Forty-eight images from December. Knox at the front of the column, bike loaded with wrapped boxes. Finn with a stuffed bear strapped to his handlebars and that grin Jess pretends she doesn't love. Colt lifting his daughter Lily onto the back of his bike, her little arms wrapped around his waist, her helmet too big and her smile bigger. The whole MC riding through Nightfall Cove with toys piled in the trucks behind them, and the sidewalks lined with kids who didn't care that the men on those bikes had tusks and green skin.
The cursor lands on the one I keep skipping.
Rex, crouched on the curb outside the fire station with a girl no older than five. She picked him. Walked right up to the biggest orc in the lineup, tugged his leather cut, and held up a drawing she'd made in crayon—a motorcycle with wings. Rex took it from her with both hands like she'd handed him something precious, and that's the moment I caught: his head bent over the paper, the gold tusk caps catching winter sunlight, a grin so unguarded it cracked his whole face open.
I haven't deleted it. I haven't printed it either. Looking at it hits the same spot a deep breath can't reach, right under my ribs. I close the folder and push the laptop back on the desk.
I stow the camera in my bag, pull my hair back with the elastic on my wrist, grab my apron from the shelf, and head out for my shift.
The Anchor's front window has a hole the size of a grapefruit and a web of cracks radiating from the center like a frozen splash. I stop at the bottom of the stairs with my apron half-tied. January wind cuts through the gap in the glass and lifts a napkin off the closest table, sending it to the floor in a lazy spin. The rock sits on the hardwood under the window, grey, the size of a man's fist. The kind you'd pick up from any beach in Oregon.
I photograph the window from inside first. Then I push through the front door to get the exterior angle, and the spray paint stops me on the sidewalk. Red letters, block capitals, fresh enough that the edges haven't bled yet. MONSTER LOVERS. Three shots each, different focal lengths, evidence before cleanup because the instinct kicks in faster than the anger.
Inside, Sal stands behind the bar with a broom in her hands and an expression I've never seen on her face before: four hundred years of keeping the peace pressed down into a single exhale through her nose. She looks at the window and then at me and then back at the window, and the broom handle creaks in her grip.
"Happened overnight," she says. "Griz found it at five."
Griz kneels by the wall with a dustpan, sweeping glass into a pile without a sound. His stone hands move through the shards and they don't cut him. Nothing cuts him. But he's pressing each shard into the dustpan like he wants to crush it back to sand, and that's the closest Griz gets to angry.
I pull the pamphlet from my jacket pocket. The one from my first week, the Humans First tri-fold with the fist logo and the clean margins. I smooth it on the bar top and look at the window.
"Is this connected?"
Sal picks up the rock and turns it over in her palm. Her grey-green skin makes the stone look pale. "The paint's the same red as their flyers."
I tuck the pamphlet back and grab a roll of packing tape and a trash bag from behind the bar. The tape over the crack will hold for a night. Sal watches me do it and doesn't argue.
The Monday evening crowd trickles in sparse. Carl and Micky take their booth and don't mention the window, which means they've already talked about it outside and decided not to bring it up where Sal can hear. Old Gene settles into the window seat, folds his hands on the table and stares at the tape like it's a personal insult.
Frank from the barbershop comes in around eight. He orders his usual pilsner and leans both elbows on the bar, the way he does when he's got something to say and is pretending he doesn't.
"Heard about the window."
"It's hard to miss, Frank."
"The Humans First crowd," he says, lowering his voice even though nobody at the bar is close enough to hear. He picks at the edge of his coaster. "They've got a new guy running things. Dale Rickman. Moved down from Portland last year, bought the old Weatherford house up on the bluff. Money. Real organization, not like the jokers who used to hand out leaflets at the grocery store." He takes a long pull of his pilsner. "They're holding meetings at the community center. Thursday nights."
"The community center?" I set his second pilsner down harder than I need to. The center sits two blocks from the Anchor, sandwiched between the library and the Methodist church. Betty takes Lily there for craft mornings on Saturdays. "Since when?"
"Since November, at least. Maybe longer." Frank shrugs with one shoulder. "Nobody paid attention because they kept it quiet. But the window—" He tilts his chin toward the tape.
I pull out my phone and type the name into my notes. Dale Rickman. Portland. Weatherford house. Community center Thursdays.
The door opens at nine fifteen and every thought I have about Dale Rickman drops to the floor.
Rex doesn't look at the bar. Doesn't look at me. He walks straight to the taped window and stops, arms loose at his sides, studying the crack and the hole behind it. His shoulders pull tight under his cut and his head turns in a slow sweep: window, ceiling corners, the front awning where Sal's camera mounts to the fascia board.
He pulls out his phone and photographs the hole. Then walks outside and photographs the spray paint. I watch through the taped glass as he crouches on the sidewalk the way I did an hour ago, angling for the same shot I already took, and my chest tightens because of course he did. Of course he came here and of course the first thing he touched is the damage.
He comes back inside and checks on Sal. She waves him off with the broom. He checks on Griz. The gargoyle shakes his head once. He's fine. Rex nods and turns around, his eyes find me behind the bar.
"We need to talk."
I drag the rag across the bar top in front of Carl's seat, keeping my face neutral because I've had two years of practice serving drinks to a man who makes my pulse do things it has no right to do.
"No, we don't."
"Holly."
