Chapter 2: The Gilded Magnolias

The drive to work is a decompression chamber. The sun sets around 8:33 PM.

You roll the windows down in your Ford C-Max, letting the heavy, humid air of Rankin Street buffer you as you navigate the potholes. You pass the corner store where the bass from a parked Impala shakes your rearview mirror. You pass the barbershop where the debate about the ’96 Bulls is still raging on the sidewalk. You pass Zora, who is doing wheelies in the middle of the road and ignores your wave.

Then, you hit the highway.

Three miles later, you turn onto a road paved with smooth, silent asphalt. The streetlights change from buzzing sodium-orange to elegant, recessed LEDs that cast a soft, moonlight-white glow.

You have arrived at The Gilded Magnolias.

It is not a nursing home. It is a "Retirement Resort." It is a sprawling, manicured fortress of colonial architecture and aggressive landscaping, designed to make the end of life feel like a very long, very quiet vacation in Williamsburg.

You park in the reserved resident space, right out front, and walk to the main entrance.

As soon as you step through the automatic sliding doors, the silence hits you. It is a heavy, sanitized silence. The air is conditioned to a crisp sixty-eight degrees and smells of lemon polish, fresh lilies, and money.

"Evening, Alistair," says the receptionist in a thick New York accent, a woman named Genie who is packing up her purse.

"Evening, Genie," you say.

"Quiet night," she says. "Mr. Henderson is complaining about the soup again, but otherwise, dead quiet." She winces. "Poor choice of words."

"I knew what you meant."

She leaves. You are alone.

You take your post. Unlike the day shift, who roam the grounds in golf carts, you are stationed at the Front Desk in the main lobby. It is a massive, high-ceilinged space with marble floors and a chandelier that probably costs more than your entire block on Rankin Street.

You sit in the high-backed leather chair. You are wearing the navy blue jumpsuit with the gold crest on the pocket. This uniform is the most powerful invisibility cloak you have ever owned.

To the residents, you are not a person. You are furniture. You are a function. You are "The Night Man." They look right through you, their eyes sliding off your polyester threads without finding purchase.

This suits you perfectly.

It is 11:15 PM. The lobby is empty. The automatic doors are locked. The security monitors behind the desk show thirty-six different angles of stillness. All is well.

You reach into your bag and pull out the object wrapped in a tattered "Employee Handbook" dust jacket.

It is The Codex of Unspooled Time, a treatise on chronological manipulation written by a mad monk in the 14th century. The parchment is brittle and smells faintly of copper. Ironically, it is perfect time killer.

You open it on the mahogany desk, right next to your observation log.

This is why you took the job. No onlookers. No interlopers. Just you, the marble, and the dulcet drone of the HVAC system.

You run your finger along a line of faded ink. The text moves, squirming slightly under your gaze. You are trying to decipher a particularly tricky passage about reversing entropy in organic matter (useful for fixing rot in wood, or perhaps arthritis), but the syntax is knotted.

"Gate," a voice says.

You don't jump. You simply slide the observation log over the Codex, hiding the squirming text instantly.

You look up. Mrs. Van Der Hoven is standing there. She is eighty-five, wearing a silk dressing gown and enough diamond rings to act as brass knuckles. She is clutching a small, fluffy dog that looks heavily medicated.

"Good evening, Mrs. Van Der Hoven," you say. "How may I serve you?"

"The gate," she slurs slightly. She smells of sherry. "It's stuck. I can't get out."

"You aren't at the gate, ma'am," you say gently. "You're in the lobby."

She blinks. She looks around the opulent room as if seeing it for the first time. The confusion in her eyes is sudden and sharp, a crack in the porcelain.

"Oh," she says. "I... I have a bridge game. In Charleston."

"That was yesterday, Mrs. Van Der Hoven. It's Tuesday. Tuesday is rest day."

"Right," she whispers. "Right."

She turns to go back to the elevators, clutching the dog.

As she turns, you see it.

It isn't a shadow. It’s a distortion. A faint, grey shimmer clinging to the hem of her silk robe, like static on an old television screen. It trails behind her, heavy and sluggish.

You narrow your eyes, shifting your vision from the mundane to the etheric. The marble floor drops away, replaced by a grid of grey lines. The shimmer resolves into a shape.

It’s a Parasitic Gloom. A small one. A sadness-eater. It’s feeding on her confusion, growing fatter with every moment she forgets where she is.

You shouldn't interfere. The Council rules are clear: Observe. Do not engage unless the Veil is threatened.

The mundane rules are just as suffocating. The employee handbook—the real one, not the dust jacket hiding your grimoire—is explicit regarding "Learned Helplessness." Section 4, Paragraph B. Staff are prohibited from performing tasks that residents are contractually obligated to perform themselves. If you help Mrs. Van Der Hoven find her room, you aren't being kind; you are creating a "dependency liability." You are admitting she belongs in Assisted Living, not Independent Living, and that creates a paperwork nightmare that usually ends with a resident being evicted to a grimier facility and you being written up. The Company demands they be independent, even if it kills them.

So you are handcuffed twice. By the high laws of magic that say don't touch, and the low laws of corporate liability that say don't care.

But you are tired. And you hate parasites.

You check the monitors. Empty. You check the hallway. Empty.

You raise your hand, pointing a pen at Mrs. Van Der Hoven’s retreating back. You don't speak a word. You just click the pen twice, flick your wrist, and push a burst of kinetic will across the lobby.

Snap.

The grey shimmer bursts like a soap bubble. The air ripples.

Mrs. Van Der Hoven straightens up. Her step becomes lighter. The dog barks. She walks into the elevator without looking back, the weight gone.

You lower the pen. You pull the Codex back out from under the log.

"Minimum wage," you mutter to yourself. "Maximum effort."

You go back to reading. But the air in the lobby feels different now. Thinner. The burst of magic has rippled out, and somewhere deep in the building, something has noticed.

A cold draft sweeps across the front desk, smelling not of lemon polish, but of old lavender and dust.

The phone on the desk lights up. Internal line.

Memory Care Unit.