Thank you for your kind words ! I quite like the way it came out, despite a few word repetitions that nag at me.

I imagine many people have felt this quiet hum of anxiety.

The one that appears when you're called to the principal's office and made to wait outside for a little while, and you have just enough time to start worrying that you're in trouble somehow.

Of course, my situation is a little different.

After what feels like an eternity, but a quick glance at the clock reveals to be about four minutes, the door opens and Mr. Winters peeks out.

"Sorry for the wait, Mike, you know how it is." His smile is a bit wry.

"It's no problem, sir," I reply, with a hesitant smile.

He waves me in with a vague gesture, and I stand up from the comfortable armchair and into his office.

Well, I say office, but really it's closer to an old-fashioned private study, or library. Elegant shelves of lacquered wood with gold filigree, comfy armchairs, red carpeted floor – and a small chandelier.

The shelves themselves carry both books – from modern paperbacks to leatherbound tomes that look like they belong in a library's rare books room – to curios – mortar and pestle, athame, beads and Celtic knots and more apparently ceremonial items that I hesitate to even try identifying – but the most notable item is, of course, the human skull perched at one end. Or at least, it looks human. I sometimes wonder who or what it once belonged to. (I can never quite decide if I'd prefer it to be a human, or something else.)

My gaze passes over these without lingering – much. Best to feign passive curiosity. The hotel has both written and unwritten rules it operates by, but I have my own rules by now, and rule one is : do not bring undue attention to these things.

We sit ourselves at the desk – lacquered wood also, of course.

And so begins my annual work review.

The first few minutes are simply business as usual – self-evaluation, an opportunity to talk about any problems. Ordinary. I slowly relax as the discussion progresses.

Until there is a lull in the conversation. Mr. Winters eyes me through his glasses, something that used to make me feel like a pinned butterfly under an unmerciful green gaze.

You get used to it. These days I take it in stride.

"Now, Mike," he starts, "I don't mean to be indiscreet, but I am by now quite curious, and I hope you can relieve me of that curiosity."

I hum questioningly.

"See," here he pauses to pull a soft cloth out of his pocket and casually clean his glasses, "I've been rather stumped now for quite a bit of time, and it took me such a long time to see the obvious – well, in hindsight – obvious answer, and by now I'm rather sure of it."

He puts his glasses back on, and I almost feel as though he's the slightest bit more manic than usual. Just a slight difference to the curve of his smile, the tilt of his head. The hair on the back of my neck stands up, ever so slightly.

"Now, Mike, correct me if I'm wrong," he finally says, "but you're actually human, aren't you."

Oh. Well.

I'm suddenly both terribly afraid and – well, relieved honestly. I'd been wondering for a few months now if this was going to come up, especially once I found out about the Rules – not the hotel's rules, but the actual Rules governing this...society ? Civilization ? People ?

Of which Rule One was more or less – as is often mimicked in fiction – "Don't Let the Humans Find Out".

"Yes, sir," I politely answer. "If I may ask, what gave me away ?"

He chuckles, the mania fading ever so slightly with his question answered. "Well, of course.

"It all started when I checked up on my bookshelf's alarms, you see."

I grimace a bit. "I did wonder. Back then I didn't quite know enough to know that it was a terrible idea."

"Indeed." He smirks. "But I was quite surprised that the only books you accessed were a rather basic bestiary, and an essay about the manners of our little...corner of civilization. At the time, I wondered whether you'd been raised in isolation and sought to educate yourself, and simply didn't know better than to peruse a warlock's library."

My eyes trail over to the works he mentions. A Short Reflection on the Manners of the People, though a little old-fashioned, had served me well in a hotel that was itself a little old-fashioned, quite intentionally so.

"This started me down quite a strange goose chase," he continues, lost in remembrance. "Such isolation is dangerous, you see, and against the laws of the People. So I thought to find out where you came from, and remedy the situation if needed.

"But the further I looked into you, the murkier the link to our People seemed. I traced your family back to the eighth generation, you know," he mentions offhandedly, "and there was still nothing to be found. Not a single strange tale or family heritage. At one point, I thought I'd found a connection to a witch clan that's since died out, but further inspection revealed otherwise.

"And meanwhile, I started doing something that – as I imagine you know by now – was quite impolite by our customs. I attempted to find out your species."

And indeed, my eyes widen a bit, used as I am to the manners of the People. That was, as he said, very impolite. I'd been lucky not to say a word to that effect in my first month on the job, or I'd have been found out much sooner. Or possibly eviscerated.

"I know," he waves off, "but by then I was really quite mad with the desire to know. The were clans were quickly eliminated – you handled silver well – and I sensed not a spark of magic from you, which rather neatly eliminated a large amount of practitioners from the running. I shan't bore you with my contrived attempts at determining your shapeshifter status. The last possibility I could conceive of was some vampire strain that could handle limited sunlight, but all would have required invitation to enter this office – which I did not provide."

I nod, his earlier, uncharacteristic hand gesture finally explained.

"And so : human," he concludes. "Which puts me in a bit of a bind."

I gulp discreetly. This was the final reckoning – which poison would I prefer ?

The silence stretches.

Literal poison is of course a possibility – or other flavors of quiet 'disappearance'. I would hope instead that the memory spells I'd heard of in passing would be my employer's chosen option.

But even this...unsettled me. How would my new self reconcile the past year ? Would there always be a strange gap at the back of my mind ? Some part of me that whispered when it saw unusually pale men in offices, that drew me towards practitioners and their discreet symbols, that would meticulously catalogue those who avoided silverware ?

Or would there be nothing – just a return to the mundane, the ordinary, the unbearably boring ?

There was, after all, a reason I hadn't quietly resigned in twelve months of work in a hotel where I might be slaughtered at any false move.

"Fortunately," he suddenly says, making me jump (and him smile), "I believe I have found a loophole which would allow the situation to resolve to my liking."

I try to compose myself.

"It is oft said the first Rule is that by all means necessary, the People must be hidden from humanity. Of course," and here the mania returns, "it is seldom clarified what, precisely, the bounds of 'humanity' are. I myself once was quite indistinguishable from the men you might walk past in the streets of London or Paris. An old man such as I has quite a lot of sway in the courts of the People, and I believe I could inconvenience quite a lot of people should this matter come to light.

"And, quite besides this, I find the idea of subjecting our guests to the same unsettling experience as I very, very appealing."

By now he is grinning in a manner others might find unsettling. I find myself unafraid.

I find myself grinning back.

The idea that guests might find themselves troubled thus, questioning what I am, and never seeing the truth, never guessing at a mere human, losing sleep wondering if they should fear the concierge, in terror of the unknown...is exhilarating.

After all…

"It is," I say softly, "rude to ask after one's species."