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Chapter 34 — Ghosts Don’t Knock
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2025-10-10 10:48:02The bell over the bookstore door rang like it was announcing mercy. Morning light filtered through warped glass, catching dust motes that drifted like secrets no one bothered to keep. O’Rourke & Finch smelled of tea, paper, and the kind of safety I didn’t trust but wanted anyway.Moira had me shelving in the back while Finn argued with the register. He swore it sang in three keys, and today it had chosen to croak in D minor. I smirked as he coaxed it with a screwdriver and a muttered prayer. “You treat machines like people,” I said. Finn grinned without looking up. “And I treat people like machines. The trick is knowing which one won’t bite you back.” From beside me, Travis leaned lazily against a shelf, smoke curling in phantom loops. “Bet he’d bite if you asked nice.” I ignored him, stacking a row of battered thrillers. Talking back made it worse, made it real. But I still caught myself pressing my lips together to keep from answeri
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Shadows and First Blood Chapter 42 — Ghosts and Gravities
Months bled together the way nights do when you stop counting them.Winter folded into spring, and the city kept turning without asking permission. The hunters had gone quiet—too quiet—and the silence itself started to feel like a trap, one I couldn’t see the teeth of yet.Sammi and Jay had become a unit. At first it was a joke—her shoes turning up under his couch, his coffee mugs crowding her sink—but before I realized it, she’d moved across town. Now, their laughter lived in a space that wasn’t mine. And when I came home, the apartment echoed with too much air.Travis lingered, but he was thinning. His jokes came late, sometimes garbled, like radio static. When I looked for him in the mirror, sometimes I found only myself staring back.
Shadows and First Blood Chapter 41 — The Man Who Knew My Name
Morning cracked open like a bad lock—one hard twist and the city spilled through. O’Rourke & Finch breathed in the cold and sighed it out as dust. Mrs. Finch had left a note in tidy, unsentimental script: Errands. Back after four. Don’t let the travel guides unionize. —F.Mr. O’Rourke’s scrawl below it: Try to keep Poetry from feuding with Philosophy.So it was just me and Crown—the black cat who treated the front table like a throne and every customer like a subject on probation. The shop was louder when I was alone, the way empty houses groan to remind you you’re only renting them from time. Shelves ticked, a far bulb hummed, and somewhere in the back a stack of paperbacks shifted two inches to the left as if making room
Shadows and First Blood Chapter 40 — Ashes in the Jokes
The door to the apartment groaned like it was sick of me slamming it, but I couldn’t help it. My head was still buzzing from the bell above O’Rourke & Finch and the stranger’s steady smile.Sammi was on the couch, half-sprawled, legs dangling off one armrest, brush in hand, phone glowing in the other. She tossed both aside the moment she saw me. Jay sat on the floor in front of the coffee table, knees bent, elbows resting, something small and metal glinting in his hands. He was turning it over and over, quiet.“You look like someone spit in your blood bag,” Sammi said, raising an eyebrow.“More like someone spit in my face,” I muttered, shrugging off my jacket. I wanted to throw it at the coat hook but didn’t trust my aim. My pulse was still racing, my palms raw from cl
Shadows and First Blood Chapter 39 — Strangers at the Door
The bell over O’Rourke & Finch rang sharp, slicing through the lazy quiet of midafternoon. I didn’t look up right away—I was too busy trying to tame a stack of poetry collections that kept reorganizing themselves when I turned my back.“Stay,” I muttered at the books, like they were dogs that could learn obedience.The bell jingled again, softer this time. Someone had actually come inside. I straightened, half-expecting Mrs. Finch’s scowl or another lost tourist looking for a bathroom.It wasn’t either.It was him.The guy from the bar—the one who’d danced beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. Same broad shoulders, sam
Shadows and First Blood Chapter 38 — Haunting & Hunger
Sammi drove like the city owed her the road. Dawn cut the sky into pale ribs, the streets thin and empty while the rest of the world pressed snooze. We slipped through the hospital’s back corridors the way we always did—hoods up, footsteps soft, pockets rehearsed.“No incidents,” Sammi whispered, like saying it out loud might jinx the calm.“No witnesses,” I answered.We moved smooth. The worker entrance clicked, the hallway lights hummed tired and yellow, a vending machine rattled like a cough. We knew the shifts, the blind corners, which cameras were dummies and which blinked for real. The storage room at the end of Radiology was our mark. Sammi palmed the latch and I slid inside, the cold hitting my face like a wet hand.The cooler door lif
Shadows and First Blood Chapter 37 — Smoke, Songs, and Strangers
I woke tangled in the blanket, warm in a way I hadn’t been in months. For a second, I swore I felt the weight of arms around me, the press of a chest at my back. But when I opened my eyes, there was nothing—just the dip in the mattress and the faint smell of smoke that shouldn’t have been there.Dream. Hallucination. Or worse. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want the answer.I shook it off and went to work.O’Rourke & Finch felt different that day. Softer. The shelves hummed under my hands, the air thick with old paper and stranger things. At one point, I thought I saw a stack of hardcovers float a few inches and slide themselves ito place. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, and they were already snug on the shelf like they’d been there forever.&l
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