Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

down at his tea, muttering under his breath that he didn’t really believe in
fate.
Hugo laughed. “That’s okay. I’ll believe in it enough for the both of us.
Drink your tea before it gets cold.”
He startled when Nelson snapped his fingers inches from his face.
“What?”
Nelson looked amused. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere,” Wallace said, face hot.
“Oh boy,” Nelson said. “Something on your mind you’d care to discuss?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Nelson sighed. “I don’t know what’s worse. Whether you believe that or
you don’t and said it anyway.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Nelson smiled sadly. “No, I don’t suppose it does.”
The day went on as it always did, even if the tea shop felt a little more
charged than normal. It wasn’t as if Alan were threatening any of them. He
wasn’t. In fact, he barely spoke at all. He wandered around the tea shop as he
had the day before, listening in on conversations, studying the customers.
There were times he’d bend over in front of them, the tip of his nose inches
from their own. No one knew anything was amiss, and rather than growing
angrier, Alan looked delighted, and not in a way that seemed to be terrifying
or menacing. It was an almost childlike glee, his smile appearing genuine for
the first time since he’d arrived at the tea shop. Wallace could see the man he
might have been before his decisions led him into that alley.
“It’s like when I was a kid,” Alan told Nelson. “You know when you think
about wanting to be a superhero? Like lasers from your eyes, or the ability to
fly. I always wanted the power to turn invisible.”
“Why?” Nelson asked.
Alan shrugged. “Because if people can’t see you, they don’t know what
you’re doing and you can get away with anything.”
And on the third day after Alan’s arrival, Nancy came back to Charon’s
Crossing.