She was working on a new episode, curled up in my hoodie in the big chair she’d set up at her desk. Her bare legs were tucked under her, mic plugged in, notes scattered on the table. She had some big headphones on with bat wings onthem, reading glasses that made her eyes look huge, the screen reflected in them.
I stood in the doorway of the shop…just watching her.
Enjoying the look of her. Her beauty. Her voice.
“…locals say the knocking started around midnight,” she was saying into the mic, voice smooth, low, professional. “Three distinct raps on the back door. Always the back door. No footsteps. No silhouette. Just the sound, over and over again, until you get up to check—and then it stops.”
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, and let myself smile. She didn’t know I was there yet. Or maybe she did. Noelle had a way of knowing things without turning her head.
“Of course,” she went on, “most of the official reports blame wildlife. Branches. Pipes. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? If it was a pipe, why would it move from house to house? Why only three knocks?”
She clicked something on her laptop, then leaned in closer. The hem of my hoodie slipped off one shoulder.
I nearly groaned.
“Some say it’s the spirit of a woman who froze to death in 1973,” she said. “A widow who got locked out by accident. Others say it’s a cryptid—a mimic. Something that learns your rhythms. Something that knocks in your mother’s voice. Your dog’s bark. Your own laugh.”
She paused to sip hot chocolate from a mug I’d brought her earlier. Then she set it down, squinting at the screen.
I cleared my throat.
She jumped.
“Jesus, Beau,” she said, ripping the headphones off with one hand. “Were you just…standing there?”
“Just admirin’ the view.”
Noelle rolled her eyes, but her mouth curled at the edges. “The view of me looking like a gremlin in gamer headphones and compression socks?”
“You inanythingis worth pausing for,” I said, stepping into the room, slow and easy. “But you, sittin’ there tellin’ spooky stories with that smart little tone in your voice? Might be my favorite.”
“Oh my god.”
“No, really. I was learnin’ about knockin’ ghosts and wondering if I should be scared or turned on.”
She pointed at me with her pencil. “If you derail my audio again?—”
“What happens?” I asked, crouching beside the chair, brushing her knee with my knuckles. “You gonna punish me?”
She arched a brow. “Tempting.”
“You gonna keep talkin’ about door-knockin’ mimics while I’m under this table?”
Her lips parted. “You wouldn’t.”
I grinned. “You wanna test me?”
She didn’t move fast enough to stop me.
By the time I was on my knees, ducking beneath the table, her chair shifted just a little—legs spreading instinctively. One of her hands dropped to her knee, steadying herself.
Her left hand. The one with the ring.
We weren’t married…not even properly engaged, no more than we’d been the night we saw the Gloamstrider, when I’d been unable to stop myself from putting that ring where it belonged. We’d kept saying we’d give this a week, maybe two. No pressure. No plans.
But one week had spun out into fifty.
And now she’d nearly been here a year, and I was still just as feral for her as the night she first told me she wanted to climb me like a tree.
