I leaned back and rubbed my temples.
Something wasn’t adding up.
The clock ticked behind the counter, steady and calm. The room around me felt too still, like the air had thickened. I scanned the space again, eyes tracking from the front display to the door, to the back hallway that led to storage.
I pushed away from the counter and moved toward the front window. The moonlight stretched across the street, silvering the wet pavement. The entire town looked asleep.
For a second, I rested my hand on the glass. It felt cold, solid, real. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but if I had, this would’ve been their hour.
Maybe I was chasing shadows. Maybe I was missing something right in front of me.
Either way, I wasn’t sleeping tonight.
Yawning, I wandered into the kitchenette and dumped the rest of my cold coffee into the sink. The bitter scent lingered as I rinsed the cup and set it upside down to dry. When I straightened, I noticed a trail of dirt on the floor.
Yeah, that was from me.
I opened the closet that held the cleaning supplies and grabbed the broom. Once I started sweeping, I couldn’t stop. The quiet made the sound of bristles against the old wood echo faintly, filling the space with a steady rhythm. Dust, leaves, and whatever else I’d tracked in slid across the floor. The task felt oddly calming—something simple and within my control.
I emptied the dustpan into the garbage and yawned again. My body protested, but my mind still churned.
What had Aiden been thinking earlier, trying to charm me in a hospital bed with an IV stuck in his arm? The image made me giggle, the sound too loud in the empty store. He was wild. Absolutely reckless, and I loved him for it.
I put the broom back, but something on the floor caught my attention. A thin, uneven line in the wood, just inside the storage closet.
Frowning, I crouched and brushed the dust away. The board seemed… wrong. Slightly offset, like it didn’t quite belong.
“Wait a second,” I murmured under my breath.
Cormac’s words from earlier flashed through my head. There were tunnels under this area. He’d mentioned them so casually, like that was a normal thing to drop into conversation.
My pulse kicked up. Holding my breath, I ran my fingers along the edge of the plank. Nothing. Just solid wood.
I almost laughed at myself. My imagination tended to sprint ahead of facts, especially after midnight. Still, that faint groove looked strange. I slid one finger into the thin gap and tugged. The board moved. Just slightly.
“Oh, no way,” I whispered.
I tried again, this time gripping both hands under the edge. With a grunt, the plank lifted, revealing a small metal handle beneath it. My heart leapt straight into my throat.
“What in the world…”
I pulled harder, the old hinges creaking as a section of the floor lifted like a lid. A trapdoor. A literal, honest-to-God trapdoor.
The air that rose from below smelled like dirt and iron, cool and old.
I grabbed my phone and turned on the flashlight. The beam cut through the darkness, landing on a small space below. Stone walls. Shelving. Something glass.
A cellar.
For a full ten seconds, I just knelt there, staring. Then curiosity shoved common sense aside. I found a small wooden ladder attached to the opening and climbed down.
The floor was packed dirt, and the air felt damp enough to cling to my skin. The space couldn’t have been more than ten by ten, half full of old canning jars. Some still held preserved fruit, cloudy with age. Others sat empty, dusted with cobwebs.
“Oh, Nana,” I whispered. “You’d love this.”
It looked like a century-old pantry, long forgotten. Except for one thing.
Boot prints.
