“Are you done drooling? Can we please go to the bar now? I’m not opposed to leaving you here on the sidewalk all night,” Eve says with a snort.
“If you leave me here, whose love life are you going to obsess over all night?” I counter with a laugh, hooking my arm through hers.
“Good point! No one’s love life is quite as sad as yours. And I mean that with love, Aury.”
I stick my tongue out at her as we keep walking.
I don’t know what the hell just happened.
Everyone in this town loves to tell stories about strange and uncanny things, so maybe this was my first true Lorewood experience.
Except something inside me—woven into the marrow of who I am—says it’s so much more than that.
It felt …right.
Like I’ve been waiting for this moment my whole life.
Maybe longer.
But it also felt dangerous.
The urge to run is just as strong as the certainty that I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. It’s ripping me in half, each part of me dragged toward something I can’t name.
And as we near the bar, icy fingers of awareness curl around the back of my neck.
I can’t shake the feeling.
The eyes in the shadows are still watching.
And honestly?
If the scent wants to rail me against the glass door, I’m not saying no.
At this point, I’d fuck a cinnamon-and-pine-soaked haunting as long as it didn’t say the words, “Joe Rogan’s podcast changed my life.”
Just give me a firm grip, solid aftercare, and maybe a snack.
So, keep watching, cinnamon broom. But next time?
Use your hands, you coward.
Ezra
Technically, I own the used bookshop in town, but the day-to-day logistics are beneath me. I leave that mind-numbing drudgery to my sole employee, Thane.
He’s the only modern human I’ve ever tolerated.
Why, you ask?
Because he’s a killer. Just like me.
It started with blood. Like it always does.
The night I found him, I was using the Tesem to track my next meal when I caught the scent of something far more interesting.
He reeked of rot and destruction, but there was something buried beneath it.
Faint and dissonant, like a note held too long in a song I’d forgotten.
