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“It’s from Jane Eyre…the book you just purchased.” Gabriel attempted a smile, but it slid from his face like an over-oiled hinge.

“Oh. Right.” The stranger’s relief was palpable as he grasped the bag and started toward the door.

“That will be fourteen seventy-five,” Gabriel called, tapping the register.

A hint of pink touched the young man’s cheeks as he fished his wallet out of a giant pocket in his too-large coat. Gabriel glanced at the name on the credit card as he pressed it briefly against the payment screen. “Thank you, Thomas.”

The stranger blinked in confusion for a moment before his expression cleared. “Thanks.” He tucked the card away and turned for a second time to leave.

“See you soon.” Gabriel regurgitated the valedictory he used with the locals who regularly visited the bookshop.

The young man raised his gaze from the floor and offered up a slight smile before hurrying through the door. It closed with a dull thud behind him, a draft of chilly air spiraling into the shop in his wake.

For a long time, Gabriel stared blankly through the empty glass door, his mind buzzing with a kind of persistent hum. If there is one, there may be others, he thought to himself. His heart clenched like a fist at the possibility.

How many there were, and how great of a threat they posed—that remained to be seen.

2

The small, rustic cottage sat at the far end of Main Street, set back from the road down an uneven, rocky driveway. The front yard was home to a dozen pale pink rose plants, which sprouted up out of the earth to wrap their spindly arms around both sides of a violet-painted picket fence. Two large elms stretched like protective giants over the old asphalt roof, and a family of rabbits lived in a cluster of low bushes that blocked out the rain and snow that frequented Vitford, their small town nestled in the Berkshires.

The house had once belonged to a middle-aged man who drank himself to oblivion and cursed the moon.

Now it belonged to his daughter.

Iris Bethel inherited her late father’s home just after her twenty-fifth birthday, the year she'd come to the terrifying realization that, as her brain was now finished developing, who she was then was exactly who she would remain.

The only consolation was that she wasn’t her father.

The house had been a desolate, lonely pit the first time she’d laid eyes on it after his death. Instead of healthy roses, tick-filled weeds had populated the front yard like unwelcome guests, and a mildewy fence had been caved in against the siding.

The door had nearly fallen off its hinges when she’d forced the rusty key inside the lock, and the sight of the filthy living room with beer bottles and dirty clothes littering the floor had been horrifying enough to bring her to tears.

After more than two years of sustained effort, the home’s former neglect was now only a distant memory. Thanks, in large part of course, to Gabriel.

She’d met him a few months after moving into the crumbling house, while still in the midst of picking through mouse-infested cupboards and throwing away years of her father’s accumulated junk. Gabriel, who was six years her senior and as disarmingly charming as the gods, had first approached her at an open mic night. Iris remembered she’d been particularly nervous that evening, since it was the first time she’d signed up to perform an original in her new town. (Then again, she was always nervous when it came to playing one of her own songs. It felt a little like cutting off a tiny piece of her heart and offering it up to the crowd as a ritual sacrifice.)

But as soon as she started talking to Gabriel, who was also relatively new to town and worked at the local bookshop, she’d realized that her fears had been needless.

They’d become fast friends, the kind who fit together as perfectly as a shiny new key in a tailor made lock, and six months and several hundreds of hours helping her fix up the house later, Gabriel had accepted Iris’ offer to move in. Since then, they’d been inseparable.

Their friendship defied traditional boundaries; it wasn’t something that would work for everyone. But for Iris, her connection with Gabriel was one of the few things in her life that had ever truly made sense.

Once she and Gabriel brought the house to the point where it didn’t need constant TLC, they had fallen into a domestic rhythm that Iris had never before had the joy of experiencing. Quiet nights spent by the fire reading, journaling, making fun of stupid TV shows—those were the moments that made her past, lonely and stressful as it was, almost worth it.

The fact that her contentment took place inside the very home where the man who had caused much of her suffering had lived was just an unfortunate coincidence.

That night, a lone barred owl coasted silently over the wilting November roses before landing in the elm tree that loomed over the right side of the house. It blinked imperiously, its eyes focused on the driveway. No one was home.

A breeze ruffled the bird’s feathers. Its head swiveled toward the front stoop as a timed lightbulb ticked on in the outdoor lantern. The owl watched. And waited.

If the owl had any perception of time, it might have realized that at seven o’clock, the fact that neither inhabitant was actively inhabiting the home was an unusual phenomenon. But owls weren’t nearly as clever as many people gave them credit for. Most likely, it noticed nothing.

At last, headlights illuminated the trees at the property’s edge, and a battered Nissan trundled down the driveway, coming to a halt near the front door. A short, thin woman with cropped curly hair the color of coal hopped out of the car, slamming the door behind her. She blew warmth into her hands as she twisted the new silver key in the lock.

Lights flickered on inside the home as she stepped over the threshold. The owl blinked before turning in the opposite direction. It wasn’t a fan of bright lights.

Eleven minutes later, a sleek silver Mercedes rolled to a smooth stop behind the Nissan, and a tall man in a long wool coat and cashmere scarf stepped onto the stones. His shoulder length wavy dark hair framed a strong jawline, and his brown eyes held a shrewd intelligence.