Chapter 3: That's Why I Let Him In

Marcus had fourteen reasons to knock on her door. He'd written them down. Only two of them were real, and neither one was the parking question.

The parking in Prospect Heights was genuine—he'd spent forty minutes Saturday morning moving his car before the alternate-side rules took effect, then forty minutes Saturday afternoon moving it back. It was, factually, complicated. But that wasn't why his hand was raised and his knuckles were two inches from her door frame at 3:47 on Sunday afternoon.

He'd been in the hallway for ninety seconds. He'd walked past her door four times in the past three days. He'd opened his mouth twice in the common stairwell and decided instead to review his spreadsheet and remember that he was a scientist and that scientists did not have agenda-based conversations with subjects. Except this wasn't a subject anymore. It was a person who'd spent fifty-two and fifty-three and now forty-seven minutes with other people and changed them.

And he didn't know her name.

Marcus knocked.

There was approximately four seconds of silence. Then the lock cycled. The door opened to reveal Wren Ashby in a burgundy turtleneck and what appeared to be the exact same wine cork in her hair. She looked at him with the patient expression of someone who'd already correctly deduced every word he was about to say.

"Parking," she said.

"The alternate-side rules," Marcus said. "They're—"

"Complicated." She leaned against the doorframe. She wasn't unkind about the fabrication. Just factual. "You moved your car twice. I heard it. Once yesterday morning, once yesterday afternoon. You're pretty consistent with timing. Did you want to know the pattern, or was there another reason?"

Marcus recognized the precision of it. He decided to risk honesty.

"I wanted to talk to you," he said.

She was quiet for a moment. Her expression changed—not surprised, just reassessing. Then she stepped back and gestured for him to come inside.

The threshold felt like walking through water.

It was subtle. His shoulders dropped just past the doorframe, like someone had released a pressure valve he hadn't known existed. His jaw unclenched. The baseline hum of something—he would have called it anxiety if he wasn't too rational for general anxiety—ceased. He paused mid-step and tried to reverse it, to feel it again and understand it, and it was gone. Already integrated. Already normal.

He did not have an explanation for that.

Wren closed the door behind him. "That's the threshold. It makes people comfortable. You'll probably forget about it after thirty seconds and feel weird when you leave."

"Why would you—" Marcus started.

"Professional standards," Wren said, moving toward the interior of the apartment. "If someone's sitting in my consulting room upset, they shouldn't be fighting the building's ambient anxiety while they work through their stuff. Come on."

He followed her down a narrow hallway. The apartment was darker than his own—fewer windows, different layout—but it was warm. Lived-in. He caught the scent of sage and something else, something herbal and complex. Her work, he supposed. The consulting room opened to his left.

It was smaller than he'd expected. Maybe twelve by fifteen feet. A single window facing the building's internal courtyard, currently framed in gauze curtains. The walls were cream-colored and bare except for a single painting—abstract, mostly greens and silvers, something that didn't resolve into a specific thing but felt intentional. A small round table sat perpendicular to the window, with a comfortable-looking chair on each side. Candles. Not theatrical or excessive, just a few white pillars in clear glass holders, unlit. A small shelf held what appeared to be tarot cards in various states of organization, some crystals (clear quartz, he thought, though he had no reliable basis for that assessment), some books with worn spines. The floor was wood, clean, unremarkable. A small side table held water glasses and a carafe.

It didn't feel like a stage. It felt like a room where people came to be listened to.

Marcus noticed he was standing very still, cataloguing details like they were data points.

"Okay," Wren said, pulling out one of the chairs. "We're going to establish some parameters because you're observant and you're curious and you're going to either blow past my boundaries or spend weeks building up to asking me if I'm actually serious. I prefer the former, but I need rules. Sit."

He sat. The chair was more comfortable than it looked.

"You can ask two questions per visit," Wren said. "Not two follow-ups, two questions. You get to observe one client session, but only if they consent and only if you sit quietly and don't interfere. You will not ask me to demonstrate anything. You will not try to debunk me. You will not suggest rational explanations for things I tell you are magic. In exchange, I'll answer your questions honestly and you'll get to see that this is real. Does that work?"

"What if I have more than two questions?" Marcus asked.

"Then you come back," Wren said. "Next visit. New questions. That's the system. It means you have to think about what actually matters to you."

He considered this. He had fourteen reasons written down. They consolidated in his head: one about the mechanism, one about whether she believed it herself, one about why she'd let him in when he'd been listening from the hallway like someone gathering evidence. The list could be infinite, but infinite questions weren't the point. The point was the return visit. The point was that there would be subsequent visits.

"Okay," he said.

"One more thing." She'd gone still. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter. "My work is real. Not metaphorical, not therapeutic—real. But I'm careful about what I let people see because belief changes things. If you're here to prove me wrong, we need to say that now."

Marcus thought about the woman who'd left with her shoulders sitting differently. He thought about the one who'd pulled her coat closed with deliberate care. He thought about the noise signatures he'd catalogued and the timings he'd verified and the absence of any rational explanation that didn't require him to assume Wren was either extraordinarily talented at talk therapy or dishonest.

"I'm here because I want to understand," he said. "I don't know if I believe it yet, but I'm not here to disprove it."

"Okay." She stood up. "Your first question, then. You get one more after we observe the session. First appointment is in about forty minutes."

"What's your name?" Marcus asked. "Your full name, I mean. Not just Wren."

She smiled like he'd given her something she hadn't expected to get. "Wren Mae Ashby. My mother had opinions about middle names. Your turn."

"Marcus James Cole," he said. "Can you feel me, when I'm listening from the other side of the wall?"

"Yes and no," Wren said. She leaned against the table. "Not like ESP. I know someone's there because the sound of the space changes. The air feels occupied. But I don't know it's you specifically until the day you left your door open and I saw your face. Before that you were just the neighbor with consistent footsteps."

She paused. "That was three answers in one. I'm being generous because it's your first time. You get to save your question for after the session. Watch the room while you wait. See if you notice the things that matter."

She left him there.