Beau was quiet, his arm around me tightening just slightly.
I let the silence stretch, warming to the rhythm of it now—the way firelight made everything feel heavier, older, closer.
“The first time I saw it,” I said slowly, “was in the woods behind our trailer. I was maybe twelve. There’d been a bad storm—lightning cracking right over the hills, thunder shaking the windows. I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and looked outside…”
The fire popped, and Whit jumped just a little.
“It was perched in a tree about ten feet off the ground. Perfectly still. Its eyes were the only thing I could see at first—those pale silver moons cutting through the dark. And I swear…it blinked. Like it knew I was watching.”
Holden shifted uncomfortably beside the log. “You sure it wasn’t just an animal?”
“That’s what I told myself,” I said. “Over and over. Foryears. But then I started seeing it other places. Not often. Not always clearly. But just enough.”
“Define ‘other places,’” Shane said.
“My dorm window in college. The rooftop across from my first apartment in Austin. Once in the reflection of a parked car’s windshield. Always still. Always watching.”
“You never mentioned that,” Shane said.
“Didn’t want you thinking I was nuts.” I offered a shrug, careful and vague. “And maybe I am. Maybe I was just dealing with grief or trauma or—hell, an undiagnosed sleep disorder. But every time I saw it…something happened. A bad car accident. A house fire two streets over.”
“You think it’s following you?” Delilah asked.
I looked at her, met her eyes dead on. “I think it doesn’t have to follow me. I think it already lives somewhere behind my eyes.”
Nobody spoke.
Even Milo had gone still, ears up.
I leaned back, my voice dry now, matter-of-fact. “That’s what they don’t tell you in the old stories. Sometimes monsters don’t just haunt a place. They haunt a person. And once they’ve picked you? There’s no going back.”
Shane let out a low breath and gave a small shake of his head, like he was trying to physically dispel the shiver crawling up his spine.
“Well,” Whit said eventually, “guess I’ll be sleeping in the truck.”
Laughter followed Whit’s comment, but it was nervous, scattered. The fire crackled again. Someone tossed another log on, and for a second, the flames surged high enough to throw the trees into sharper relief—tall and twisted, limbs like crooked fingers, reaching.
Holden dove into a story of his own, then—one that, blessedly, did not start withWhen I was in Guatemala—but Iwas too rattled from my own ghost. Now that I’d talked about the Painter, I felt like it had to be in the woods…like talking about it had let it know I was thinking about it, like I’d summoned it. Beau’s hand slid down my arm, anchoring me like he always did—just one touch and I could breathe again. But this time, I didn’t just want to breathe.
I wanted to forget.
I leaned into him, my head against his shoulder. He turned, pressing a kiss to my hair.
“You good?” he murmured.
“Getting there.”
“You wanna get there faster?”
I tilted my chin up to meet his eyes. The firelight painted him in gold and shadow, his stubble catching little flecks of amber, his mouth soft and infuriatingly perfect.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I said, my voice quiet enough that only he could hear it.
“I’m thinkin’,” he said, “that I’ve got a warm sleepin’ bag and a girl who just told a room full of people she’s being stalked by a death cat. And if I don’t take care of you properly tonight, I’m gonna wake up with that thing gnawin’ on my ankles out of spite.”
I snorted—then bit my lip when his hand skimmed beneath the hem of my hoodie, palm hot against my lower back.
“And how exactly were you planning on taking care of me?” I asked, lifting an eyebrow.
