“Whydoesa town this small have such a well-stocked shop like that?”
He just blinked at me, then very deliberately licked his paw, giving himself the laziest bath in the history of feline-kind.
“Your help is noted and appreciated,” I muttered, turning back to my browser. I knew the basics of Lowery’s Crossing just from living here and what I’d looked up before moving here, but I’d never dug that deeply into the history. Could there be something about the town that helped explain why at least two psychics had been here? Thomas McAvell wasn’t the best example, but it was likely he’d seen the same things as Alex. Or he’d seensomething, at least, and it’d driven him insane. Some of what he’d said in his ramblings almost seemed to imply there’d been others before him, too.
A basic search of the town didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Location, population, distance to the nearest actually interesting city, things like that. The only location of note listed in the entry was the Silver Lake Reservoir and even that only mentioned that it was a popular hiking and swimming spot.
Clicking away from the official sites, I kept digging, scrolling through the results until a forum a few pages into the search caught my eye. The site wasn’t one I frequented, but I’d been online enough to recognize it as the kind of place that loved a good conspiracy theory. The headline on the search page was for a subforum on the site, called ‘Havens for the Paranormal’. Buried in the subheading, I saw Layton County, Colorado listed.
Curious, I followed the link. Instead of the cheap DIY website I’d been expecting, the forum that popped up was surprisingly polished and well-organized. The subforum I found myself in was nestled under a larger forum called ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ and each category seemed to list supposed sightings of paranormal activity.
It took a little more scrolling to find the original post that’d caught my attention, buried a few pages back in the forum posts. The most recent posts seemed to be some sort of heated debate over whether Salem, Massachusetts was real or a tourist trap, with a few cooler heads tagging moderators to shut down the argument. The post about Layton County turned out to be one of the shorter ones, posted by someone with the username ‘AllWhoWanda’.
AllWhoWanda: I can’t believe no one has mentioned Layton County, CO! My great-uncle lived there as a kid and he told me all kinds of crazy stories. He said he’d seen a shapeshifter out in the woods and there were rumors of a coven living out there, too. He even said one of his neighbors was well over a hundred years old. The strangest story is about a psychic, though. A guy named Thomas McAvell went crazy and killed his whole family, except his wife. His dad, his kids, all the ones who shared his blood. His wife didn’t say much after, not surprising, but I guess before it happened, she told one of her friends that her husband was acting strange and talking about seeing ghosts. I bet that’s why he snapped. This isn’t just a rumor, by the way. Here’s the link to a news story someone did on the fifty-year anniversary.
A link attached to the post redirected to an article from a true crime blog, talking about the case. Just to be cautious, I checked through that blog’s posts but didn’t find anything relating to Alex’s incident at the farm. I knew it’d made local news, obviously, but I was still relieved to see it hadn’t seemed to spread much beyond that.
Only a few people replied to Wanda’s post, two of them saying they’d never even heard of the place, while the third waved it all off as hearsay. The tag next to that poster’s name seemed to mark them as a moderator of some sort.
SpeakerForTheLost: One verified incident doesn’t make a place a haven, especially when there’s no proof that the guy was even psychic. Maybe he was just went psycho from living on a farm in the most boring place I can imagine? We’ll put a pin in this one until we can get some verified information. Thanks for bringing it to our attention, @AllWhoWanda!
The posts ended there, with no follow-up from Wanda. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to make me curious. Clicking on her profile showed she hadn’t posted anything before or since and her direct messaging option was turned off. Still, it was a start, proving that other people had heard strange things about Lowery’s Crossing.
Another hour of digging around didn’t turn up much more than that, but it was enough to get me thinking. Maybe there was something more to this? Something deeper? Could there be something about this town that drew in people with unique abilities, like Alex? A remote mountain town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods, seemed like an excellent option for anyone looking to hide.
“Donovan?”
A sleepy voice pulled me out of my thoughts and I looked up to see Alex standing in the doorway, hair rumpled, wearing only one of my shirts that fell just to the tops of his thighs.
“Hey. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” I bookmarked the site I was on and shut down the laptop, putting it on the table out of the way as Alex crossed the room. He crawled into my lap, straddling my legs and resting his head on my shoulder.
“What were you doing?” He still sounded half-asleep, his words mumbled and slurred.
“Just some research. I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t want to bother you.” A warm, sleepy, half-naked Alex in my lap was the perfect distraction, shunting all my questions and theories to the background. I ran my hands along his legs, tracing a line from his knee to his hips, grinning when I felt him shiver.
“Sounds like we need to try harder to exhaust you,” he murmured and his lips brushed my throat, soft and teasing. He rolled his hips forward, his arms sliding around my neck, plastering his body to mine.
I groaned, long and low, and he laughed, lifting his head and catching my lips in a heated kiss. When he rocked forward again, my hands went to his ass, naked under the shirt, and pulled him closer, grinding up against him.
“Bedroom,” I breathed, and he immediately slid out of my lap, but not without another kiss that made my head spin and my cock ache. Taking my hand in his, Alex pulled me through the house back to the bedroom, closing the door behind us. His shirt and my sleep pants fell to the floor and Alex tumbled back onto the bed, pulling me on top of him and into the cradle of his thighs.
My research could wait.
Chapter 13
Alex
“Ithinkit’stimetoreassess my weekday hours,” I grumbled to the empty air. There was no one in A Likely Story to hear me and there hadn’t been in over an hour. The shop had always opened at 10:00 in the morning every weekday, since the day Aunt Lizzie had established the place. Once I’d taken over, changing anything she’d created just seemed wrong, so I’d left it as it was, but maybe it really was time to consider a change.
Most of the time, I was lucky to see one person a week before noon on a weekday. The morning hours were usually when I did stocking, inventory, and all the other administrative tasks that came with running a store, just to fill the time. Maybe opening later would be a good way to save on energy bills, too? I made enough sales to keep the place open, but not enough to pay any staff, and I certainly wasn’t rolling in money. If Aunt Lizzie hadn’t paid off the loan on this place, I’d be screwed.
There was one other good thing about being in the bookstore in the quiet morning hours, though. The shop, even more than the house, brought me peace like nothing else. This place had been my safe haven as a scared child, a place to lose myself in fantastic stories of brave knights and magic and adventure. When I opened a book, my own problems and fears disappeared and I could be in a world where, no matter how terrible things seemed, there was always a happy ending.
Slipping into a relaxed headspace was the easiest thing in the world when I was here.
I settled down on the same loveseat Ori and I had sat on when they’d helped me with my focus, getting comfortable. The bell over the door would let me know if anyone walked in, and I wanted to keep working at the meditation exercises. It came easier now, but I still had a long way to go if I wanted to move past just breathing and attempt any sort of control over my ability.
Counting out each breath, I closed my eyes, allowing myself to relax. Almost immediately, a soft, relaxed haze settled over me, my body and mind already learning that it was time to relax and just be.
