Paranormal occupations have long hours and late nights, which extinguishes all hope of ever considering myself an early riser. In this case, I was able to make an exception since I couldn’t sleep.

Avalon didn’t tell me what time to meet her in the morning, so I showed up thirty minutes before the earliest reasonable hour, hoping to get answers before she left for work.

I needed them to buzz me into their building first. The button with Avalon’s name didn’t have her last name, which made sense since she was trying to keep under the radar of the local paparazzi. Instead, the name following Avalon’s was Igraine, also without a last name. Or maybe it was positioned so that it looked like it was one name. Avalon Igraine. Several other occupants had slashes separating any roommates.

I pushed the button, and her roommate answered. She had a strained sleepy voice of a woman who must have been closer to Mrs. Camelot’s age than to Avalon’s.

“I’m here to see Avalon.”

“Now is not a convenient time,” the intercom cracked.

I waited a moment just in case she changed her mind.

A man walked in behind me with a disposable cup of coffee, unlocked his mailbox to retrieve its contents, then opened the door.

He didn’t stop me when I caught it before it closed, nor did he make a fuss when I entered the building. Didn’t even make eye contact. The typical see-nothing-say-nothing behavior of someone who either said something about something he saw or knew someone who’d made that mistake.

Still, I wasn’t going to push my luck by riding the elevator with him. There was only one, and judging by its age, I likely increased my life expectancy even if my climb to the top floor resulted in a heart attack.

The stairs were loud, uneven, and narrow by modern standards. On the drafting board I am sure it was wide enough for two people walking side by side, but in practice you must really like the person you’re walking next to.

On the top floor, I noticed that they had a corner apartment. Their door was paneled, but solidly built, and painted a darker shade of gray-ge than the walls of the hallway.

I knocked. The dry voice of her roommate said from behind the locked door, “I don’t know who let you in, but go away.” She sounded younger now that there wasn’t an intercom.

I knocked again.

“I’ll call the police,” she said.

I took a deep breath and spaced out my words. “No, you won’t.”

The old woman didn’t respond, so I continued, “I know about the moths. Not everything. I promise I am here to help her, but I need a better idea of what she’s dealing with. She didn’t get a chance to tell me everything last night.”

One after another, the locks turned from her side, and the door opened. I had been wrong about the woman’s age. She wasn’t elderly, but about the same age as Avalon. Everything about her told me that her age didn’t reflect her experience. Physically she might have been young, but she’d seen enough to be old.

“She’s still asleep.” She opened the door all the way. I walked into the apartment, which had abundant natural light entering from the windows and a skylight. It was hard to imagine a person who worked at a museum featuring dark imagery would choose to live in a place so bright.

To my right was where they had placed chairs and a couch, even though the design of the room was for the dining area. It had a stocked bookshelf ordered by color. A breakfast bar divided the reading room from the kitchen. The microwave light was on, and something was spinning inside it, but I couldn’t hear the machine.

Their dining table was to my left in what should have been a living room. It was low to the ground and surrounded by red cushions with gold embroidering. The table’s dark stain celebrated the imperfections of the wood’s grain.

“Is our apartment up to your standards?” she asked.

“Sorry, I have a bad habit of taking inventory of my surroundings. My name is Viktor.”

Their microwave sang a perky tune.

She stared at me with her lip twitching and jaw clenched. I couldn’t tell if she was about to cry or scream. Instead, she blinked an uncomfortable amount of times and muttered, “Igraine.” I think it had been some time since she had spoken to someone besides Avalon.

“Hi, Igraine.”

A smile wanted to form on her face. It knew how to form, and not too long ago it was probably hard for her to do anything but smile. Now she wore mismatched pajamas, her hair hadn’t been brushed in a long time, and she wore a single slipper. She was out of practice of being herself.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

One of the neighbors banged against the wall. We exchanged strange glances. We weren’t being loud, why would they be banging on the wall?

A memory jumped into her head. “Oh! I almost forgot to let her out.” She raced into a hallway past the kitchen and into a bedroom that shared a wall with the tiny dining-table room. Her movement was so uncoordinated she almost ran into the doorframe.

This couldn’t have been good.

I followed Igraine into the bedroom, but there wasn’t a bed. In the middle of the room was a brown coffin wrapped in chains. Igraine was on the opposite side of it, racing to open a padlock.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

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It hadn’t been a neighbor banging on the wall, it was whoever was inside the coffin.

Thump.

Each time, the lid lifted a little bit.

This violated a personal rule of mine: things that go into coffins should not come out of them.

The scene was enough to make me turn around.

“Wait,” Igraine called after me. I heard the chains fall to the ground and the lid open and Avalon whisper, “I’m fine, it’s alright.”

I walked a little faster.

Igraine called one more time, “It’s not what you think.”

There was some whispering between the two, and then Avalon said, “He’s here?”

I could have been out the door, down the stairs, and out of the building by the time she walked out of her room. But I stayed. Too much didn’t add up. Avalon didn’t seem like a vampire, and she was in trouble. I owed it to my client to find out what kind (or how many kinds) she was in.

She walked out of her bedroom in a long nightgown. Her skin was pale. Maybe she was a vampire, but she didn’t fear the sunlight flowing into the apartment from the skylight.

“I can explain. Just please take my word, I’m not what you suspect I am.”

“I’m listening.” But I wasn’t going to let her step between me and the exit.

“The cult I escaped from had a deadly curse for abandonment. Anyone who fled would be consumed by insects.”

“So, you sleep in a coffin to keep them from killing you?”

Igraine walked into the room, leaning against the wall the entire time.

“No, they attack me every night. The coffin is there to make my regeneration less complicated.”

At the mention of the word “coffin,” Igraine fought back something inside of her. I didn’t think she wanted me to see it, but she couldn’t help shaking her head.

“You couldn’t tell me any of this last night?”

My words stung her more than I intended. Her voice was burdened, “Because in that moment the only thing that was important to me was getting back home. I am embarrassed and ashamed of my… condition. You didn’t need to know the full story, but now you do.”

“That the truth?” I asked Igraine.

“Partially. The coffin also—”

Avalon cut her off “—Keeps Igraine from having to witness the attack.”

Before I could ask Igraine to confirm, she added, “And she dies faster.” She slid down the wall and sat on the floor. Her hands covering her face. She said something between her cries, but it was incomprehensible. It took me a few seconds to reshape her sounds into words. “And covers up her screams.”

Avalon was torn between responding to me and going to comfort Igraine.

“It keeps my remains in the same spot, and it dampens my screams. Eventually, I suffocate.”

Death. Avalon died every night.

“You’re not a vampire, but you’re undead.”

“I am wholly alive, just cursed. Double cursed to be exact.” She turned away from me and walked to comfort Igraine, who had started regaining control. To Igraine ,I overheard her say, “I’ll make you some tea.”

She walked into the kitchen and I stepped a little farther into the apartment, away from the door. I’m not one who is natural at comforting people, so I kept my distance from Igraine.

The microwave reminded everyone that no one had removed the contents it had so generously heated. Avalon pulled out a bowl of steaming oatmeal. She grabbed a spoon and walked it over to Igraine and then returned to the kitchen.

As the steam rose from Igraine’s breakfast, I felt nothing but contempt for the appliances in my office.

Avalon began talking while filling a teakettle. “One curse comes from the cult and the other is from my own spell. I can’t die until I’ve paid what is owed for using dark magic. It’s how I know some of the details about the terrible thing I need to do.”

There’s so little written down about dark magic and how it all works. I wondered if anyone else had ever been in this situation. This couldn’t have been the first time that someone died while obligated to pay their debt, but it was possibly the first time that someone died more than once or with such regularity.

“How much do you know about your obligation?”

She nodded toward Igraine, who was busy consuming her breakfast, and then put a silent finger to her lips.

“As you’re a paranormal investigator I assume you’d be interested in seeing the coffin.”

“Of course.” I could have cared less, but Avalon wanted us to be out of earshot of Igraine.

Avalon stepped out of the kitchen, and waved me into her room.

When I entered, I had no intention of examining the coffin, but once inside I saw it was open and couldn’t take my eyes off it.

The coffin’s interior was a mess of dried blood and crushed bugs. How Avalon had stepped out without being covered by any of it was something I didn’t understand. My curiosity shifted when I noticed the restraints for her wrists and ankles secured to the creases of the coffin’s interior. My heart dropped further when I noticed the gag resting on the coffin’s silk pillow.

Despite the mess, I hooked my finger into one of the restrains and gave a tug. No way it was moving.

“They keep me from banging on it at night.”

“Were you not in them last night?” Referring to the noise she had made a short time ago to get Igraine’s attention.

“I was, but when I materialize in the morning, I am not bound in them.”

They went to great lengths to make sure Avalon made as little noise as possible. “Why do live here? Why not go out to the suburbs or something?”

“Igraine tells me people ask more questions in the suburbs,” and then she added, “I can’t be helped or cured. This has been my life for almost a year. I brought you in here to discuss the one person who can be saved.”

I had all the information I needed to close the case for my client. I walked out of the bedroom and said, “Sorry, you’re not my client.”

Igraine had moved out of the way and made a valiant but unconvincing attempt to pretend that she hadn’t been listening in.

I kept walking past the kitchen, with my eyes firmly fixed on the door.

Avalon stepped out into the hallway. “Please, I know this goes beyond what you were hired to do. But I don’t have anyone else to turn to.”

“What about Igraine?”

Whatever she wanted to keep from Igraine, she’d need to spill it out now. I don’t do well with secrets that aren’t absolutely necessary.

“Because I’ve caused her too much suffering already.”

“No, that’s not true,” Igraine said and then started apologizing, which made it clear that there was at least some truth to the claim.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Avalon comforted.

They continued talking while I argued with my conscience. I wanted to leave, but I also knew that I was their only hope to do some good. And when I’m someone’s last hope or best chance, the circumstances are grim. I decided to at least hear a little more.

I turned back, and Igraine was still apologizing. “No. I forgot to unlock the coffin again. You almost suffocated again this morning.”

Avalon countered, “It’s not your fault. You’re not well and you need to get better. You must get better.”

Avalon put her arms around Igraine, who carried the weight of someone who refuses to forgive themselves, then looked at me and said, “We need someone with a clear head.”

“I don’t know what you’re asking me to do, but it doesn’t sound safe.”

Avalon spoke with the presence of a funeral director. “Sometime tomorrow, I have to lure a child away from his family and deliver him to a place where he’ll be found by criminals. The child needs to be rescued. Not me.”

“Tomorrow?” Igraine asked. “You didn’t tell me it was so soon.”

“Because I didn’t know. As the time gets closer, I wake up knowing just a little more about how to fulfill my obligation.”

My instinct told me that there was something to what she mentioned, but I focused on what I considered the most important question that needed an answer. “Won’t someone’s interference invalidate your payment?” If she still needed to make a payment, there may never be a way out saving an innocent bystander.

“I don’t think so. Not if we do it correctly.”

“Assuming it gets done correctly”— whatever that meant— “what happens to you after that?”

“Then I’ll only have one curse to deal with.”

“But the one that regenerates you will be lifted.”

“Yes, it will be.”

We were risking a lot. And once the Camelot Heiress found out that her granddaughter had died, I think I could count my compensation good-bye.

Avalon’s eyes said it all. A child’s life rested on my decision.