I run a boarding house for extraordinary people. Tonight, something went wrong.

I inherited the boarding house six months ago, though “inherited” isn’t really the right word for it. There was no lawyer, no funeral—nobody actually died, and no one read a will in an expensive office. My great-aunt May just called me out of nowhere and said, “Lucy, pack your stuff, get your ass over here. I’m tired of this shit. It’s your turn.”

It’s not a hotel. It’s not even a proper business, at least not in the way people usually mean it. There’s no website, no listings, no reviews. If you try to look it up online, you won’t find anything except a few dead links and a dentist’s office that hasn’t existed since 2009.

And yet, somehow, we’re mostly full.

Forty rooms. Five floors. Four shared bathrooms on each level, which is a nightmare on its own. The place is an old colonial building wedged between two newer brick structures like it refused to be replaced out of spite. You can walk past the street three times and never notice it—unless you’re looking for it. Or unless it’s looking for you.

The only real sign is a small neon sign in the front door.

LAST CHANCE

It flickers sometimes. Not like a faulty bulb. More like it’s thinking about whether it should be on at all.

My great-aunt didn’t give me a handbook when she left. No instructions, no emergency numbers, nothing useful.

“The guests aren’t exactly normal,” she said on her way out, waving her plane tickets to Florida at me before grabbing her two suitcases and shuffling out the front door on her crooked feet, straight into a waiting Uber.

The Keys were on the counter in the lobby. The Uber drive off and I was left alone in a five-story building full of people I wasn’t supposed to ask questions about.

That was six months ago. I’ve learned a few things since then:

If a guest asks for a room without mirrors, you give it to them. No questions.

If something goes missing in the house, you don’t report it. You wait. It usually comes back.

And if one of the bathroom doors disappears, you start checking the other floors immediately. Because someone might still be inside the bathroom.

There’s one resident who’s been here longer than I have, and if you believe him, longer than my great-aunt ever was. His name is James Hampelton.

He looks like he stepped out of a different decade and simply never adjusted. Always dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit, polished shoes, and a long wool coat with silver buttons that catch what little light the hallway offers. His hair is thick and completely grey, combed back with the kind of care you don’t really see anymore. He’s somewhere around seventy, I think, though with him it’s hard to be certain. Some people age in obvious ways. Others just… stop, settle into themselves, like time decided it had done enough.

James is also the reason this place is still running.

Most of our residents don’t pay rent, at least not in any way a normal person would recognize. But electricity bills don’t stop coming just because your tenants bend the rules of reality, and neither do water, food, or the countless small things that keep a building like this from falling apart. So we had to find another way to keep everything going.

That’s where James comes in.

He always wears white gloves. Both hands, always. I asked him about it once, early on, before I really understood how things worked here. He didn’t seem offended, just quietly reached out and placed his hand against the edge of a wooden side table.

It turned to gold instantly.

No warning, no sound, just a smooth, immediate shift from something ordinary into something heavy and wrong in a way I still can’t quite explain.

After that, we made some adjustments. Firstly, we painted the golden table in brown – an ugly, flat kind of brown – because we can’t exactly have a solid gold table sitting in the lobby without raising questions.

The thing about James is that it’s not just his hands. It’s his skin. Anything his bare skin touches turns to gold. Instantly. The only reason he isn’t walking around turning the entire building into a museum piece is because of what he wears—and more importantly, because it seems to only spare exactly what he’s wearing. That suit, those gloves, the coat. Anything else would turn into gold the second it touches him.

We’re all very grateful that he has those clothes. Otherwise, he’d be walking around the house naked, and this would be a very different kind of establishment—considerably more awkward.

It also means he doesn’t really need things like a bathroom. Dirt doesn’t stay on him long enough to matter. It just turns. If anything, he sheds fine traces of gold dust instead, the kind that settles into the corners of his room no matter how often we clean it.

Interestingly, the inside of his mouth doesn’t seem to be affected. He eats without any issues, and from what I’ve seen, he eats well—better than anyone else in the building, actually. Which makes sense, considering what he’s capable of. Before he ended up here, he must have lived a very comfortable life.

Still, there are things even that kind of life doesn’t give you.

He doesn’t have a wife. No children. No one who comes to visit, no one who calls.

But there is a woman in his room.

A life-sized statue, cast entirely in gold.

She stands near the window, just slightly turned, like she had been in the middle of saying something before everything stopped. The details are too precise to be decorative. The expression, the posture, the way the folds of her clothes fall—it all feels… preserved, rather than sculpted.

We don’t know who she is and we don’t ask.

Maybe she was the first person he ever loved. Maybe she was someone else entirely. A sister. A mother. Someone who got too close at the wrong moment. Or maybe she came later, long after whatever happened to him had already happened.

We don’t even know when it started for him. Whether he’s always been like this, or if there was a point where things changed. Whether he aged into it, or stopped aging because of it.

All we know is that the statue is there and that he brought it with him when he moved in. Or had it delivered. No one’s really sure which.

My great-aunt never said anything about it. Then again, she never says anything about this place at all. She’s in Florida now, living her best life, drinking mimosas with her friends at some bridge club like she didn’t just hand me a building full of things that shouldn’t exist.

That’s the arrangement we have with James.

Every Friday, he comes down to my office. We keep it simple, predictable—routine matters in a place like this. By the time he arrives, I’ve already laid everything out on a silicone mat across my desk. Small things, mostly. Stones, bits of scrap, the occasional plant stem if we’re running low.

He takes off one of his gloves, just enough to free a single finger, and goes through them one by one, barely more than a light touch. Each object shifts instantly, dull and ordinary turning into something dense and metallic, catching the light in a way that never quite feels natural, no matter how often I see it.

When he’s done, he puts the glove back on, exactly the way it was before, like the moment never happened.

My employee – I’ll get to him later, he’s a story on his own – takes the pieces afterward and drives them out of the city. Pawnshops, jewelers, places far enough away that no one starts connecting patterns that shouldn’t exist. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough.

It keeps the lights on. Pays for food, taxes, repairs, just everything that quietly piles up when you’re responsible for a building like this.

All things considered, it’s a very good deal.

James lives here without paying rent, and in return, he makes sure the rest of us can afford to stay. No one bothers him. No one asks anything of him beyond Fridays. He gets his room, his privacy, and whatever version of a life this is.

Outside of that, he keeps to himself.

He likes to walk in the evenings, slipping out into the city when the streets are quieter, always careful to keep his distance from other people. He watches where he steps, where he stands, like he’s constantly aware of how little it would take for something to go wrong.

Sometimes, when he comes in on Fridays, he brings extras.

A small pile of gold insects – flies, mosquitoes – sets them down on the mat with the rest without a word. It happens often enough that I don’t ask anymore. Something must have wandered too close. Landed where it shouldn’t have.

It doesn’t take much.

Needless to say, he doesn’t like to shake hands.

That Friday, I was in my office when James came by, right on time as always.

He greeted me the way he always did—polite, composed, like we were meeting under entirely normal circumstances. A small smile, a slight nod. “Hi, Lucy,” he said, setting his gloves down just enough to free his fingers. “I brought you something.”

He placed a small collection onto the silicone mat before I could even respond.

A handful of insects, all turned to gold.

Beetles, their shells perfectly preserved. Two spiders, delicate legs frozen mid-curve. A caterpillar, a butterfly, a few moths, and several flies. Every detail was still there, every tiny structure intact, like they had been captured mid-movement rather than transformed.

It was… fascinating, in a way that made you forget for a second that it probably shouldn’t exist.

I thanked him, and then handed over what I had managed to gather—some small stones, a few screws and bolts I’d found in the basement, and, because I had run out of better ideas, three potatoes.

He didn’t comment on that.

He simply touched them one by one, and they turned, just like everything else.

When he was done, he slipped his glove back on, precise as ever, and reached into his coat pocket.

“Oh,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “I nearly forgot.”

He placed a single golden M&M onto the mat.

I stared at it for a second longer than I probably should have.

We don’t buy M&Ms. We don’t have them in the house. No one here eats candy.

Where did he even get them from? Did he rob a gas station or a grocery store? He doesn’t exactly carry cash. We never give him any. Should we give him cash? Should we be giving him pocket money? I should probably be giving him pocket money.

How did he get M&Ms? I don’t understand. Did he steal them?

I didn’t ask.

I thanked him again, and a few moments later, he left, just as quietly as he had arrived.

For a while, I just stood there, looking at the mat.

At the insects. The potatoes. The small pile of gold.

And the M&M.

Then Kevin came in.

He didn’t knock, just hovered in the doorway for a second like he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be there, then stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

Kevin is the one who handles the selling. He’s the reason we haven’t been arrested yet, which, considering everything, is an impressive achievement on ist own.

He shifted his weight a little, glanced at the desk, then back at me.

“So… small problem,” he said.

That was never a good way for a sentence to start in this house.

“The usual guy,” he continued, “the one three cities over? I can’t go there anymore.”

I frowned. “Why not?”

Kevin hesitated, then rubbed the back of his neck. “Something about last time. He got… suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what?”

He gave the gold insects a brief look, then back at me. “Of this. Said it’s too clean. Too detailed. Thinks it’s stolen. Like… museum stuff. Private collections. That kind of thing.”

I glanced down at the butterfly on the mat, ist wings caught in perfect stillness.

Yeah. I could see that.

“He won’t take anything from us anymore,” Kevin added.

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

Because the problem wasn’t just finding someone else.

The problem was finding someone who wouldn’t ask questions.

We couldn’t exactly start melting everything down first. That would raise even more questions, not to mention require equipment we definitely didn’t have.

We needed someone … flexible.

Someone who didn’t care too much where things came from, as long as they could sell them.

I leaned back slightly, thinking it through.

Then I looked at Kevin.

“Alright,” I said. “Then we find someone new.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We?”

I gave him a small smile.

“We,” I repeated.

I had actually found the note a few days earlier while digging through my great-aunt’s old paperwork.

While looking for tax documents, of all things—bills, receipts, anything that would help me make sense of the mess she had left behind—I came across a tin box tucked away in the back of a drawer, the kind you’d expect to hold cookies, not secrets.

Inside were dozens of small slips of paper. Names, mostly. Some with numbers, some without. No explanations, no categories—just a collection of people my great-aunt had apparently considered worth remembering.

Most of them didn’t mean anything to me.

One of them did.

It only had two things written on it.

Mr. Gold. And an address. No phone number.

I had already memorized the address by then.

“2397 Tallow Lane,” I said, glancing up at Kevin.

He repeated it under his breath, like he was trying to decide whether it sounded like a place you could go to without getting stabbed.

It didn’t.

“Sounds promising,” he said anyway.

It didn’t.

But we didn’t really have a better option.

So we decided to check it out.

Kevins old, rusted Dodge pickup sounded like it was reconsidering its life choices every time he started the engine. It rattled, it groaned, and I was never entirely convinced all of its parts were still attached, but it got us where we needed to go.

Most of the time.

We drove in relative silence, both of us thinking the same thing without really saying it out loud:

Please let this work.

The address led us to a lamp store.

Not even a subtle one.

The entire place was packed wall to wall with lamps—every kind you could imagine. Antique pieces, ornate baroque monstrosities, delicate art nouveau designs, modern chrome, steampunk, even a few that looked like they belonged in some kind of cyberpunk fever dream. Light everywhere, shapes and shadows overlapping in a way that made it hard to focus on any one thing for too long.

It felt … excessive.

Like the place was trying to distract you.

At the back of the store, behind a counter, sat a woman with dyed red hair and far too much makeup. She looked like she was somewhere in her fifties, but dressed like she was trying very hard not to be. Tight clothes, low neckline, long nails she was currently filing without much interest in anything else.

She didn’t look up when we approached.

“Hi,” I said. “We’re looking for someone. Mr. Gold?”

“Nope,” she said flatly. “No one here by that name.”

“You can try Larry. He’s out back.”

So we went outside, around the building, into the backyard.

Larry looked like he hadn’t planned on seeing anyone that day. Overweight, greasy hair, stained t-shirt, sweatpants, two different sneakers, a cigarillo hanging from his mouth.

He looked at us like we were a problem before we even said anything.

“Yeah?” he grunted.

“We’re looking for someone,” I said. “Mr. Gold?”

His reaction was immediate.

“Never heard of him.”

Too quick.

“Are you sure?” Kevin asked.

“Yeah,” Larry snapped. “I’m sure. No Mr. Gold here. Never was.”

I hesitated, then tried a different approach. “Do you know who owned the place before?”

That earned me a sharper look.

“There is no ‘before,’” he said. “Family’s had this place for three generations.”

That didn’t feel true either.

“Look,” he added, taking a step closer, “either you buy a lamp, or you get out.”

That was pretty much the end of that conversation. The drive back was quiet. Not the comfortable kind.

I watched Kevin from the side for a moment while he drove. He’d been working for me for about six months now, ever since my great-aunt left. I’d found him through a handwritten note pinned to a board in a grocery store: “Looking for work. Anything. I’ll do whatever.”

I had called the number. Kevin had shown up.

He was twenty-two, one of seven kids, and it showed in the way he carried himself—practical, a little rough around the edges, used to figuring things out as he went. He wore ripped jeans, a t-shirt, and usually an old denim jacket that looked like it had survived the nineties and refused to move on. His hair was shoulder-length, sun-bleached blond, never really brushed, and he always had that permanent three-day stubble no matter how often I told him to shave.

“I just did,” he’d say every time.

Still, he was reliable. And, objectively speaking, not bad to look at.

Which, given everything else, felt like a bonus. He often charmed his way around the female guests, when they tried to complain about something in the house. They liked him.

It was while I was looking at him that I noticed the motorcycle behind us. A black bike, the rider was also dressed entirely in black, helmet and all.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. But then we turned. And they turned.

We took another street. So did they.

I watched them in the side mirror for a while, trying not to make it obvious.

“Do you see that?” I asked.

Kevin glanced up briefly. “Yeah.”

Neither of us said anything else for a moment.

“We still have money left from last week,” he said after a while.

“Not enough,” I replied.

He nodded slightly. “Yeah.”

We both knew the problem.

We had been careful. Always selling just enough to get by, never enough to attract attention. It had kept us safe, but it also meant we didn’t have much of a buffer.

We needed a new buyer.

Soon.

By the time we got close to the boarding house, the motorcycle suddenly sped up, passed us, and disappeared down another street.

Just like that.

Kevin exhaled quietly. “Probably nothing.”

“Probably,” I said.

Neither of us sounded convinced.

He parked the truck outside, and we went in.

I handed him the remaining cash and a short list of groceries.

“Get enough for the weekend,” I said. “I’ll start cooking.”

He nodded, took the list, and headed back out.

I watched him go for a second, then turned toward the kitchen.

We currently had thirty-four guests staying in the house. Not all rooms were occupied, but it was still more than enough to keep me busy. And while not everyone had conventional eating habits, there were still plenty who did – and they tended to be picky about it.

At least I didn’t have to worry about cooking for the vampires.They were on a liquid only diet and didn’t show up until after dark anyway.

Still, cooking for that many people was a lot.

I found myself wondering, not for the first time, if I should try to hire someone.

But then again, how exactly were you supposed to advertise a job like this?

I stood in the kitchen for a moment, looking at the counter while going over what still needed to be done. Dinner had to be something simple that would keep most of them satisfied for a while, so I had settled on pot roast with baked potatoes. It wasn’t exciting, but it worked.

I carried the sack of potatoes over to the sink, emptied them into the basin, and turned on the water, letting it run over them while I started washing off the dirt one by one. The steady sound of the water filled the room, dull and constant, blending with the low hum of the old refrigerator in the corner and the faint, uneven creaking of the floorboards that never quite settled, no matter how long you stood still.

For a few seconds, everything felt almost normal.

Then I heard something behind me.

It wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t sudden, just a small shift in the air, the kind of sound that makes you pause without quite knowing why. Old houses make noises, I reminded myself. The floorboards swell, the wood settles, the doors don’t quite sit right in their frames anymore. Sometimes they creak open just a fraction on their own, especially if there’s a draft.

I kept my hands in the water for a moment longer, listening, trying to decide if I had actually heard anything at all or if my mind was just filling in the silence.

Maybe it was Jolene.

She had a habit of sneaking into the kitchen before dinner, thinking she was being subtle about it, which she wasn’t. If it was her, she was probably already halfway to the pantry, pretending not to notice me.

I turned around and looked in the direction of the pantry.

No Jolene there.

Maybe an animal?

We had a raccoon problem not long ago, one that had taken me embarrassingly long to notice. This raccoon had somehow made ist way into the basement and decided to stay there, sleeping during the day and leaving together with the vampires at night. For a while, I had simply assumed we were going through food faster than usual, until I realized that one of the vampires, a younger fellow named Vincent, had, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, decided to keep the raccoon as a pet. He named him Fluffers.

I had a strong word with Vincent about it and told him that as soon as he started buying his own food for the raccoon, he could keep him – but I wasn’t going to feed him chocolate cereal and peanut butter bites.

The sound came again, a little closer this time, just enough to pull me back into the moment, and this time it didn’t sound like wood settling or a loose hinge shifting in its frame.

I turned around.

And found someone standing in my kitchen.

He was dressed entirely in black leather motorcycle gear, the kind that looked too heavy for indoors, with a helmet still covering his face, the visor dark enough that I couldn’t see anything behind it. For a second, I just stared at him, my brain lagging behind, trying to make sense of something that didn’t fit into any of the rules I had learned over the past six months.

Because there were rules. There were always rules.

And one of the most important ones was that people didn’t just walk into this house unless they were supposed to be there.

“Can I help you?” I asked, more out of reflex than anything else.

He didn’t answer, and he didn’t move, just stood there completely still, like he had been there longer than I had noticed, and for a second I almost thought he might stay that way—until he suddenly moved, fast and abrupt in a way that felt wrong, and then everything went black.