The dam didn’t break while he was talking.

  It broke after the last words left his mouth.

  The room fell into that careful, fragile quiet when no one quite knew what to say. When the adrenaline that had carried him through the telling finally drained away and reality rushed in.

  David stayed seated, afraid to trust his legs. He caught his breath as heat climbed his face. The chair felt cramped, the table too close. Even the air felt heavy.

  Someone asked if he was okay. Someone else offered him a drink.

  He pushed himself up from the chair when the pressure became too much, legs unsteady, and muttered an excuse he barely heard himself say. No one stopped him as he slipped into the hallway, the voices behind him fading with every step.

  The bathroom light snapped on. Pain shot through the back of his skull, and he squinted, turning his face slightly to keep the light at bay.

  David leaned over the sink and turned the tap full cold, splashing water onto his face, cooling his skin as he tried to hold on to what little control he had left. He failed.

  Tears broke free, washing down his cheeks, mixing salt with the water running into the basin. His breath hitched. A sob tore loose, then another, until his body folded over the sink as if it could no longer hold the weight.

  All that pain.

  All that terror.

  Right there — at the feet of strangers.

  And Chris. Francis. Rowan.

  For a few seconds, there was nothing else. Just the pain and the memory. Those shadows. That last one. A twinge of unease rose up, threading through the hurt, pushing back against it.

  When he finally lifted his head, the woman was there.

  She stared back at him from the mirror, copying his every movement with perfect precision. When he tilted his head, she did the same. When he raised his hand, so did she.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Not again… I’m not asleep. I’m not drunk. I’m not hungover.”

  His voice sounded too loud in the small space.

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  She looked… familiar. Uncomfortably so.

  “Raven.”

  Francis’s voice floated through the closed door, gentle but edged with concern. “Y’all doin’ alright in there, honey?”

  “I’m fine,” David called back, too quickly. “Did you need the bathroom?”

  “No, darlin’. I’m just checkin’ on ya’. You been in there a while.”

  He turned his attention back to the mirror, heart thudding. As he watched, steam crept across the glass, fogging his reflection until the woman blurred into pale shapes.

  The fog thickened until he could barely see himself. He reached up and wiped a clear path through the condensation.

  Symbols glowed back at him.

  They glowed beneath the fogged glass, layered through the reflection itself. The same markings from the table. He’d only glanced at them then, barely registered them at all, yet here they were, as if he had memorized every line and placed them there himself.

  “What is happening to me?”

  “Raven,” Francis called again, louder now. “Honey, you’re startin’ to worry me. Chris is on his way, and he ain’t gonna let that door stop him.”

  David swallowed hard. “Sorry, Francis. I know I’ve been in here a bit. I’m okay. Really.”

  He turned back to the mirror to convince himself of it.

  And leaped backward with a gasp.

  A raven was perched on the edge of the sink.

  Its feathers were black, catching the bathroom light just enough to show their natural sheen. Its eyes weren’t beady or dark, but eerily familiar — the same blue he saw staring back at him in the mirror.

  It simply watched him with his own eyes.

  David screamed and lurched for the door, shaking hands clawing for the handle.

  The door swung open, interrupting Francis’s knocking.

  She smiled in relief. “By the Goddess, darlin’, I—”

  Her eyes shifted to the right.

  To his right shoulder.

  The blood drained from her face.

  Francis jumped back, slamming into the hallway wall. “Raven—what is that on your shoulder!”

  David’s heart sank.

  He glanced nervously over his left shoulder toward the bathroom.

  The mirror was clear. The counter was empty.

  He swallowed hard.

  Slowly, he turned his head to the right.

  The raven was staring back at him.

  David screamed and dropped to the floor by Francis’s feet, his palms slapping the carpet as his knees gave out.

  The raven launched upward, wings snapping once as it streaked toward the ceiling. Just before impact, it unraveled into smoke, stretching into a dark column that twisted, thinned, and vanished.

  Francis slid down the wall with him, breath coming fast, eyes never leaving where the bird had been.

  “It was on the sink counter,” David choked out. “It was there and then—” His voice cracked. “It had my eyes…”

  David stayed on the floor, staring up at the blank ceiling, chest heaving.

  “Did… did you see that, Francis?”

  She didn’t blink. “Did I see it?” Her voice shook. “Sugah, how on earth did you manage to miss that?”

  Footsteps thundered down the hallway.

  “?Qué diablos está pasando?” Chris skidded to a stop and stared at them.

  Both of them spoke at once.

  “There was a raven—”

  “On Raven’s shoulder—”

  “It flew up—”

  “Turned into smoke.”

  Chris scanned the ceiling, then the hallway, then them. “I don’t see nothin’ now.”

  “It was there,” Francis said, steady despite herself. “I saw it.”

  David pushed himself up slowly and offered his hand to Francis. She took it, and they both glanced back toward the corner of the hallway where the smoke had vanished.

  A shiver ran through them.

  They fell in behind Chris, shoulder to shoulder, and walked back down the hallway together—neither of them willing to look back again.