He left a minute ago," I answered. "He has opinions."

"He collects them," James said. "He keeps the useful ones."

The fire cracked behind him, a soft sound like a sentence ending. He nodded at the side room. "Try again. Morning will come early."

"You told me the only easy thing I would have was sleep," I said. "You did not make it sound inviting."

"It is not," he said. "It is necessary."

I waited for him to soften it. He did not. Something in me liked him better for that and hated that I liked him better for that.

"Tell me one thing I can hold," I said. "Just one."

He studied me the way he studies a street from the shadow of a doorway. Not cruel. Precise. "Hold this," he said. "If anyone asks you a question that starts with did you know, do not answer until I am in the room."

I let the breath go that I had been keeping. "All right."

He walked past me, into the little kitchen, poured water from the kettle that had gone quiet, drank it without a sound. The ring felt heavy again. I slid it off and put it in my pocket, not because I disliked the metal on my skin, but because I wanted the choice to be mine when I wore it.

"Good," he said, seeing more than I wanted him to see. He turned off the light in the kitchen and the room drew closer to the fire again, edges softer, corners honest. "Try to sleep."

I went to the side room and did not close the door all the way. The hall light lay along the floor like a pale ribbon, thin and straight. I lay on my side and watched it. A minute passed. Maybe ten. The building breathed. A pipe ticked. Far below, a door opened and did not close.

I sat up, every quiet part of me suddenly louder.

The phone on the table in the outer room lit once, a square of white in the dark, then went still, no ring, no vibration, as if something had thought better of itself at the last second.

I did not move. I let the ribbon of light stay where it was and I counted the beats between breaths until the glow faded and the room became a shape again.

The ribbon of light from the hall was still on the floor when I woke again, but it was thinner, like the night had been pulled tighter around the building. I could not remember falling asleep, only lying there with my eyes open until they closed without permission. The air was different now, less still, with a faint hum that hadn't been there before. It sounded like wires warming, or something mechanical turning over and waiting.

I sat up slowly, listening. The fire in the main room was nearly out, only a red ember or two blinking in the grate. The phone on the table was still face-down, and the dark ring Richard had given me was where I'd left it, beside my glass from earlier.

I should have stayed in the side room. James would have told me to. But the air had weight again, and it was pressing me toward the door.

The hallway beyond was darker than it should have been. Two sconces were off, one flickering, like something had touched the wiring. At the far end, where the paneling turned a shade darker, a shadow lingered. It wasn't moving, until it was.

"Kristina."

My name, quiet but close enough to pull the breath from my chest. I knew the voice. Elias.

He stepped into the thin light from the flickering sconce. The man who had stopped us outside the meeting, the one whose presence felt like a drawn blade. His coat was closed, but his hands were empty. He looked like he could be holding a thousand knives inside his mind.

"You should not be here," I said. My voice was steady enough to surprise me.

"Neither should you," he replied, and the faintest curl of a smile edged his mouth. "But you are, which means he has left a door open."

I glanced toward the stairwell, wondering if James had heard. Wondering if Richard had.

Elias tilted his head slightly, watching my thoughts move. "I am not here to take you," he said. "Not yet. I am here to remind you that belonging to his protection does not mean you belong to safety."

"I do not belong to him," I said.

His smile grew, not with humor but with recognition. "That is what makes you dangerous to him. And to yourself."

He started toward me, slow and unhurried, until the hum I'd heard earlier grew louder. A door down the hall opened, and James stepped out.

The stillness between the two men was different than silence. It was the pause in a room when a fuse is burning, and everyone is waiting to see if it reaches the powder.

"Not here," James said.

Elias's eyes flicked to me once, then back to James. "You cannot keep her in walls forever."

James didn't blink. "I only need to keep her in the right ones."

Elias held his gaze a moment longer, then stepped back into the shadow at the end of the hall. The hum faded with him, like the building itself had been holding its breath.

James didn't move right away. His eyes stayed on the darkened corner until the last trace of Elias was gone. Then he looked at me, not sharply, but as if measuring how far I had already been pulled into the game.

"Inside," he said.

I stepped back into the main room, and he followed, shutting the door with deliberate care. The latch caught, quiet but final.

"Did he touch you," James asked.

"No."

"Did you believe him," he said.

I hesitated. "About which part."

He didn't answer, which told me enough.

James didn't speak right away. He crossed to the window, brushing the curtain aside just enough to check the street. His posture wasn't tense in the way most people showed tension; it was too controlled for that. Every shift of his shoulders, every glance outside, felt like it was placed on a map only he could see.

I stayed near the table, the low heat from the dying fire grazing my side. "You're not going to tell me what's really going on, are you?"

His reflection met mine in the glass before he turned. "Not yet."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I can give you without making things worse." He stepped away from the window, his focus narrowing on me in a way that made the room smaller. "Elias isn't just another player. He's part of something older, tangled deeper than what you saw tonight."

I caught the shift in his tone, the one that usually meant he was already deciding which truths I didn't need. "And he knows me."

"He knows of you," James corrected. "That's different. Dangerous, but different."

The fire popped, and for a moment the sound was all that filled the room. Then James closed the distance between us, slow enough that I had time to read the decision in his eyes. His hand came up, fingers curling under my chin, tilting my face toward his.

"I need you to trust me," he said.

"Trust isn't the problem," I replied. "Being left in the dark is."

Something like a shadow crossed his expression, quick but unmistakable. "If you saw the whole picture, you'd run."

"Or maybe I'd stay by choice," I countered.

We held there, the space between us thin enough to break with a breath. His gaze dropped briefly to my mouth, then back to my eyes, and for a second I thought he might close it. Instead, he stepped back, letting his hand fall away.

"You should get some rest," he said, voice rougher than before.

I stayed standing as he moved toward the hallway. His footsteps paused at the threshold. "Lock the door," he added.

When I turned to slide the bolt, I caught a sliver of movement outside, the faintest ripple in the rain beyond the glass. Someone was still out there. Watching.

The shadow outside lingered long enough for my breath to slow into something sharp and deliberate. I kept my movements small, my fingers finding the edge of the curtain and letting it fall back into place without a sound.

James was already gone from the hallway, the quiet of the house pressing in heavier now that I knew we weren't alone. I sat on the edge of the bed, my pulse thrumming a stubborn rhythm in my ears, eyes fixed on the door as though that alone would keep it closed.

The fire in the other room cracked once, then faded to the softer hiss of embers. Beyond that, the rain filled every corner, its steady rush masking whatever sounds might be hiding in its weight. I told myself it was nothing, that whoever had been there was gone, but the image stuck, a dark outline etched in the downpour.

I lay back, the ceiling above me a pale blur. My mind kept replaying James' words, his refusal to give me the whole truth. It wasn't just caution; it was protection sharpened into something that cut both ways. He thought keeping me in the dark made me safer. Maybe he was right.

Somewhere between the sound of rain and the low groan of the building settling, I heard it, soft, deliberate, just outside the wall where the window sat. A scrape, followed by stillness.

I sat up, heart knocking against my ribs, listening hard. The sound didn't return, but the air in the room had shifted, as if the night itself had leaned closer.

I eased to the floor, sliding across the carpet until I reached the nightstand. My hand closed around the cool metal of the small folding knife James had left there earlier, his casual "just in case" now carrying a weight I hadn't felt until this moment.

The rain kept falling. The shadow didn't move again. But I stayed there on the floor, knife in hand, waiting, knowing that when morning came, it might not feel any safer than the night.