Chapter One: Grindstone

For the girls who pull cards in coffee shops and don't know they're prophets yet. For the monsters who learned to be gentle. For the ones who refuse to say the words until they mean them. This one is for you. Every word. Every page. Every door you were too stubborn not to open.

And for my mother, who taught me the cards and never told me why. -Josie

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Chapter One: Grindstone

The coffee machine screamed. Josie slapped the side of it, twice, and it shut up. She wiped steam off her forehead with the back of her wrist.

Six forty-five. Grindstone opened at seven.

Ash Harbor in August was wet heat and the smell of asphalt after rain. She'd been here eleven days. The apartment above the laundromat on Beacher Street still smelled like the previous tenant's incense, something patchouli and wrong. The coffee shop was the first thing that felt like hers.

She'd taken the job because the listing said "morning person wanted" and she was, aggressively, a morning person. She'd left Tucson because Marcus had left her first, and the desert had started to feel like a joke told twice. Her mother, Vangie, had said go somewhere green. Ash Harbor was green. Green and wet and full of buildings older than anything in Arizona.

Josie Vargas. Twenty-seven. Half Mexican, half Greek, all restless. She had dark hair she kept in a knot, brown skin, and a mouth that her abuela once said would talk her into trouble or out of it, depending on the day. Five-four. Work boots. A tarot deck in her apron pocket because her mother had raised her superstitious and she'd never grown out of it.

She was setting out the pastries when he came in.

Seven twelve. First customer of the day, and he came in like he owned the street.

Tall. Not just tall. Built like someone who carried heavy things and got paid for it. Blonde hair, short, pushed back. Green eyes that did this thing, this quick scan, like he was reading the room for exits and threats before he looked at her. He wore a grey button-down with the sleeves rolled to the forearm. Watch on his left wrist. No ring.

"Black coffee. No sugar."

Not a question. A statement. He said it the way people said open the door or pass the salt. Like the universe was already doing it and he was just noting the fact.

"Large?" Josie asked.

He looked at her. Really looked. It lasted two seconds too long.

"Large."

She poured it. He paid cash. Left a twenty on the counter for a four-dollar coffee and walked out without waiting for change.

Josie stared at the twenty. She picked it up, folded it, put it in the tip jar. The bell above the door was still ringing.

Her coworker, Patsy, came out of the back room carrying a tray of muffins. Patsy was fifty-two, had tattoos of birds going up both arms, and had been at Grindstone for nine years. She knew everything about everyone in Ash Harbor.

"That was Harlan Voss," Patsy said, setting the tray down. She said it the way you'd say that was a grizzly bear.

"Who?"

"Voss Development. He owns half of downtown. The other half, he's buying." Patsy squinted at the door like he might still be there. "He comes in every morning. Seven twelve. Never late. Never early. Orders the same thing. Never says please."

"Guy's a tipper, at least."

Patsy laughed. It was a smoker's laugh, dry and warm. "Honey. That's not a tip. That's him not caring about money."

Josie pulled the tarot deck from her apron while Patsy arranged muffins. She didn't do a full spread. Just a single card, quick, thumb flicking the edge. A habit. Like cracking your knuckles, but with more consequences.

The Lovers.

She stared at it. Put it back.

The day went. Harlan Voss didn't come back. But at three, when her shift ended, she walked home and found a black feather on her doorstep. Long. Sleek. Not a pigeon feather. Something bigger. A raven, maybe. Or a crow.

She picked it up. Turned it over. It was warm.

Not from the sun warm. Warm like it had just been held.

She put it on the windowsill above her sink and told herself it was nothing. A bird. Birds had feathers. That was the whole deal with birds.

That night she sat at her kitchen table with her laptop open and her tarot deck spread beside it. She was writing. A horror novel. She'd been writing it for two years and it was sixty pages of a woman walking through a house that kept adding rooms. It wasn't going well. The woman in the story kept opening doors and Josie kept not knowing what was behind them.

She pulled another card. The Devil.

The Lovers in the morning. The Devil at night.

"Great," she said to the empty apartment. "Perfect."

She shut the laptop and went to bed. She dreamed of something with green eyes standing at the foot of her bed. It didn't move. It just watched. She tried to say something, to tell it to leave, but her mouth wouldn't open. In the dream she thought: I can't say what I don't mean.

She woke at five-fifty with her heart pounding and the sound of rain on the window.

Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

*Nice boots.*

She stared at it. Looked down at her work boots by the door. Looked back at the phone.

"Creepy," she said. But she didn't delete it.