Temptation

I was still standing in the living room when Moira came back down the stairs.

She moved quietly, the short black dress brushing her thighs, the white apron still perfectly tied. In her hands she carried a small silver tray with two glasses of red wine. She stopped a few feet away, head slightly tilted, the picture of helpful concern.

“I thought you might need this, Mrs. Harmon,” she said. Her voice was softer than before, almost intimate. “It’s been a long day. Strange boy in the house, Mrs. Langdon arriving unannounced, all these… revelations. Wine helps.”

She held the tray out. The glasses caught the fading light.

I didn’t take one. “I’m fine.”

Moira set the tray on the coffee table anyway, then stepped closer. The air around her carried that same faint metallic undercurrent the house itself seemed to breathe.

“Burning the sage tonight,” she said, not quite a question. “Leaving the door unlocked. Letting whatever Constance wants to invite walk straight into your bedroom.” She smiled, small and knowing. “That’s one way to feed the house. But it isn’t the only way. And it certainly isn’t the safest.”

Her eyes dropped briefly to my mouth, then lower, to the place where the sweater still hid Constance’s bite mark.

“I’ve been here a long time, Mrs. Harmon. Longer than any of the living. I know what happens when someone starts opening doors the house has already unlocked for them. People get hurt. Marriages get… rearranged. Bodies end up in the backyard.” She reached out and lightly touched the sage bundle I still held, her fingers brushing mine. The contact was cool and deliberate. “You don’t have to do what she says. You could put that sage away. Lock the door. Keep what’s left of your family intact for a little longer.”

Her voice dropped further.

“Or… you could let me help you another way. I know where the real pressure points are in this house. I know what your husband looks at when he thinks no one notices. I know what you reached for this morning when you thought the door was locked.” A faint, almost pitying smile. “Those black toys didn’t put themselves in the drawers, Mrs. Harmon. The house gave them to you for a reason. I can show you how to use them without inviting every hungry thing that lives in the walls into your bed.”

She was close enough now that I could see the perfect stillness of her chest - no real breath, only the appearance of it. Ghost. Shot through the eye. Still trying to steer the living.

“Stay downstairs with me instead,” Moira murmured. “Have the wine. Tell me what you actually want. I can be very useful when someone decides not to trust Constance Langdon.”

The sage felt heavier in my hand. Upstairs the bedroom door remained unlocked, the three black shapes waiting on the nightstand. The house seemed to lean in from every side, curious which temptation I would answer.

I looked at Moira - young, beautiful, dead - and felt the same dark pull that had answered Constance’s fingers and the Rubber Man’s dream.

“You’re trying to keep me away from her,” I said.

Moira’s smile widened just enough to show she wasn’t entirely pretending to be human.

“I’m trying to keep you alive long enough to understand what this house really does to women who burn sage and leave their doors open at night.”

She picked up one of the wine glasses and held it out again, the red surface perfectly still.

“Your choice, Mrs. Harmon.”