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Mateo pointed across the table. “You don’t know that.”

“I know enough.”

Mateo shook his head. “The building contains hidden passageways, private residences, and enough history to justify at least one supernatural presence.”

“Hidden passageways?” I repeated.

Priya nodded with the enthusiasm of someone who felt the hidden passageways were the least interesting thing about Blackwood Hall. “The original structure was built during the Gilded Age. Apparently, there are old service corridors throughout parts of the building.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because people in the nineteenth century preferred the illusion that everything they needed materialized out of thin air.”

The table laughed. The more I learned about Blackwood Hall, the less it sounded like a research institute and the more it resembled something from a gothic novel.

Mateo lifted his glass. “All I’m saying is, if the place is haunted, the ghost better have exceptional bone structure.”

Someone at the far end of the table asked the question I had been avoiding.

“So you’re really meeting Alexander Blackwood?”

“I am.” A few heads turned in my direction.

“The Chairman?” the researcher asked.

I nodded. “According to the invitation, yes.”

Mateo looked at me. “I still can’t believe he’s welcoming you himself.”

“We’ll see,” I said. I tried to sound indifferent. I don’t think I was.

Somewhere between hidden passageways and the opera house, Alexander Blackwood had begun to feel less like a chairman and more like one of the Hall’s most intriguing questions.

* * *

I got home a little after eleven, still hearing their excitement.

An opera house. A ballroom. Hidden passageways. A ghost with exceptional bone structure. Mateo and Priya had spoken about Blackwood Hall the way other people talk about Atlantis. Their excitement had become oddly contagious. I dropped my keys into the bowl by my door and stood in my foyer. Nothing here had changed, but the same could not be said about me.

I made myself a cup of chamomile tea before doing anything else. This was how I marked the end of the workday, when I decided it was time to leave the day behind and unwind. I carried the mug to my desk but changed my mind. The desk was where I did my thinking, and it was time for rest. The relocation planning could wait until tomorrow.

I sat down on my couch and turned on my favorite music channel. There was something about Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata that soothed my soul. I started looking around the apartment, making a mental note of things that would be coming with me to Blackwood.

The living room looked lived in without being crowded. I had built a life here slowly, around long days at the lab and whatever time remained afterward. I couldn’t have pictured a better place to call home.

My favorite part was the reading chair by the window. It was teal with gold embellishments, the cushions soft with years of use. Most mornings began there with a cup of tea before I checked my emails. I enjoyed ending my evenings there too, when I arrived home in time to watch the last light disappear between the buildings across the street. The novels on the shelf beside it took longer to finish than they should have, but they were finished eventually. A slim stack of opera programs rested underneath them, each one representing a time I chose beauty over work.

I let my attention return to the move. Blackwood had arranged for movers to pack and transport everything I wanted to bring, another detail handled before I had to ask about it. I walked over to my desk. I would pack this myself. Nobody else knew where anything belonged, and I did not want to explain it to anyone. I opened the bottom drawer to estimate how many boxes would be required when I found the program underneath a folder of old conference badges. La Bohème, soft at the folds, six years old.

I’d gone with Sofia. What I remembered was not the production. I remembered Sofia leaning over halfway through the second act to whisper, “Is he supposed to sound like that?”

“Like what?” I’d whispered back.

“Like he’s dying.”

“He is dying.”

She looked back at the stage. “Well…he’s doing an excellent job.”