The Huntsman in My Kitchen

The door shut, not quite a slam, but close enough that I was left blinking at the painted wood, wondering, not for the first time, why the two sweetest people I'd met in this town kept acting like they were sitting on a state secret.

I shrugged it off. Or tried to. When I turned from the shop, the street that had been full of chatter and clinking bells twenty minutes ago now sat completely empty, every shop dark, every curtain drawn, light spilling out from behind glass like the whole town had simultaneously decided to go into hiding.

The moonlight, when I found a gap in the buildings to see it, hung heavy and pale over the rooftops, beautiful in the way a held breath is beautiful. Nothing else moved. No cars, no voices, not even the stray cat that usually stalked the bakery bins. My boots against the pavement were the only sound in the entire town, and I picked up my pace without deciding to.

A twig snapped again, closer this time, and I spun the flashlight toward it fast enough to give myself whiplash.

There, maybe fifteen feet off, stood something that was very much not a rat. Or a squirrel. Unless squirrels had recently unionized and started working out.

It was a wolf. A big one. The kind of big that made the word "wolf" feel insufficient, like calling the ocean "a puddle." Its eyes caught the flashlight and threw it back gold, and for a solid three seconds neither of us moved.

"Okay," I said, because apparently that's what my voice does under mortal peril: it negotiates. "You stay there, I'll go this way, and we never speak of this again. Deal?"

The wolf did not move.

"Great. Love that for us." I started backing away, slow, one boot behind the other, still talking because silence felt worse. "You and I have an agreement now. Very mature of both..."

It took a step forward.

"Nope. Agreement canceled." I turned and ran.

I want to be clear that I am not, as a rule, a runner. But something about being maybe two hundred pounds lighter than the apex predator behind me turned out to be excellent motivation, and I made it out of that treeline faster than I've made it anywhere in my life. I didn't look back. I didn't hear paws behind me either, which I chose to interpret as a good sign and not think about further.

My cottage came into view, porch light glowing, and it wasn't until I was halfway up the path that the detail actually registered.

The porch light was on.

I hadn't left the porch light on. I never left the porch light on, mostly because I was always complaining to past-me about the electric bill, and past-me had apparently, finally, listened.

Which meant someone else had turned it on.

"Great," I muttered, slowing to a stop at my own front door like an idiot who'd apparently decided almost getting eaten was the low point of the evening. The door was unlocked. Also not something I did. Was I secretly trying to get murdered tonight? Was this a subconscious cry for help? I made a mental note to unpack that with a therapist I did not have and pushed the door open.

There was a man sitting at my kitchen table. At my laptop. Scrolling through what was, unmistakably, the book I had finished exactly six hours ago.

For a second, the sheer audacity of finding a stranger casually using my laptop distracted me from the fact that he looked like he'd walked straight out of one of the fantasy novels on my bookshelf. He was tall, or at least he looked tall even sitting down, with broad shoulders beneath a dark, weather-beaten coat. Long brown hair fell past his shoulders in thick, unruly waves, curling around a face that was all sharp cheekbones, strong brows, and a jaw roughened with dark stubble. His skin was tanned in the way that suggested he spent more time outdoors than in, and when his eyes finally lifted toward me, they were a warm hazel that caught strangely gold in the kitchen light. He was unfairly handsome, which felt like an especially rude quality for a man currently committing a home invasion.

Then I noticed the sword.

An actual sword was strapped across his back, its worn leather hilt rising over one shoulder. The scabbard was battered and scratched, and there was nothing decorative about it. It looked used. Frequently.

"Took you long enough to get home," he said, not looking up again. Then, with considerably more feeling, "Also, lock the fucking door."

I opened my mouth to respond to literally any part of that sentence and instead looked past him, out the window behind the table, where something large and gold-eyed was sitting very calmly in my garden, watching us through the glass.

"Get out of my cottage!"

"Sorry, can't." He pointed at the wolf outside my window.

"Is that your wolf?"

"No."

"Then why is it staring at you?"

"Because it wants to kill me."

I thought about this for a second, then said, "Oh, that's good news! I thought it wanted to kill me."

He finally looked up from my laptop.

"I'm glad my impending death has taken some weight off your shoulders."

"It has, actually. Thank you."

"Happy to help."

"Now get out."

He stared at me.

I pointed toward the door.

"Absolutely not."

"I was sorry to hear about your grandmother."

I stopped. "You knew my grandma?"

"Everyone knew your grandmother."

"That's a weird thing to say."

"She was the Keeper."

"Of what?"

His eyes flicked toward the window.

"The boundary."

I stared at him.

"I'm sorry, the what?"

"Your grandmother kept the wolves out of town for almost forty years."

I laughed.

He didn't.

My laugh died.

"Okay. Well. Hate to ruin whatever incredibly weird story you're telling, but my grandmother was seventy-eight and had arthritis. She wasn't keeping anything out of anywhere."

"Not toward the end."

Something about the way he said it made my stomach tighten.

"She died in her sleep."

Silence.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"That wasn't a nothing face."

"You really don't know."

"Know what?"

He looked genuinely uncomfortable for the first time since I'd walked in.

"Your grandmother was killed by werewolves."

I stared at him.

Then I looked at the wolf outside.

Then back at him.

"No, she wasn't."

"I'm afraid she was."

"She died in her sleep."

Another silence.

"Oh."

"Oh what?"

"That's what they told you."