David glanced back at the booth. Chris waved him on, grinning. David chuckled under his breath and shook his head.
He walked to the big window. The patio beyond was dark, its string lights dead. He paused. Those lights never went off during business hours. He made a mental note to mention it to someone.
The dark patio offered a clear view of the night sky. A thin sliver of moon hung above the city haze. He looked down at the necklace. Just like they said—the waning crescent was slightly larger than the other two phases beside it.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” He blinked between sky and charm. “It matches. Son of a bitch, it really matches.” He grinned, chuckling to himself, already picturing Chris’s reaction.
Movement flickered on the patio, catching David’s eye.
A woman sat on the patio, her outline glowing faintly with pale blue light.
David froze, his breath caught. “What the hell is that?”
He spun back toward the bar. Gone. The booths, the laughter, his friends—swallowed in shadow. His pulse thundered in his ears. He turned in a circle, searching for an exit, a wall, anything solid. Nothing. Only darkness, pressing closer.
The necklace pulsed, casting a pool of silver light around him. He clung to it, rooted in place, the glow the only thing holding back the dark.
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Unconscious of what he was doing, though his heart still pounded, David stepped closer to the window. The glass disks tinkled like faint bells as he brushed past.
The glowing woman’s face came into focus, and his mind reeled. He knew her—her face haunted his dreams, her voice lingered in every half-waking moment. Morgana.
She sat in the darkness, familiar with it like an old friend. Her porcelain face glowed, green eyes old as deep-mined emeralds, black hair spilling in starlight. Around her neck hung a necklace like his own.
A raven perched on her shoulder, its gaze fixed on him—knowing, too knowing. A memory tickled the back of his mind. He reached for it but it slipped away into smoke.
Morgana looked up to David and gave him a soft, knowing smile, as though she had been waiting for this moment. The window between them vanished, but the tinkling of fae bells remained.
The smell of wildflowers and pine needles drifted through the dark, and for a heartbeat he felt as though he had stepped back into a place he once knew, a place that still remembered him.
Morgana raised a delicate hand to David with an open palm reaching for him. She whispered, “M’chroi…”
His heart stumbled, then slammed hard against his ribs.
The raven tilted its head, beady eyes fixed on him. It gave a soft tok, tok, tok.
It let out a deep, throaty croak and launched itself from her shoulder. It struck him with enough force to knock him back—then it was gone.
The window returned between them. The forest scents faded, replaced by the distant smell of Mexican cuisine.
Through the glass, David saw Morgana reach for her necklace. In his mind, he heard her whisper, Keep. The raven’s croak followed, fading into silence.
The necklace flared into blinding white light. The terrible darkness fell away. The sounds of the bar came crashing down on him.
“What the hell just happened?” David’s voice shook as he glanced back at the now-empty patio.
He reached for the necklace, meaning to rip it off, but hesitated. Her request echoed in his mind.
Keep it.
uncomfortable.
can be explained yet — not by David, and not by the story at this point. What matters is not what happened, but that it did… and that it chose him as much as he chose to keep the necklace.
