Midnight Markets

Midnight.

The grandfather clock in Marcus's hallway chimed twelve times, each resonance a starter's pistol firing through his bones. His wife Sarah rolled over in their bed upstairs, mumbling something about checking on the baby, but sleep reclaimed her before the thought fully formed. Marcus sat perfectly still in his home office, laptop closed, waiting.

The transformation wasn't like the movies. Instead, it felt like finally exhaling after holding his breath all day. His shoulders straightened, his mind sharpened, and the familiar electric current of pure focus coursed through his veins. This was his time.

He opened his laptop and watched the screen illuminate his face—angular features that seemed more pronounced in the blue glow, eyes that reflected the light with an almost predatory gleam. The cursor blinked expectantly in his trading platform. Tokyo was waking up. Hong Kong was already in full swing.

Marcus wasn't like other stay-at-home fathers. While other dads struggled with the transition from boardroom to playroom, he'd found his niche in the shadows. Literally. The sun wasn't just uncomfortable for him—it was debilitating. Some rare genetic condition, the doctors said, extreme photosensitivity that made normal daylight hours feel like walking through molten lead. Sarah understood, mostly. The kids were too young to question why Daddy only came outside after dark, why their family outings were limited to evening strolls and late-night grocery runs.

But they didn't know about the other thing. The thing that made the darkness not just bearable, but essential.

His first trade came within minutes: a pharmaceutical company in Seoul whose overnight earnings report had beaten expectations by thirty percent. His fingers moved across the keyboard with supernatural precision, buying in at the exact moment before the price surge. The profit was immediate—eight thousand dollars in less than ten minutes.

The baby cried upstairs.

Marcus paused, listening to Sarah's footsteps padding across the hardwood floor. Her voice drifted down, soft and soothing, singing the lullaby she'd inherited from her grandmother. Something twisted in his chest—not guilt exactly, but something adjacent to it. Sarah believed he was consulting for tech companies in Silicon Valley, taking advantage of the time difference to work normal hours their time. She was proud of how he'd figured out a way to be present for the kids while still contributing financially.

If only she knew how he really saw in the dark.

The second trade was riskier—a currency play between the yen and the Australian dollar. Marcus had been tracking the patterns for months, watching how certain geopolitical tensions affected the overnight flows. His success rate was almost supernatural, something that would have attracted attention if anyone were paying close enough attention to his specific trading patterns. But he was careful, spreading his activity across multiple platforms.

Another win. Twelve thousand this time.

The moonlight streaming through his office window seemed to pulse with his heartbeat. Outside, the suburban street was tomb-quiet except for the occasional prowling cat or late-night jogger. Marcus envied them their casual relationship with darkness. For him, night wasn't just preferable—it was the only time he could truly think, truly perform, truly be himself.

His phone buzzed. A text from his brother Dave in London: "Saw your LinkedIn post about the consulting work. Drinks this weekend to celebrate?"

Marcus stared at the message. Dave didn't know about the condition, didn't know why Marcus had really left his corporate job three years ago. The official story was that he wanted to be more present for his family, wanted to escape the rat race. The truth was more complicated.

The truth was that something had changed in him around the time his son Tommy was born. At first, he'd attributed the light sensitivity to stress, new parent exhaustion. But as the months passed, other things changed too. His hearing became sharper. His night vision improved dramatically. His instincts for reading people, for sensing market movements, for predicting outcomes became almost preternatural.

Third trade: a biotech company in Mumbai whose clinical trial results were scheduled to be announced in four hours. Marcus had been tracking the preliminary data leaks on obscure medical forums, cross-referencing with patent filings and FDA correspondence. The signs pointed to success. He bought in heavy.

The baby cried again, longer this time. Sarah's footsteps were more urgent now, and Marcus could hear her muttering about teething and sleep schedules. He glanced at the monitor showing their daughter Emma's room—she was still peacefully asleep, clutching the stuffed wolf he'd bought her for her second birthday.

His trades were now running into six figures for the night. Enough to pay off Sarah's student loans, enough to put both kids through college, enough to give his family the financial security he'd never quite managed during his daylight corporate career.

But the weight of the secret was growing heavier.

The Mumbai trade hit exactly as predicted. Twenty-two thousand profit in a single position. Marcus leaned back in his chair, feeling the familiar mixture of exhilaration and exhaustion that came with successful hunting. Through the window, he could see the first hints of gray creeping along the horizon. Dawn was still hours away, but his body was already anticipating the withdrawal, the way his supernatural focus would fade as the sun climbed higher.

A soft knock on his office door made him freeze.

"Marcus?" Sarah's voice was gentle but curious. "I heard typing. Is everything okay?"

He minimized his trading platforms and opened a generic consulting document he kept prepared for these moments. "Just finishing up some documentation for the Palo Alto project. You know how it is with the time difference."

Sarah appeared in the doorway, wearing one of his old t-shirts, her hair messy from sleep. Even in the darkness, he could see the concern in her eyes. "You've been working later and later."

The words hit him like physical blows. This was the conversation he'd been dreading, the moment when his two worlds would finally collide. Sarah was smart—a research librarian with an instinct for detecting inconsistencies and half-truths. How long before she started asking harder questions about his mysterious consulting income? How long before she noticed that his "clients" never called during normal business hours, never sent emails, never seemed to exist beyond his carefully constructed stories?

"I'm fine," he said, but even he could hear how hollow it sounded.

Sarah moved closer, close enough that he could smell her shampoo, close enough to see the worry lines around her eyes. "Marcus, we're partners. Whatever's going on, we can figure it out together. But you have to let me in."

For a moment, he considered it. Considered telling her everything—about the condition, about the trading, about the way darkness transformed him into something more than human. About how their comfortable suburban life was built on secrets and supernatural instincts that he couldn't explain and didn't fully understand.

But how do you tell the person you love most that you might not be entirely human anymore?

"I should get back to work," he said instead. "The Hong Kong markets are about to close."

Something shifted in Sarah's expression—disappointment, maybe, or recognition that he was choosing distance over intimacy. She nodded slowly and turned to leave, but paused at the doorway.

"Tommy asked me yesterday why Daddy only plays with him when it's dark outside," she said without turning around. "I didn't know what to tell him."

The words hung in the air long after she'd gone, heavier than any market position he'd ever carried.

Marcus stared at his trading screens, but the numbers seemed to blur together. For the first time in months, he felt uncertain about his next move. The Asian markets were indeed closing, but the European markets would be opening soon. He could easily turn tonight's winnings into even more, could continue building the financial fortress that would protect his family from any possible future hardship.

But at what cost?

He thought about Tommy, barely three years old, who only knew his father as a shadowy figure who appeared after bedtime for whispered games and midnight stories. He thought about Emma, who might never see him in full daylight, might grow up thinking fathers were naturally nocturnal creatures. He thought about Sarah, lying alone in their bed, married to a man who was becoming more ghost than husband.

His phone buzzed with another opportunity—insider information from a forum contact about pharmaceutical mergers. The kind of tip that could net him fifty thousand in a single trade. Easy money. Victimless crime. The perfect exploitation of his supernatural market instincts.

Instead, he closed the laptop.

The house felt different in the silence—not empty, but full of sleeping potential. Upstairs, his family dreamed their daylight dreams while he sat in the darkness he'd convinced himself he needed. The first time in three years he'd shut down his trading operation before dawn, and the absence of that familiar electric focus felt like withdrawal.

He climbed the stairs quietly, muscle memory navigating every creaking board. Tommy's room first—his son was sprawled across his toddler bed, arms flung wide, completely surrendered to sleep. Marcus knelt beside the bed and whispered the kind of promise that only darkness could hear: "Tomorrow we'll play outside. I'll find a way."

Emma's room next. His daughter slept with the focused intensity of someone conserving energy for tomorrow's adventures. Her stuffed wolf had fallen to the floor. Marcus picked it up, studying its fabric features in the moonlight streaming through her window. When he'd bought it, he'd thought it was just a cute toy. Now he wondered if he'd unconsciously chosen it as some kind of totem, a way of marking his territory in his daughter's dreams.

Finally, the master bedroom. Sarah was awake, he realized, though she was pretending to sleep. Her breathing was too controlled, too conscious. She was waiting for him, hoping he would choose her over whatever kept pulling him away.

He slipped under the covers and moved close enough to feel her warmth. For a moment, they lay there in perfect stillness, two people pretending to be asleep while actually conducting an entire conversation through proximity and breath.

"Sarah," he whispered finally.

"Mmm?"

"I need to tell you something. About why I can't work during the day. About what I've really been doing."

She rolled over to face him, eyes wide open in the darkness. "Okay."

And for the first time in three years, Marcus began to tell the truth. Not all of it—not yet—but enough. About the condition that made daylight unbearable. About the trading instead of consulting. About the money they had, much more than she knew, and the guilt that came with earning it in shadows.

Sarah listened without interrupting, her hand finding his in the darkness. When he finished, she was quiet for so long he wondered if she'd fallen asleep.

"How much money?" she asked finally.

"Enough to quit your job if you want. Enough to move somewhere with better schools. Enough to..." He trailed off, realizing he'd been thinking about their future in purely financial terms, as if money could solve the fundamental problem of his transformation.

"I don't want to quit my job," Sarah said softly. "I love my job. And I love our house. And I love our life, Marcus. I just want my husband back."

The words hit him with more force than any market crash. In trying to provide for his family, he'd been systematically removing himself from it. In embracing his supernatural abilities, he'd been neglecting his human connections.

"What if I can't change?" he asked. "What if this is who I am now?"

Sarah's hand squeezed his. "Then we'll figure out how to make it work. But you have to stop hiding from us. The kids need to understand why Daddy is different. They need to see that different doesn't mean absent."

Through their bedroom window, Marcus could see the sky beginning to lighten. Soon, his supernatural focus would fade, his market instincts would dull, and he'd return to being merely human. For three years, he'd dreaded these moments, fought against the approaching dawn.

But lying there next to Sarah, feeling the solid reality of their marriage reasserting itself, he realized that maybe his humanity wasn't something to be overcome. Maybe it was something to be integrated with whatever else he was becoming.

"There's something else," he said. "About what happens to me at night. About why I'm so good at this. It's not just the light sensitivity."

Sarah propped herself up on one elbow, studying his face in the pre-dawn gloom. "Tell me."

And this time, he told her everything. About the enhanced senses, the supernatural instincts, the way darkness transformed him into something more than human. About his suspicion that he was changing into something that didn't have a name in the medical journals.

When he finished, Sarah was quiet for a long time. Then she reached out and touched his face, tracing the angular features that seemed sharper in darkness.

"My husband, the werewolf trader," she said, and there was something in her voice that wasn't fear or revulsion, but wonder. "Do you know how many stay-at-home moms would kill for supernatural market instincts?"

Despite everything, Marcus laughed. "That's your reaction?"

"Marcus, I've been married to you for six years. I've watched you adapt to every challenge life has thrown at us. Did you really think I wouldn't notice that you were becoming something extraordinary?"

The dawn light was stronger now, and Marcus could feel his supernatural focus begin to ebb. But instead of fighting it, he let it go, accepting the return to merely human consciousness. Sarah was right—extraordinary didn't have to mean isolated.

"So what do we do now?" he asked.

Sarah smiled, the expression visible even in the growing light. "Now we figure out how to integrate your night job with our day life. We explain to the kids that Daddy has a special condition that makes him stronger at night. We set up proper boundaries so your work doesn't consume our marriage. And maybe..." She paused, considering. "Maybe we look into whether there are other people like you. Other families dealing with supernatural conditions."

The idea hadn't occurred to Marcus—that his transformation might not be unique, that there might be communities of people navigating similar challenges. The isolation he'd felt for three years suddenly seemed less inevitable, more like a choice he'd made out of fear.

"And the money?" he asked.

"We use it responsibly. College funds, retirement savings, maybe a trust for the kids. But we don't let it become a substitute for presence." Sarah's voice grew firmer. "And you scale back the trading. Maybe three nights a week instead of seven. The kids need their father, even if he is part werewolf."

Marcus nodded, feeling something loosen in his chest that he hadn't realized was tight. For three years, he'd been carrying the weight of his transformation alone, convinced that becoming something more than human meant becoming less of a husband and father.

The sun was fully visible now through their bedroom window, and Marcus felt the familiar heaviness settling over him as his supernatural abilities retreated. But for the first time since his transformation began, the approaching day didn't feel like a defeat. It felt like an opportunity to practice being human again.

"I love you," he said, meaning it in ways he'd forgotten were possible.

"I love you too," Sarah replied. "All of you. Even the parts that only come out at night."

Downstairs, the grandfather clock chimed six times, marking the end of Marcus's hunting hours and the beginning of something new. Through the walls, they could hear Tommy stirring in his room, preparing for another day of three-year-old adventures. Soon, Emma would wake too, and the house would fill with the chaos of family breakfast and getting ready for daycare.

But for now, Marcus and Sarah lay together in the growing light, two people who had just rediscovered each other after three years of living as strangers under the same roof. The supernatural trader and the research librarian, the werewolf and the woman who loved him, the father who had been absent and the family that was willing to welcome him back.

Outside, the suburban street was waking up—coffee makers gurgling to life, garage doors opening, the ordinary magic of families beginning their days. Marcus had spent so long focused on the darkness that he'd forgotten there was beauty in the light too. Not the harsh, debilitating brightness that made his condition unbearable, but the soft morning glow that meant home and safety and love.

"Marcus?" Sarah's voice was drowsy now, finally ready for the sleep she'd been postponing.

"Yeah?"

"Tonight, after the kids are in bed, maybe you could show me some of those trading techniques. I've always been curious about the markets."

Marcus smiled, imagining Sarah's research skills applied to financial analysis, her methodical mind working alongside his supernatural instincts. Maybe his transformation didn't have to be a solitary journey after all. Maybe it could be something they explored together, as partners.

"I'd like that," he said.

And as the sun climbed higher and his supernatural abilities faded completely, Marcus felt something he hadn't experienced in three years: the simple human happiness of being exactly where he belonged.

The grandfather clock chimed seven times, then eight. The house filled with the sounds of family life resuming—Sarah making coffee, Tommy demanding pancakes, Emma babbling in her crib. Marcus got up to help with breakfast, moving slowly in the daylight but moving toward his family instead of away from them.

For the first time since his transformation began, he was looking forward to both the darkness and the light.

Midnight.