Page 28 of My Neighbor Literally Bites

"I saw movement," he says. "I won't come in. God, Hannah — look at this place. Are you both all right?"

"We're fine."

"Lily?"

"Fine."

His gaze drifts past me, gentle, thorough. "Has he come back? Alaric?"

"No."

"Good." He turns the hat. "And the back room — did the weather get into Elspeth's papers? Her ledgers. If anything's water-damaged, I know a man who restores⁠—"

"Who told you she kept ledgers?"

A pause. Smooth as water closing over a dropped stone. "Everyone in this town knew Elspeth had records." He smiles. "Did you find them? Anything strange in there?"

I glance at the hooked mark on the beam, then back at him, and I lie. "There's a page about the old well. Some blessing for the water. Nothing strange."

There is no page about a well.

"The well." He nods slowly, and something behind his eyes adjusts — a man fitting a new fact into a frame he built before he ever arrived. "Of course. She did love that well."

He doesn't ask which well. We don't have a well.

"Salt those sills," he says, already stepping back. "You can't be too careful, with what's out there."

"What is out there, Nathan?"

"You know what." He's turning away.

I pretend I'm considering how to fix the door, but really I'm waiting for him to disappear before going to the pages.

Lily comes to my shoulder. "He's lying."

"Yes."

"About what?"

"Not sure."

I go back down to the ledger and letters. Below Elspeth's signature, smaller, is a line I missed.

What I have written would end people if the wrong hands closed on it. Names. Roofs. Every safe place. Burn it before you let it be taken. Better lost than turned into a list of the hunted.

A list of hunted. Somewhere I haven't found, dangerous enough to get people killed. I don't know where she hid it, but I know she ain't no liar.

I lay Alaric's note on the floorboards and set Elspeth's letter beside it. One says how to stay alive, the other how to notice the ones who don't keep peace. And Nathan definitely what she had.

Nathan's story, that Alaric is the danger, is a lie. It doesn't mean I forgive him though. I'm too angry to consider that. But not once did he ask me to fear the wrong thing.

"Mom," Lily says. "What do we do?"

"We find more." I stand. The braced door holds at my back — the house broken and upright, full of supports I never knew ran underneath it. "Before either of them gets into my head. Before I trust one more word."

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ALARIC