Chapter 1
Belle
The cash register drawer clanged shut. Forty-three dollars. I stared at the crumpled bills and loose change, then at the notebook where I'd tracked every transaction for the past month. The numbers formed a pattern—downward, always downward, like water circling a drain.
Rain drummed against the front window. Beyond the glass, Main Street stretched empty and slick under the streetlights. The arena's glow painted the low clouds orange in the distance. Fight night. Which meant everyone with money to spend was three blocks over, drinking overpriced beer and screaming themselves hoarse.
I turned back to my kingdom of yellowing paperbacks and warped hardcovers.
The floor lamp in the corner cast a warm light over the reading nook Mom had insisted on—two mismatched armchairs she'd reupholstered herself in faded burgundy fabric. My handwritten recommendation cards dotted the shelves: If you loved Station Eleven, try this. Perfect for fans of Circe. The mildew smell lingered near the back wall despite three different dehumidifiers. The landlord kept promising to fix the leak. I kept believing him because I had no other choice.
This place was mine. Not Dad's, not the bank's—not yet, anyway. I'd scraped together Mom's life insurance money, her savings, everything she'd hidden from him before the cancer took her. Turned it into something real. Something that couldn't be gambled away or drunk or pissed into the wind.
I ran my finger along a spine. Beloved. The pages fell open to a passage I'd read a hundred times, back when I thought literature might save me from becoming my parents.
Books were honest. People weren't.
I twisted the deadbolt and flipped the sign. Seven-thirty on a Thursday. If someone wanted books this badly, they could come back tomorrow.
The cart of returns sat near the fiction wall. I wheeled it over, started slotting paperbacks back into their alphabetical homes. Atwood. Banks. Butler. The familiar rhythm usually settled my mind.
Instead, my shoulders tensed.
I paused, fingers resting on a tattered King novel. The silence pressed wrong—too thick, too deliberate. Like the building was holding its breath. The rain outside should've filled the gaps, but it didn't. The sound seemed muffled now, distant.
Something was watching.
I straightened. Scanned the aisles. Shadows pooled between shelves where the lamp didn't reach, but nothing moved. The front window showed only wet pavement and the dim shapes of parked cars. Empty.
"Get it together," I muttered.
Three cups of coffee and four hours of sleep. That's all this was. Exhaustion playing tricks. I turned back to the cart.
Scrape.
My hands stilled. That came from the alley side—near the employee bathroom and the storage room. Not inside, but close. Right against the brick, maybe. A footstep on gravel. Or fabric brushing the wall. The distinct sound of someone trying to stay quiet and failing.
I stared at the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The storage room had a narrow window that faced the alley, protected by rusted bars Mom had installed after a break-in attempt years ago.
Raccoon. Probably. They got into the dumpster three times a week.
Or one of those arena drunks who couldn't find their car, decided to piss behind my store because the world was their urinal.
My feet stayed planted. The storage room key hung heavy on the ring in my pocket.
People who ran bookstores learned when to mind their own business. You saw things—customers pocketing merchandise, teenagers getting handsy in the poetry section, grown men crying over self-help books at two in the afternoon. You learned to look away. Keep your head down. Lock your doors and let the night sort itself out.
I grabbed another book. Shelved it. Listened.
The storage room window was old. Warped glass in a frame that hadn't closed flush since before I bought the place. Through it, shapes distorted—raindrops became oil slicks, streetlights bled into halos.
A shadow passed. Just once. Tall. Wide-shouldered. Moving slow across that murky glass like ink spreading through water.
Then it stopped.
I froze.
My hand hung in the air, still reaching for the next book on the cart. My breath caught somewhere between my lungs and throat. Not fear—not yet. Something older than that. The same thing that made rabbits go still in tall grass when the hawk's shadow crossed overhead.
