Peggy studies me for a long moment, then relents. “Fine. But you text me thesecondsomething weird happens. Not after. Not ‘when you’re sure.’ Immediately.”
“Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a scout.”
“Then it means even more.”
She rolls her eyes and heads out, but not before grabbing the fire extinguisher from behind the desk and placing it like a trophy beside the computer monitor. “Just in case. Again.”
Closing goes slower than usual. Every creak makes me jump. Every shadow feels like a prelude to chittering madness. But nothing happens. No monsters. No voices. No creepy girls with cell phones doing TikToks by the urinal.
Just books. Dust. And me.
I finish the sweep, double-check the doors, and turn off the main lights. The glow from the EXIT sign bathes the lobby in an eerie red. The library feels…hollow. Like something’s missing. Or waiting.
“Alright,” I mutter. “No ghosts, no goblins. No?—”
The men’s room door explodes outward.
Again.
“OH COMEON?—”
But it’s not splinters and claws this time. The door doesn't disintegrate into confetti. It slams open with force, yeah—but the man who comes barreling out is all solid, all mass, all heat and muscle and motion.
He’shuge. Not just tall—built. The kind of powerful that looks sculpted by war gods and punishment. Skin like burnished green stone, hair braided back in thick cords, sharp tusksframing a face that shouldn’t be beautiful butis. There’s a scar cutting across his jaw and a snarl on his lips, and my body goes into DEFCON 1 before my brain can process why.
He’s speaking. Loud. Fast. Angry.
Not English.
It rolls from him in a guttural cascade of consonants and deep, shaking vowels that hit like thundercracks. I don’t know the words, but I know thetone—this man is pissed and determined and utterly sure of himself. It’s the sound of a storm walking on two legs.
“Whoa—HEY!” I yell, backing up, fumbling behind the desk for the extinguisher. “You can’t just burst out of—again—what even IS this bathroom?! A rift in space-time?!”
He ignores me. Or doesn’t understand me. His eyes—sharp, amber, animal—lock onto mine. I swear the worldtilts.
He stalks toward me, one hand gripping a long, black weapon—some kind of twisted spear. Not a gun. Not a blade. But I don’t care what it is, because I’m cornered again.
Hegrabsme.
Not hard. Not painful. Butfirm. Like I might vanish if he lets go. His hands are rough and warm and cover half my torso, one around my waist, the other braced on my shoulder. I open my mouth to scream, to fight.
He kisses me.
Just—kissesme.
What thehell?
It’s not gentle. It’s not soft. But it’s not hungry either. It’s…deliberate. Heat blooms across my lips, down my spine, radiating outward like lightning in my bloodstream. The room pulses once. Something unseenshifts—like the very air has been rewired.
He pulls back.
My hand shoots up on instinct and slaps him.
Hard.
“What the HELL?—!”
