A cold shower. Yeah, that might do it.
Or maybe this place had ghosts of its own, stirring things better left buried.
Dominion Hall tomorrow. Tonight? Survival.
The hallway upstairs was narrow, wallpaper faded with vine patterns that seemed to watch. Room 4 was at the end, overlooking the marsh. I unlocked, stepped in—simple bed, dresser, window cracked to let in the sea breeze. I dropped my pack, then sat on the edge of the mattress. I stared at my hand, the ghost of her touch lingering.
Charleston had just gotten complicated.
5
HAZEL
I’d spent the day conducting triage on a dying house. I’d counted windowpanes, noted which ones stuck and which ones rattled, tested every outlet with my phone charger, and made a running list that bled from one page to the next—bullets and sub-bullets and parentheses whispering contingencies only I could hear.
The work had steadied me. Numbers and fixtures were predictable. Hinges told you when they needed oil. Wood sagged in ways you could see. People were trickier.
By four, my shoulders had ached. I was halfway down the stairs with a bag of trash on my hip when the bell on the front desk gave a bright, single ding.
I froze.
I hadn’t expected anyone to ding that bell. The sound cut the quiet like a clean blade, and for a heartbeat, it was just me and the echo.
I’d set the trash down carefully on the step and came around the banister, smoothing my hair without thinking. He was there,big and impossible in the foyer, and the world narrowed to the shape of him.
Tall. Broad-shouldered. The kind of build that came from work, not a gym membership. His T-shirt strained across a chest carved from something older than discipline—mountain muscle, maybe. His hair was pulled back, dark blond with a hint of copper, the sides shorn close to reveal the sharp cut of his skull. The beard—thick, burnished gold—framed a mouth that looked made for sin and silence both. His eyes were a pale, impossible gray, clear and watchful, the kind that saw through walls and people alike.
He didn’t just take up space. He altered it. The air around him shifted, heavier somehow, like even gravity deferred to him.
He looked up at me like he’d expected me to be there, like he’d felt me coming before I appeared at the foot of the stairs. Grey eyes—no, not grey; wolf-colored, changeable—found mine and held.
He didn’t linger. Just accepted the key, and carried his duffel toward the stairs with a kind of quiet confidence that made my pulse skip. No wasted motion. No glance back to see if I was watching. Which, of course, I was.
The boards creaked under his weight—deep, steady sounds that matched the rhythm of his stride. I listened until the noise faded overhead, until the silence filled back in like a tide reclaiming the shore.
Only then did I let out the breath I’d been holding.
I rubbed my palms down my jeans, trying to ground myself in something ordinary—dust, fabric, motion—but the moment had already branded itself somewhere low in my stomach.
“Hazel?”
Maude’s voice carried from the hallway. I jumped.
She appeared with a stack of folded towels in her arms and a knowing look that made me feel like I’d been caught doing something indecent.
“You’ve got a guest?” she asked, not surprised so much as satisfied.
“I guess, I do.” My voice came out thinner than I wanted. “He just checked in.”
Maude set the towels down on the counter. “That’s good news. The place’ll start to feel alive again with folks coming through.”
“Sure,” I said, though it didn’t feel like good news. It felt like a test.
My eyes drifted toward the staircase. He was up there now—Gideon Dane. The name suited him. Hard consonants, no wasted syllables.
“He’ll be needing supper,” Maude said, already pivoting toward the kitchen. “I’ll see what I can pull together.”
“I can help,” I said automatically, following her.
