"Yes," she said. "If you don't mind."

He didn't respond, but nodded slightly, the only answer she figured she was getting.

"And try to be quiet about it," she told him. "You know, since they have the baby and everything."

"Quiet," he said. "Got it."

She offered him a wave as she took another step away before turning and heading inside the lobby of the motel.

She paused when she reached the door, glancing back, but he was gone already.

Serah didn't much mind the nightshift, although it could be a little boring most of the time. Especially weekdays, like today, where very few people traveled through this town. They had two occupants, and nobody came into the lobby for hours.

It was dark outside, approaching midnight, as Serah sat beside the desk, reading a trashy little romance novel she'd plucked out of one of the drawers. She assumed it belonged to Gilda. She was skimming a particularly indecent scene, her cheeks flushing from the obscenity, when the door opened, the bell dinging. Serah anxiously closed the book, dropping it back into the drawer, and called out a "welcome" as she glanced up. The smile on her face melted, quickly wiping away when she realized nobody was there.

Her eyes looked around the lobby, confused. "Hello?"

"Hello."

The voice came from right behind her, so close the hair at her nape prickled, a chill shooting down her spine. Fear tensed her muscles as she spun around in the chair, coming face to face with a familiar man. It took her a few seconds in her alarm to recall his name. "Don."

He grinned. "You remember."

"Uh, yes," she said tentatively, standing up and edging away, stepping out into the lobby as the man lingered behind the desk. Bells and whistles went off in her head. Something wasn't right. Luce's earlier words rang through her mind. Something that shouldn't be here. "Can I help you?"

"As I said before, you can," he said, slowly stepping around the side of the desk. "You can help me in ways nobody else can."

This wasn't right. Serah's defenses prickled as her eyes darted around. It was so late, the town was dead at this hour, no one roaming or awake to hear her if she needed to scream. Serah counted to three in her head, her heart racing frantically, before she turned to run for the door, hearing his voice call out behind her. "Ah, don't be like that!"

She grabbed ahold of the door, the bell dinging above her as she ran out into the night, looking over her shoulder at the door to make sure he wasn't following. She swung back around just in enough time to collide with something, a scream bubbling up inside her. She looked up, scarcely making the man out in the pitch darkness as she stumbled backward, her knees nearly buckling.

"Why'd you go and run?" Don asked. "I wasn't going to hurt you."

"How…?" She stammered, shocked, glancing back at the building. He hadn't followed her out. She was certain of it. "You were just… and now you're…"

In a blink, he was gone from in front of her, suddenly twenty feet to the right before disappearing again, appearing right in front of her face just long enough for her to let out a sharp scream. Again and again, he flickered all around, vanishing right before her eyes. She spun around in a circle, terrified as he popped up all around her.

"This isn't real," she chanted, her voice unsteady as she came to a stop, his image vanishing and not reappearing, the parking lot still… so still… too still. There wasn't a breeze, not a cricket chirping, nothing. It was as if the world around her had hit pause. "It isn't real. It's can't be. This isn't happening."

"Oh, but it is."

The voice was barely a whisper as shadows fell over her, blocking out the small shred of light offered from the motel signs. Her breath hitched, her body shaking as she slowly turned around, coming face to face with the eerie figure. She cried out, terror gripping her insides. His sharp face was twisted angrily, despite his grin, his eyes dark pits of blackness. Blackness cloaked him, dark shadows surrounding him. It was Don, but it was something else now… something unnatural.

Something not human.

"Oh God," she cried. "What are you?"

"You know what I am," he said, "and I think it's time you remember."

Before she could react, before she could run, or scream, or beg for mercy, pray to God to save her, hands roughly grabbed ahold of her, blackness whisking her away.

Luce popped up in front of Serah's house.

It was pitch black out, an antique clock in a neighboring house chiming exactly midnight. The witching hour, they call it, the time where human folklore says witches, and demons, and ghosts are most powerful, where black magic is strongest, where the world is most dangerous.

What people don't seem to realize, though, is it's always dangerous. It's not just the supernatural world they have to contend with. When you're mortal, life is nothing more than a drawn-out game of Russian Roulette. Every moment is the spin of a gun cylinder, every decision pointing the barrel at your head. Over and over, again and again, you pull the trigger, hoping it won't be your last turn in the game.

Angels were blessed with knowing which would be the last, which decision would hold the bullet ending it all. Luce could look at every mortal and know when they would take their last breath and what would happen to their souls afterward with just a glance.

Luce knew their futures, but he didn't know Serah's. He should've been able to tell, when she opened her eyes in the street that day, what would come of her, but there was nothing. There was never anything. Every moment was like her last, until another moment happened, replacing the one before it. There was no life, no death, and no future, just a right now. A right now she'd been living for months. The muzzle of the gun was pressed to her temple but nobody had pulled the trigger yet.