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Chapter 39 — Strangers at the Door
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2025-10-15 07:16:14The 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
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Shadows and First Blood Chapter 43 — The Shape of Letting Go
The yes slipped out of me like a tired breath.Not dramatic. Not fireworks. Just the quiet answer a body gives when the ache of saying no has worn it raw.“Coffee,” I said at the counter, pretending it wasn’t a surrender. “One hour.”Matrix’s smile didn’t gloat. It warmed, low and steady, like a hand around a mug in winter. “One hour,” he agreed, as if he’d already built a life inside the space of those words.We chose the diner two blocks down—the one with cracked red vinyl and a neon sign that blinked OPEN like it was trying to convince itself. The bell over that door was brighter than the shop’s, shriller, and the air smelled like burnt sugar and the memory of bacon. He took the booth facing the door, which I
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
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