Chapter 1
Holly
The pint glass squeaks under my towel, I hate the sound of it. Clean rim, dry cloth, the same circular motion I've done ten thousand times behind this bar. My hands know the work even when the rest of me has checked out, and tonight the rest of me checked out around nine.
January rain hits the Anchor's windows in sheets. Not the polite coastal drizzle the tourism board puts on the brochures but real Oregon rain, heavy enough to drown a conversation and cold enough to end one. The neon Scales & Ales sign above the taps throws red light across the bar top, and the wood grain looks like it's bleeding.
I set the glass on the rack and pick up the next one.
Last hour of my shift. The Thursday crowd has thinned to the diehards: Carl and Micky in the corner booth arguing about crab pots, a couple of dock workers splitting a pitcher, old Gene asleep in the window seat with his chin on his chest and his cap pulled low. Griz hasn't moved from the entrance all night, arms folded across a chest made of actual stone, face carved into an expression that hasn't changed in the two years I've workedhere. I've never seen him blink. I asked Sal about it once and she said if I had time to count a gargoyle's blinks, I didn't have enough tables.
The stool third from the end sits empty. Rex picked that seat the first week I started at the Anchor, and he's sat in it four nights a week for two years. The leather is worn to a shine where his thighs press the edges, and there's a dent in the brass rail from the night Finn—three bourbons deep and grinning like he had a death wish—asked Rex if he'd ever thought about what my legs would look like on a motorcycle. Rex's hand closed around the rail and the brass bent. Jess smacked Finn on the back of the head and told him to quit poking the bear.
He hasn't been on that stool in twenty-three days.
Twenty-three days since the New Year's party. Since midnight hit and I looked across the clubhouse and found his eyes already on me, green-gold and burning with everything he'll never say out loud. Since I waited and he didn't cross the room. Since Tyler leaned against the bar and said a line I don't even remember, and I laughed because laughing is easier than standing still while a man you've been sleeping with for six months stares at you like you're the last exit on a highway he refuses to take.
Rex's champagne glass cracked in his fist. The blood ran between his fingers and dripped onto the table. He set the broken pieces down and walked out the back door without a word.
I poured Tyler another drink and kept smiling.
Twenty-three days. The longest Rex has gone without showing up at the Anchor since I started working here. He's still in town—I've seen his bike at the garage, overheard Finn talking about him at Betty's. He's just not here. Not on that stool. Not at my bar.
I told myself the arrangement worked. Six months of Rex at my door after midnight, boots on my floor, hands that knew every inch of me and a mouth that could take me apart in the dark. Six months of waking up to cold sheets and the dent in the pillow where his head had been, the front door locked from the outside because he's considerate enough to secure the deadbolt on his way out but not enough to stay until morning.
I told myself it didn't bother me. A woman who walked away from a trust fund and a family name and a mother who scheduled her life in fifteen-minute increments didn't need commitment. I chose freedom. I chose this bar, this town, this life where nobody tells me which fork to use or which man to marry or when to smile. I chose myself.And the one thing I didn't choose—the pill I swallow every morning before coffee, the reason I stopped picturing a nursery years ago—I folded that into the story too. Made it fit. Told myself it was just another kind of freedom.
But all those days of that empty seat have stripped the varnish off the lie, and underneath it is a truth I didn't want to look at. Freedom is supposed to feel like something. But this feels like an empty apartment and a phone that doesn't ring after midnight anymore.
Sal moves behind me, reaching for the top-shelf bourbon. Seven feet of troll, grey-green skin rough as bark, hands the size of dinner plates. The Anchor's been hers longer than the town's had electricity, and she moves through it like she built every wall herself and might outlast them too. Everything in its place. Nothing gets past her. I've seen her cut off a biker mid-sentence with a look that could cool magma and pour a free drink for a girl crying in the corner booth without anyone asking.
She hasn't mentioned Rex's absence.
A table near the window draws my eye. Three men I don't recognise. They came in forty minutes ago and ordered domestic bottles, which nobody orders at the Anchor because Sal stocks seventeen craft taps. Ordering a domestic in her bar is a mistake you only make once. They're wearing new boots with clean soles that have never touched a dock or a trail. Pressed jeans. Haircuts too recent for locals—Nightfall Cove's only barber is Frank at Clipper's, and Frank gives one haircut: the only one Frank knows how to give.
The blond one at the end of the table watches Griz. Not with the usual tourist double-take, the oh-my-God-that's-a-gargoyle look I see ten times a night from people who came to Nightfall Cove because they read about monsters on the internet and wanted to see one in person.
I polish the pint glass in my hand, tracking the blond man's focus on Griz, and the hair at the base of my neck lifts.
They settle their tab in cash. Exact change, no tip. That tells me everything I need to know. The blond one stands last and buttons his coat, and when they leave, I circle the table to clear the empties.
A pamphlet sits on the wood, half-tucked under a beer bottle. Glossy paper, tri-fold, expensive print. Humans First. The fist logo on the front, NIGHTFALL COVE FOR NIGHTFALL FAMILIES beneath it. Inside: the usual talking points about "preserving community character," "protecting human heritage," "traditional values for traditional families." No names. No contact info. Just a web address.
I fold the pamphlet and slide it into my back pocket.
"Table six tip out?" Sal asks from behind the taps, not looking up.
"Cash. Exact change, no tips."
A low grind rolls through her throat. "New faces?"
"Humans First guys. Pamphlet on the table."
Sal nods. She doesn't ask questions she already knows the answers to.
The front door opens and Tyler walks in, shaking rain off his jacket.
He's been coming in every night for three weeks. He's a human, early thirties, easy face, easy smile. Brown hair pushed back from his forehead, stubble that took more effort than he'd admit. He writes for a travel magazine—came to Nightfall Cove to do a piece on monster-human integration and stayed because the story got longer. Or because I'm behind this bar. He hasn't said which, and I haven't asked, because asking would mean caring about the answer.
