Chapter 71: The Maddening Landlady, Part Two
Chapter 71: Chapter 71: The Maddening Landlady, Part Two
Chapter 71: The Maddening Landlady, Part Two
"Oh, so you really want me to call the police?"
Daphne Whitlock held Cyrus’s wrist against the floor and watched the panic move across his face.
His attempt to snatch her phone had answered more than any denial could have. The theory she had built from camera footage was absurd, but Cyrus had reacted like someone whose secret had been placed directly under a spotlight.
The building’s surveillance system covered nearly every route in and out. There were cameras by the front entrance, in the stairwell, along the hallway, near the rear exit, and facing the street outside. If someone had carried a small child out of the building, taken him down the stairs, or tried to lower him from a third-floor balcony, there should have been a trace.
There had been nothing.
Cory entered Cyrus’s apartment.
Cory never appeared on camera afterward.
Cyrus continued coming and going as though nothing had changed.
Daphne had replayed the footage too many times to call it a glitch. Each time she lined up the entries and exits, there was a mismatch between Cory’s appearances and Cyrus’s. One appeared where the other should have been. One vanished whenever the other returned.
The simplest answer was also the most impossible.
Cory had never been a separate child.
There had only been Cyrus.
Daphne remembered the security footage from the night she had chased Cory down the street. The white-haired boy had vanished from view, yet a black-haired child in the same clothes had passed through the camera’s range moments later. The size, the clothes, and the guarded way he moved all lined up too well to ignore.
Cyrus’s reaction now gave the suspicion weight.
The world had rare-bloods. Daphne knew that much.
Her own family carried a sliver of giant-blood, thin enough that it rarely mattered until strength was needed. She had never considered it especially important, but it explained why grabbing Cyrus’s wrist had felt so effortless. If she had inherited something strange, then another rare-blood might carry a much stranger ability.
The possibility had stopped sounding ridiculous.
Cyrus twisted beneath her grip.
Daphne loosened her hold by the smallest degree.
He tore free immediately.
Cyrus slid backward across the floor, caught himself against the edge of the low table, and got to his feet. A red mark had already formed around his wrist. He looked at it once, then moved toward the balcony door with measured caution.
The food container remained untouched on the table.
Daphne did not rush after him.
He had more room near the balcony than he had in the narrow entryway. If he tried to grab her phone again, he would not be boxed in by the front door and the hallway wall. He was clearly thinking through his options, even if none of them looked especially good.
Daphne waited near the locked door.
Cyrus stopped with one shoulder turned toward the glass. The balcony offered a possible escape, and his eyes had already measured the distance beyond it. The building was only three stories high. He might survive the drop. He might even get away before she could stop him.
That did not mean he would.
"You have been very quiet," Daphne said. "Where is Cory’s explanation?"
Cyrus’s posture tightened at the name.
"I can explain this."
"Then explain it."
The silence stretched.
Daphne raised her phone slightly. The emergency-call screen was still open, the number already entered.
"You know what the police will think if they see the footage," she said. "A child enters your apartment, then disappears. The cameras show enough to make this look very bad."
Cyrus did not answer.
His attention flicked toward the balcony again.
Daphne followed the movement with her eyes. She could almost see the decision forming behind his face. Run, wait to be found, or tell her enough to prevent the call.
The apartment had become too small for all three choices.
At last, Cyrus spoke.
"The smaller form has conditions."
Daphne’s expression changed.
"What conditions are those?"
His fingers curled near his side.
"Whenever I get a full day off, I lose pieces of my memory. It has happened more than once. I do not know why, but I think it might be connected."
Daphne stared at him.
"So you do become Cory."
Cyrus did not deny it.
That was enough.
He had transformed. He had hidden it. He had built a story around memory loss. Yet the explanation did not settle anything in Daphne’s mind. The footage from her apartment, the finger against her cheek, the sly expression she had caught on camera, all of it made her suspicious that Cyrus was still choosing his words carefully.
Cory had not been as helpless as he looked.
Cyrus probably was not being fully honest now.
Daphne’s voice flattened.
"If that is true, then we should bring in someone who understands rare-blood conditions. A child appearing on building cameras and disappearing inside an apartment is not something I can ignore."
Cyrus’s patience broke.
"Could you stop calling it that?"
Daphne blinked.
He pointed toward the phone in her hand.
"You keep talking about a missing child when I am standing right here."
"You turned into a child."
"I turned into a smaller form," Cyrus snapped. "That does not make me a kidnapped kid."
The irritation in his voice made Daphne’s grip tighten around her phone.
"You are not giving me much to work with," she said. "You hid this from me, and you tried to take my phone the second I mentioned the cameras."
"Because you threatened to call the police."
"I threatened to call because you refuse to explain."
Cyrus let out a short, humorless breath.
"You are an adult who keeps demanding I turn into a child. Do you hear how creepy that sounds?"
Daphne’s face warmed at once.
"What did you say?"
"You heard me."
His tone had sharpened, but it carried more fear than defiance. He was trapped between a locked door, a phone call, a landlord who controlled his rent, and a secret he could not explain to ordinary people.
Daphne knew that.
She also hated that he had found a way to make her sound worse than she felt.
"You never even kissed me," she said. "I never touched you."
The moment the words left her mouth, Daphne regretted them.
They sounded defensive because they were defensive.
Cyrus stared at her.
"That does not make this less disturbing."
Daphne looked away for half a beat, then forced herself to regain control.
The conversation had gone in a direction she had not planned. She had started with cameras and missing footage. Now she was standing in Cyrus’s apartment arguing about whether she had crossed a line, while he stood near the balcony like a cornered animal deciding whether the fall was worth it.
She needed something simpler.
"Would it help if I waived your rent?"
Cyrus went silent.
The offer landed.
Daphne could see it in the faint shift of his expression. Rent mattered to him. She had seen the condition of his apartment, the cheap food bags, the careful way he thanked her for every meal she brought over. He treated financial security like something fragile enough to vanish if he held it too loosely.
Daphne hated how blunt the tactic sounded.
She used it anyway.
"Transform," she said. "Then we can talk without pretending that Cory is a separate person."
Cyrus looked at her phone.
Daphne tapped the emergency-call button.
"I will count down. When I reach one, I am calling the police and asking for someone who handles rare-blood cases."
Cyrus remained still.
"At three, you can still make this easy."
The line began to ring.
"At two, I am no longer waiting."
His shoulders lowered.
Daphne had seen surrender before in students who knew they had been caught cheating, in tenants who had ignored warnings too long, and in people who realized they could no longer talk their way out of a problem.
Cyrus’s expression was different.
He looked as if he had been forced back against an old wall.
The dark hair at his forehead began to bleach white.
It happened gradually at first, the color draining from strand after strand. Then his body followed. His shoulders narrowed. His height dropped. The clothes that fit him seconds earlier loosened and folded around him, sleeves sliding past his hands and fabric bunching at his feet.
The transformation ended with a small white-haired figure standing near the balcony door.
Daphne stopped the call immediately.
For a moment, she could only stare.
Cory was real.
Cory was Cyrus.
There was no missing child. There was no kidnapping case. The camera footage had not documented a crime. It had documented something impossible that Cyrus had hidden because the truth would have sounded insane.
The relief came first.
Then the questions rushed in.
Why had he hidden it from her? Why had he run every time she tried to keep him around? Why had he acted as though she was the threat when all she had wanted was an explanation?
Daphne did not like the answer forming beneath those questions.
She had locked his door.
She had used the police as leverage.
She had demanded proof from someone who clearly did not want to give it.
Daphne moved away from the entrance and sat on the couch beside the low table. The food container rested within reach, still warm beneath its lid.
She tapped her thigh.
"Come over here."
Cory stood where he was.
The oversized clothes hung off him awkwardly. He tugged one sleeve up with visible irritation, then glanced between Daphne, the phone, and the food.
He was considering whether he could fight her.
Daphne could see it.
The thought was not unreasonable. She had put him on the floor once already, and the phone remained close enough for her to use again. He was smaller now, but Cyrus was not helpless. His earlier attempt to grab the phone had been fast, and his body had moved with more instinct than most people expected from someone his size.
Daphne kept both hands in plain sight.
"I am not calling anyone," she said. "Come sit down and eat. Then we will talk."
Cory remained near the balcony.
Free rent had entered the situation too. Daphne knew it had. The offer sat between them, useful and ugly at the same time. He had no reason to trust her, but walking away would mean giving up the apartment, the food, the job nearby, and the small life he had built for himself.
The silence grew heavy.
At last, Cory crossed the room.
He ignored the space on Daphne’s lap.
Instead, he sat at the far end of the couch beside the low table, keeping as much distance between them as the room allowed.
Daphne did not comment.
Cory lifted the lid from the food container and inspected the meal.
His attention shifted to the food with almost immediate seriousness.
That, at least, was familiar.
Cory had not decided whether Daphne was safe. He had not decided whether he could bargain his way out of the situation. He had not decided whether the rent offer was worth the pressure attached to it.
He had decided that fighting on an empty stomach was foolish.
Daphne was stronger than she looked. She had a phone, control over the building, access to the hallway cameras, and a frightening ability to turn simple practical things into weapons without raising her voice.
For now, Cory would eat.
If she tried to force more out of him than answers, he could change back and make her reconsider. Until then, he needed strength, time, and a better plan than jumping from a third-floor balcony.
Whoever won got to set the terms.