Page 12

Something is very, very wrong.

I push to my feet. Grab the loosest dress I own. A faded blue cotton thing I bought for Dan’s funeral and haven’t worn since. It slides over my head, settles around the new shape of my body like it was tailored for this exact moment.

The mirror shows someone I don’t recognize. Glowing skin. Bright eyes. A stranger wearing my face.

I look healthy.

And for me that is wrong.

The town feels different lately. Or maybe I’m just noticing things I’ve always ignored. Little details that never seemed important when I was drowning in grief and flour dust.

Like how some residents’ shadows don’t quite match their movements. I noticed it yesterday when Mr. Rodriguez crossed the street. His shadow stretched left while he walked right, just for a moment, before snapping back into place like a rubber band.

Or how certain customers never come in during the brightest part of the day. The lunch rush is always tourists and humans. The early morning and late afternoon crowds, that’s when the regulars appear. Mrs. Chen. The teenager from the coffee shop. The construction workers with their too-bright eyes.

Speaking of that teenager, I saw him yesterday through the window. He was laughing at something on his phone, head tilted back, and the light hit his eyes wrong. The pupils weren’t round. They were vertical. Just for a second. Just long enough for my brain to register it before he blinked and they were normal again.

Dan used to say Deception Point attracted unusual people. “Refugees,” he called them once, late at night when we were closing up the bakery, his voice soft and careful like he was telling me a secret. But he never explained what they were fleeing from.

I’d assumed he meant artists, dropouts, people escaping boring corporate lives elsewhere.

Now I’m not so sure what he meant.

Now, standing in my bathroom with my jeans on the floor and something impossible growing inside me, I think maybe Dan knew exactly what kind of town this was. And maybe he’d been trying to tell me, in his careful way, that I was living somewhere the rules didn’t quite apply.

I wish I’d listened.

I sigh heavily, there’s only one place I need to go to be sure. And it’s the last place I want to go to.

The Bait Shop crouches at the far end of the marina, where the wooden planks are slick with brine and the air reeks of fish guts and diesel. The sign out front says TACKLE & BAIT in peeling red letters, but everyone knows old Mariska sells more than worms and lures.

I stop three stores down. My hand finds the lamppost, grips cold metal while my stomach tries to crawl up my throat. The dress sticks to my back despite the harbor breeze. Two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated.

A fisherman emerges from the shop, clutching a brown paper bag. He hurries past me with his shoulders hunched like he’s carrying something that might bite.

I force my feet forward. One step. Another. The planks groan under my weight, or maybe that’s just my imagination adding sound to the dread pooling in my gut.

The door handle is brass, worn smooth by decades of desperate hands. My fingers hover an inch away. I could leave. Drive to a real doctor in the next town over, get normal answers to normal problems.

Except there’s nothing normal about hearing hearts beat three streets away.

I push through the door holding my breath, wishing I was back in my shop getting ready to bake. This is what I get for having one night of pleasure in my desperate loneliness.

Inside, fishing rods lean against every wall like a forest of dead trees. Mason jars crowd the shelves, their contents floating in liquids that range from amber to black. Bundles of dried herbs hang from the rafters, close enough to brush my hair. The smell hits me like a fist: low tide and burned sage and something underneath that tastes like metal on my tongue.

I can’t see her. The counter is empty, just a brass cash register that looks older than the building itself. My pulse hammers so hard I can feel it in my teeth.

“Mariska?” My voice comes out thin. Reedy.

Movement in the corner. She unfolds from a rocking chair I swear wasn’t there a second ago. Ancient doesn’t cover it. Her skin looks like parchment stretched over bird bones, translucent enough to see the blue veins underneath. Her eyes are milky white, cataracts thick as frosted glass.

Those blind eyes lock onto me.

Not near me. Not in my general direction. Onto me. Through me. Like she’s reading something written on my bones.

Her mouth curves. The smile belongs on a snake that’s spotted a mouse.

“You,” she says.