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Ethan’s jaw tightened. “I can’t just ignore this.”
“I’m not asking you to ignore it. I’m asking you to let me help.” Rook pulled out his keys. “Look, meet me tomorrow and bring everything you have on Grant and the other disappearances. We’ll figure out where Fiona is and who else might be at risk.”
“Where?”
Rook thought fast, trying to remember where Cillian took Julian sometimes. “The coffee shop on Fifth. The one with terrible music and good internet. Two o’clock?”
Ethan nodded slowly. “I work tomorrow night. Six to close.”
“Then, let’s make it ten o’clock in the morning, and we’ll work during the day.” Rook’s shadows finally, reluctantly, began retreating from Ethan. “Don’t go anywhere alone. Don’t talk to Grant if he approaches you. Don’t…”
“I’m not completely helpless.”
“I know. But these people are professionals.” Rook caught himself before he said something stupidly possessive. “Just...be careful...please.”
Ethan unlocked his car. Rook’s shadows immediately protested, clinging to Ethan’s coat, wrapping around his bag strap, curling around his wrist. Rook forcibly retracted them, ignoring their sulky resistance.
“Sorry. They don’t want you to leave.” One tendril had wrapped around Ethan’s car door handle. Another was trying to tie his shoelaces together. A third one appeared to be attempting to braid itself into his hair. “They’re also terrible at subtlety. That one thinks if it ties you to the car, you can’t drive away.”
“You don’t seem to want me to leave either,” Ethan said quietly.
“No. I don’t, but I haven’t moved to the trustworthy category yet, so we’ll meet up again tomorrow.”
Ethan studied him for a long moment. “Tomorrow. Ten o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.”
Ethan got in his car. Through the window, Rook watched him set his bag on the passenger seat, adjust his mirrors, fasten his seatbelt with the same precise actions he seemed to apply to everything he did.
The engine started, and the car backed out of the space. Rook’s shadows writhed around him like anxious tentacles, reaching after the disappearing taillights.
“I know,” Rook told them quietly. “I don’t like it either.”
He waited until Ethan’s car turned onto the main street before mounting his motorcycle. His phone buzzed again.
Silas: Rook. Be careful with this one. Ashford has resources. If he identifies Ethan as a threat…
Rook: He won’t get the chance. Ethan’s my beacon.
Silas: That’s what concerns me. Don’t do anything stupid.
Rook: Define stupid.
Silas: Exactly what I thought.
Rook pocketed his phone and started the motorcycle. His shadows coiled tight around his body, restless, bristling with protective instincts, and fixated on someone who’d walked into his life just four days ago.
Ethan Park, theater bartender, clinical observer, collector of data, and wearer of bow ties. And now…the owner of Rook’s completely undisciplined shadows. Mine to protect.
Rook pulled out of the parking lot, his shadows streaming behind him in the wind, already counting the hours until ten o’clock in the morning.
Chapter Six
“Coffee. Black. Two sugars.” Ethan spoke to his empty kitchen the same way he dictated notes, documenting his own morning routine to maintain some sense of normalcy. The kettle hissed on the stove. His laptop sat open on the counter, displaying the document he’d created at one-thirty in the morning when sleep proved impossible.
OBSERVATIONS: ROOK - POTENTIAL SUPERNATURAL ENTITY
The seriousness of the heading was undermined by the Arial font. Ethan had spent forty minutes debating whether to use “paranormal” or “supernatural” before settling on the latter as more encompassing. Then he spent another twenty minutes cataloging physical characteristics he’d noted.
