Chapter 241: Possessed?
The meal ended in a tense, unfamiliar quiet.
Arthur and Marlene were plainly unsettled. Nothing Elias had done since returning resembled the boy they remembered. He had spoken to Arthur like a favored son, treated Marlene like hired help, and taken control of the household without raising his voice. The change had left them watching him carefully, as though he might reveal the trick at any moment.
Elias did not care what conclusions they reached.
He was full.
That was enough.
Arthur’s cooking had not been exceptional, but it was solid, comforting food, the kind made from habit rather than technique. Elias had spent too many missions eating whatever kept him alive, meals purchased under false names, cold takeout in anonymous rooms, luxury food served as part of a threat. A plate made by a guilty foster father in this worn little house was not grand, but it had been cooked because Elias asked for it. That gave it a particular charm.
The ribs were tender. The sauce had soaked properly into the meat. Elias had eaten until he could no longer justify another bite, then stretched out along the old sofa with one hand rubbing his stomach.
The room looked worn around him. The fabric was faded. The coffee table had scratches that no one had bothered to cover. Yet the meal had been warm, and his clean sheets waited in the next room.
For the moment, that counted as a successful evening.
Marlene appeared beside the sofa holding her phone.
Elias opened one eye.
"It’s..." She glanced down at the screen, then at him. "Ms. Voss is calling. Should I answer?"
Elias did not even sit up.
"Do you dare ignore her?"
The question made the decision for her.
Marlene accepted the call and held the phone in both hands. "Hello?"
Liora’s voice came through calm and cool. It was strange how different she sounded from the woman who had laughed softly through Elias’s phone only a short while ago. The same person, yet the warmth had been packed away so completely that it might have belonged to someone else.
"How is he?"
Marlene had put the call on speaker. Arthur heard it from the dining table. Elias heard it from the sofa.
Marlene looked directly at Elias.
The question in her eyes was obvious.
What am I supposed to say?
Elias smiled.
"Say whatever you want," he told her. "You can complain too. I don’t mind."
Marlene’s expression became even more awkward. She wanted permission and feared it at the same time. Anything honest might offend Elias. Anything flattering might make Liora think she was lying. The call had turned her own home into a place where every answer could be punished.
Elias got up from the sofa.
"You’re scared to say it? Fine. I’ll go to my room and give you privacy."
He walked down the narrow hall without waiting for an answer and shut the bedroom door behind him.
Marlene stood still with the phone in her hand.
Then she brought it closer to her mouth. "Ms. Voss, he’s... doing well."
Doing well did not cover it.
The boy was acting like someone else had moved into his body. He lounged around the house, ordered his parents to cook for him, threatened her with a woman powerful enough to ruin her life, and somehow made Arthur grateful for the chance to be ordered around.
"That’s good," Liora said.
Her voice suggested that the conversation was over.
"Wait." Marlene swallowed. "Please wait a second."
"What is it?"
Marlene checked the bedroom door again. She made sure Elias was not standing in the hall, then turned to Arthur and gave him a warning look. He was not to say anything.
Only then did she lower her voice.
"It’s just... he’s strange. He wasn’t like this before."
Liora’s reply came without heat.
"You mean he should still let you push him around?"
Marlene’s eyes widened. "That isn’t what I mean."
It was, in fact, exactly what she meant. She had only learned enough fear to avoid saying it aloud to Liora Voss.
Marlene tried again, choosing her words with more care. "I mean his personality is different. The way he talks, the way he looks at people. He doesn’t feel like the same Elias."
She had said almost everything except the thought she was too embarrassed to name.
It was like something had taken him over.
Liora did not seem interested in entertaining it.
"That is impossible," she said. "Look after him. If anything happens to him, you’ll answer to me."
The call ended.
Across the city, Liora lowered her phone.
Serena lay in a private room at Longhaven Hospital. An IV line ran into her arm, and bandages covered much of one side of her face. Only her eyes were fully visible, exhausted and shadowed by pain.
"How is he?" Serena asked.
Liora looked at her sister.
"He isn’t doing well."
It was a lie.
Serena’s eyes sharpened at once. "Marlene didn’t take care of him?"
"She did. That isn’t the problem."
Liora paused. Lying to Serena required almost no effort. The harder part was deciding what lie would hurt precisely enough. Serena was already injured, already holding herself together with pride and medication. Liora did not want her unconscious or useless. She only wanted the guilt to keep working.
She pictured the version of Elias Serena would expect to be at the house now. The Elias who had discovered the truth about his foster parents. The Elias who had collapsed in the garage and begged to be released. The boy Serena had helped turn into something small enough to hurt.
"He’s quiet," Liora said. "He barely speaks. He doesn’t want to look at anyone. He’s forcing himself through food, then withdrawing again. He looks like he’s trying very hard not to fall apart."
Serena closed her eyes.
The nurse at the side of the room continued checking the IV without looking over. Serena did not want anyone to see weakness on her face. Liora knew that. Even with Serena’s eyes shut, she could tell where the pain was landing.
Regret.
Guilt.
The knowledge that Elias’s silence, his tears, and every imagined hour of suffering had begun with Serena’s own decisions.
Liora watched without moving.
It was difficult to believe that Serena, who had always stood above everyone else with such effortless authority, had reached this point. She was lying in a hospital bed with a bruised face, waiting for updates about a boy she had once treated as a temporary substitute.
Liora had seen Serena with women before. She had seen the women Serena allowed close, the ones she discarded, the ones who thought they could change her. None of them had ever left Serena looking like this.
Elias had.
That was why Liora could not stop being fascinated by him.
Marlene’s question sat in the back of her mind too. Liora had investigated every piece of Elias’s past. She knew his childhood, his school records, the small humiliations and dull routines that had shaped him. She knew more about the old Elias than Elias himself probably remembered.
Nothing in that history should have produced the young man now lying in that house.
The story did not add up.
Possession was ridiculous.
A soul from another world was worse.
And yet, beside the answer Liora already knew was impossible, even something that absurd began to feel faintly believable.
She lowered her gaze, hiding the smile at the corner of her mouth.
Maybe he really had come from somewhere else.
Maybe he was some beautiful little incubus sent from another world to charm her until she could never crawl free.
Liora would prefer that.
[Liora Voss’s favorability has increased. Current value: 99%.]
"Where are you going?"
Serena’s voice stopped her at the door.
Liora did not look back. Her answer came out soft, with something barely restrained under it.
"I’m going to see my Little Kitten."
Back at the house, System Theta delivered the new number.
Elias rolled over on the bed so quickly that the mattress creaked. Excitement broke through him before he could stop it. He buried his face in the pillow and gave a muffled, breathless cheer, both socked feet curling tight against the sheets.
[System Theta: Host... what are you doing?]
Elias froze.
The question might as well have been a paralysis spell.
He stayed perfectly still for several seconds, face pressed into the pillow.
Then he lifted his head with a quiet cough.
"Nothing."
He sat up and smoothed the front of his shirt. "I need to go buy a few things."
System Theta hesitated.
[System Theta: Are you... excited?]
Elias stared at empty air.
Then his expression became faintly savage.
"Knowing too much can get you hurt," he said. "You understand?"
System Theta’s data stream seemed to seize up.
[System Theta: I don’t know anything! I know nothing!]
Elias laughed.
"I’m joking. I was a little excited, yes. This is an important stage in my retirement plan."
That was perfectly normal.
Anyone who laughed at him for it could get bitten.
[System Theta: Is that really why?]
System Theta sounded uncertain, but its trust in Elias won out. It accepted the explanation and missed the faint color still lingering in his face.
Damn it.
He had forgotten the system was watching.
Elias went back into the living room. Arthur and Marlene sat stiffly on the sofa, not talking.
He did not care.
Arthur watched him from the sofa with the uneasy attention of someone trying to learn the rules of a new household. Marlene sat beside him, tense and silent, her anger repeatedly rising and disappearing before it reached her face. Neither of them knew which version of Elias would look at them next: the sweet son who called Arthur Dad, or the cold young man who could make one phone call and take away everything Marlene thought she owned.
Elias held out a hand toward Marlene.
"Give me more money."
Marlene blinked, then shook her head hard. "I don’t have any. I already gave Arthur everything I had."
Elias narrowed his eyes.
One second later, a wrinkled fifty-dollar bill landed in his palm.
Elias looked at it and smiled.
"You did have money?"
Marlene stared at him.
What?