Jonathan Ward had never been so grateful to see his own street, yet dread turned the cobblestones into a gallows walk.
The fire from the asylum painted the sky orange. Smoke smeared across rooftops, bent low by the wind, and curled into Ashford's alleys like a thief checking locks. People ran with buckets, with children, with half-packed sacks, every face carved by firelight into panic. But Jonathan's eyes fixed only on the narrow house with the lamp burning in the front window.
Evelyn's lamp.
It always burned when he was on watch. She said she couldn't sleep if she didn't give him something to walk toward. Tonight it burned steady, unblinking, as though nothing had changed, as though the world hadn't tilted.
"Jonathan."
His wife's voice. Clear, soft, carried on smoke, though the door was still shut.
Jonathan's heart stuttered. He sprinted the last yards, boots splashing in gutter-water, Gregor's shadow at his back, Elise slack in Gregor's arms. He grabbed the latch with a hand slick from sweat.
Gregor's voice was iron. "Don't open it."
Jonathan turned, breath ragged. "She's in there!"
Gregor's face was pale, unreadable. "Or something wearing her voice."
The words hit like a fist. Jonathan froze, the latch biting into his palm.
Another call: "Jonathan, love. You're late." Evelyn's voice, the little smile in it. She'd said those exact words before—on nights when he came home after midnight, smelling of rain and cheap tobacco from the guardhouse stove.
Jonathan's eyes burned. "It's her. It has to be her."
Elise stirred in Gregor's arms. Her lips twitched, sound scraping out like frost breaking glass. "Cold," she whispered again. Her mirror eyes flickered open, catching the lamplight through the curtain. For an instant, Jonathan thought he saw Evelyn's reflection in them. Then the grayness swallowed it.
"Open the door," Evelyn's voice coaxed. "Let the smoke in before it takes me."
Jonathan slammed his fist against the wood. "Say my name!" he shouted.
Silence.
Then—soft, careful—"Jonathan."
Not Ward. Not shouted. Just Jonathan, the way she always said it when he dropped his boots too loud, when he forgot to bank the stove, when she wanted his attention without the whole town's.
He sagged against the frame, tears stinging. "It's her."
Gregor's voice cut through. "It knows what she says. It remembers everything you remember. That's how it works. It isn't proof. Ask it what only she would know."
Jonathan's mouth dried. He pressed his forehead to the door. "What did you sew into the lining of my coat, Evelyn?"
A pause. The fire outside roared like someone drawing breath to lie.
Then: "A coin. From your father. You still haven't noticed."
Jonathan blinked. His throat locked. Because it was true. He had found the lump one morning, pressed into the hem. A penny his father had carried from the war. He'd meant to thank her, and then he hadn't.
He turned to Gregor, wild. "It's her."
Gregor's jaw clenched. "Or the Archivist rifling through your head."
Jonathan's knees weakened. He wanted to scream, to smash the door down, to throw Elise into Gregor's arms and run inside. But he didn't. He pressed his hand harder against the wood.
"Evelyn," he whispered. "Step to the window. Let me see you."
Curtains stirred. A shape moved behind them—slender, shoulders hunched the way Evelyn's did when she bent over her sewing. The lamp's glow brushed hair that might have been her brown, skin that might have been her pale.
"Jonathan," the shadow said again.
His body screamed to open the latch. To take her in his arms. To believe.
Gregor stepped beside him, Elise's head cradled in his elbow. "Choose wrong," Gregor said, "and you may never touch the living again."
Jonathan's hand slipped from the latch. He staggered back, choking. The shape behind the curtain stood still, waiting. The lamp glowed on.
And then Evelyn's voice changed. It stretched, thinned, turned papery. "Jonathan Ward. Owed. Owed."
The word rattled the window. The shadow blurred, bleeding into the fabric of the curtain. The lamp sputtered once.
Jonathan fell to his knees. "No," he gasped.
Gregor caught his arm, steadying him. "Now you understand. It will use her until you give her."
The house groaned as if under weight. Curtains fluttered though no wind passed. From upstairs came a sound Jonathan knew too well: the bedroom floor creaking under careful steps.
His blood froze. "She's inside."
Gregor shook his head. "Or it is."
Jonathan pushed him off, staggering toward the door again. He pressed his ear to the wood. A faint sound came from the other side. Not Evelyn's voice. Humming. A tune.
Jonathan's heart collapsed. It was the tune Evelyn always hummed when she worked her needle: low, almost tuneless, more breath than melody. He had teased her once, called it "the sound of a kettle with nothing in it." She'd laughed and told him she'd keep humming until he remembered the words.
And she had. Every night. Until tonight.
He whispered her name. "Evelyn."
The humming stopped. Silence pressed close. Then, from the dark of his own home:
"Jonathan," she whispered, her voice her own, small and trembling.
Gregor swore softly in a tongue Jonathan didn't know. "If she's still in there, the Archivist has already marked her. Once we cross that door, it won't let both of you leave."
Jonathan's vision blurred. "Then I'll make sure it's me."
He reached for the latch.
Behind him, Elise suddenly convulsed in Gregor's arms. Her back arched. Her mirror eyes blazed white, then silver, then black. Her mouth opened wider than it should, and in a voice that wasn't hers, wasn't Evelyn's, wasn't the Archivist's, she screamed a single word—
"NO."
The lamp in the window burst, showering glass into the street.
And the door latch turned by itself.