The Last Chance

Kelsey’s POV

She ran through moonlit woods, her bare feet tearing across damp earth. Ahead, a woman who looked exactly like her, same messy dark hair, same determined eyes reached out, desperate. “Silas!” the woman screamed. “Don’t…”

A monstrous howl shattered the night. Claws. Blood. Pain.

Kelsey bolted upright in bed, heart hammering against her ribs. Her alarm shrieked on the nightstand like a warning siren. She slapped it silent, breathing hard, sweat cooling on her skin.

Just another dream. The same damn dream she’d been having for weeks.

She rubbed her face and glanced at the clock: 7:45 a.m. Late again. Swearing under her breath, she threw on jeans, a worn jacket, and her most comfortable boots — her unofficial reporter uniform. Ten minutes later she was out the door of her tiny apartment, coffee forgotten in her rush.

The People’s Gazette office smelled like stale coffee and broken dreams. She remembered moving to Romania three years ago with a journalism degree, $40,000 in debt, and a fire in her gut that her professors had called "reckless ambition" and her mother had called "a phase."

But now she was beginning to realize that just maybe it was truly a reckless ambition because for one, she was still in debt, her rent was due, and her love life was pretty much nonexistent at this point. Oh let’s not forget her mother had also left three voicemails last week, each one a variation on the same theme: When are you going to get serious about your life?

She didn't check the voicemails. She knew the script by heart.

Her thinking was cut short by the loud voice of her coworker Tomàs arguing with someone on the phone about ad space. And in the corner, occupying the desk nearest the window, the one with the working computer and the view of the mountains sat… Derek Smith.

Derek looked up when she entered, and his smile was a knife wrapped in charm.

"Kelsey! Early as always. You know, most people would take the 'end of the week' deadline as a suggestion to sleep in."

Kelsey didn't break stride. "Most people don't have your gift for turning nothing into something, Derek. Must be nice, having a trust fund to back your Pulitzer dreams."

Derek's smile didn't waver. He was handsome in a way that made her want to check his teeth for maybe some food remnants, blue-eyed, the kind of all-American features that played well in the expat community. He'd been at the Gazette for eight months, and in that time he'd written three features that had been picked up by regional outlets. His desk was covered in printouts of his own bylines. He kept them in a neat stack, like a resume he was constantly updating.

"I heard about your meeting with the boss today," Derek said, leaning back in his chair. "Tough break. But hey, maybe the upcoming Festival will save you. 'Local Woman Smells Alliums for Science' I can see the headline now."

"And I can see yours," Kelsey said, dropping her bag at her own desk. "'Trust Fund Baby Discovers Romania Has Poor People. Film at Eleven.'"

Marisol, another of her colleague snorted, quickly covering it up with a cough. Derek's smile tightened at the corners, but he recovered fast. He always did.

"Just trying to help, Kels. We're all on the same team here."

"We're not on the same team, Derek. We're in the same lifeboat, and you're the guy throwing deck chairs overboard to make room for your ego."

She sat down, pulled out her notebook, and opened it to a fresh page. The top of the page had a two words, written three weeks ago and underlined twice: NEW STORY.

Below it, nothing. A blank page that had become a reproach.

She'd had leads. A local who claimed the Carpathian woods were "wrong" and that compasses spun, that time moved differently, that people who went in deep didn't come back the same. A tourist who'd sworn she'd seen a "monster" near the tree line, only to recant the next day and fly home early. A historian in Brașov who'd rambled about "hidden kingdoms" and "blood debts" before his department chair had cut the interview short.

Kelsey had followed each one. She'd hiked into the woods twice, gotten lost once, found nothing but mist and the distant howling of feral dogs. She'd called the tourist three times, no answer. She had tried to reach the historian again and been told he'd taken a "sabbatical" and couldn't be contacted.

Dead ends. All of them.

And now, the ultimatum.

"Kelsey." Tomás had hung up the phone and was looking at her with the expression of a man about to deliver bad news. "He wants to see you."

"Now?"

"Now."

She stood, straightened her jacket, and walked to the door at the back of the room. It had a frosted glass panel with the words Editor-in-Chief painted in peeling gold letters. She'd walked through that door a hundred times. Today, it felt like the entrance to an execution chamber.

She knocked twice.

"Enter."

Harold Crane looked like what would happen if a bulldog learned to wear tweed. He was sixty-three, had been running the Gazette for thirty years, and had the kind of face that suggested he'd seen the decline of print journalism as a personal affront. His desk was a fortress of paper—stacks of old issues, unread manuscripts, coffee cups in various states of fossilization.

He didn't look up when she entered. He was reading something on his laptop, his reading glasses sliding down his nose.

"Sit."

Kelsey sat. The chair was wooden, uncomfortable, and positioned so that the morning light from the window hit her directly in the eyes. She'd long suspected this was intentional.

Crane finished reading, removed his glasses, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You know what our circulation numbers look like this quarter?"

"I can guess."

"Down twelve percent. Down. Twelve. Percent." He enunciated each word like a separate sentence. "The Gazette has been the voice of this town since 1952. My grandfather started this paper. My father kept it alive through the revolution. And I am not going to be the one who lets it die because we can't produce content that people want to read."

"I've been working on—"

"On what? Festivals? Town council minutes?" Crane leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. "Kelsey, you're a good reporter. You're dogged, you're thorough, and you have instincts that I would kill for in a journalist twice your age. But instincts don't pay the bills. Stories do. Good stories. The kind that get shared, that get picked up, that bring eyes to our website and advertisers to our pages."

"I have leads. The woods, the historian…”

"Leads that go nowhere. You've been chasing ghosts for three months." Crane’s voice softened, which was somehow worse than his shouting. "I'm not blind. I know you came here with big dreams. I know you think Valemont is just a stepping stone. But stones don't step themselves. You either find something to push off from, or you sink."

He slid a folder across the desk. Kelsey opened it. Inside was a single sheet of paper: a formal letter of recommendation, already signed, with her name at the top and a blank space for the date.

"That's your parachute," Crane said. "If you need it. But I'd rather you didn't use it. I'd rather you give me something I can print. Something with teeth." He held up a hand, ticking off fingers. "Mystery. Danger. The supernatural, if you can verify it. I don't care if it's a cult, a conspiracy, or a very committed LARPing group. I care that it's real and that it's yours and that people want to read it."

"By when?"

"Friday." Vance's eyes were steady. "End of the week. You bring me a story, Kelsey. A real one. Or you pack your bags and find a paper that has the luxury of patience."

Kelsey looked at the letter. She looked at Crane. She thought of the her debt, her mother’s pressure, basically everything going on in her life at the moment.

"I'll get you a story," she said.

"Good." Crane picked up his glasses, already dismissing her. "Get out of my office."

The door clicked shut behind her.

Derek was waiting. Of course he was waiting. He'd positioned himself by the water dispenser, which gave him a clear sightline to Crane’s door, and he was holding a paper cup he didn't drink from.

"So?" he asked, eyebrows raised in mock concern. "Survival of the fittest?"

Kelsey walked past him, grabbed her bag, and kept walking.

"Hey, I'm talking to you!"

She stopped at the door, turned. The newsroom had gone quiet—Marisol's fingers frozen over her keyboard, Tomás holding the phone an inch from his ear.

"Enjoy the window, Derek," Kelsey said. "The view's about to get a lot lonelier."

She pushed through the door and stepped into the morning.