Intuition

"You knew they'd clash from the start?" Hope asked Wilbur as they walked back.

"Why would you think that?" Wilbur countered.

"Instinct."

"That's your illusion."

"Did you pull some strings?"

"Are you suspecting I caused their conflict?" Wilbur sneered. "Go to hell, Hope! Their business has nothing to do with me."

"But how am I supposed to trust you? Wilbur, you said this was compensation for me. How do I know you're not staging the whole thing?"

That struck a chord with Wilbur. He seemed to care deeply about the compensation he'd promised. He hesitated for three or four seconds, then asked again, "Why do you think I knew in advance?"

"I already told you, I don't know. Just instinct."

"Right. Instinct." Wilbur nodded.

Hope frowned. "Are you trying to say you can know things through instinct alone? Are you joking? You might as well say you rely on divination."

"There's not much difference between the two," Wilbur said. "What we usually call instinct is actually unconscious logical reasoning. For example, you say you guessed I had foreknowledge through instinct, but you actually picked up on some unreasonable details—you don't even know what those details are—and your brain reached a conclusion from them."

"So what, you sensed the possibility of their conflict three days in advance..."

Wilbur shook his head. "I don't have that ability. The instinct I'm talking about is different from yours. It's true instinct. No logical reasoning needed, no prerequisites. Like divination, it predicts the future to some degree. I knew three days ago that I could give you compensation at the funeral, and I only knew it would be through this right before their conflict started."

"An extraordinary ability?"

"Yes, an extraordinary ability."

Hope lagged a step behind, pretending to think, then, when Wilbur wasn't paying attention, kicked hard at the back of his knee.

Wilbur's "extraordinary instinct" didn't work at all. He completely missed Hope's move. His kicked leg buckled forward, and losing one leg's support sent his center of gravity—for a man over two meters tall—lurching backward and downward.

He thrust one hand to the ground, crouching awkwardly on one knee, barely managing not to fall.

"Damn it, Hope!" Wilbur roared.

He didn't use any spell. Instead, he scrambled up and, with sheer size advantage, tackled Hope to the ground, his large, black-haired hand clamping around Hope's throat.

"You trying to prove I'm lying with this?" Wilbur's face twisted uglier with rage.

"Only you, Hope!" Wilbur said. "I can even predict Grandfather's movements. Only you—I can't predict you!"

He extended his other hand, palm open, beside Hope's ear, then said, "I'm going to catch a falling leaf. It'll have a spiderweb on it. I'm going to stuff that leaf into your mouth."

Hope's eyes went wide. He saw a speck of green drifting slowly down from the sky—a slightly yellowed leaf. It fluttered down, landing precisely in Wilbur's open palm, without a hair's breadth of error.

He turned to look at the leaf. It had bite marks from insects and was covered in white spiderweb.

It was early summer. Without insect damage and spiderwebs, a leaf like this wouldn't have fallen at all.

"Mm... mm..." Hope tried to struggle free from Wilbur's grip, but Wilbur pressed one knee on his chest, switched to gripping his cheeks, and forced his mouth open.

Wilbur shoved the leaf into Hope's mouth, then clamped his jaw shut.

The bitter taste of fresh leaves mixed with the silky texture of spiderweb. Hope didn't dare move, afraid that chewing would tear the web and release whatever bugs or spiders were inside.

After more than ten seconds, when the pressure on his chest made him feel like suffocating, Wilbur finally let him go.

"Ugh... mm..." Hope knelt on the ground, gagging.

"Do you believe in my instinct now?" Wilbur asked.

Hope nodded.

Paul lay on the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.

Colin was busy entertaining guests for him. Paul had irresponsibly said he wanted to be alone for a while, and the guests all expressed understanding.

He didn't actually feel much grief. The guests thought he was too sad to control his emotions, too sad to the point of collapse—maybe that was true. But really, he just felt lost.

That day, right after he'd finished his enrollment paperwork, a senior student called him over to take a phone call.

He saw the senior looking down, not meeting his eyes, and a bad feeling crept in. He asked if there was news from home. The senior hemmed and hawed, unwilling to say, and Paul was almost certain something bad had already happened.

When his aunt cried and told him to come back immediately, he only thought, Of course.

He wasn't sad then, because his parents' death was just a sentence from his aunt's mouth—light, weightless, lacking the power to convince him.

He asked his freshman advisor for leave; the advisor had no reason to refuse. He bought the earliest train ticket, brought no luggage, thinking that when he got home and saw the bodies, he would cry.

The train stopped midway. Workers there were on strike, blocking the tracks. He couldn't exchange his ticket for any compensation. The railway company people weren't difficult, but he felt someone like him shouldn't bother with such things.

He spent all the money he had, hitched a ride back to Arkham, and Red-haired Colin met him there, starving, and told him they hadn't found his parents' bodies.

Everything after that was a blur. He became the center of attention for neighbors and relatives, all orbiting around him. His aunt handled everything, telling him some things he had to do himself, but if he was exhausted, Colin could handle the rest.

He didn't care about any of that. He asked his aunt how his parents died. She hemmed and hawed, finally saying they fell from a waterfall and their bodies were swept away.

He nodded, but he knew it was a lie. No one feared water more than his father—that strong man would cry in the shower. There was no way he'd go near a waterfall.

Even now, he wasn't sad. He hadn't shed a single tear.

He stared at the ceiling, remembering how his mother had a broom tied to a long wooden pole. Every month without fail, she would lift that broom and sweep it across every inch of the ceiling in the house, so his home's ceiling had always been spotless.

Outside, the guests were in a commotion, arguing about something again. Colin knocked on the door and asked if he wanted some corn wine, saying the high-proof liquor might make him feel better. He politely declined.

He didn't need strong liquor to numb himself. He wasn't in pain, wasn't sad—he just felt the house was a little empty, and he wasn't quite used to it.

Someone sat down on the other side of the bed and lay down beside him. That person was as pale as the legendary evil vampire.

He had a gut feeling that he was about to learn the truth behind his parents' deaths.