Page 7 of Paws & Order

The wind rattles the windows overhead, and I pretend it's someone moving through the apartment.

In this town, you can believe in ghosts.

Or in kind hands unseen, keeping the small disasters from burying you.

For a long time, I teeter on the edge of sleep, legs curled under me, replaying Cassian's laugh and how it lands right in my chest.

The last thing I remember before I drift off is the firm warmth of his hand on my shoulder, steady and certain—even when I'm about to fall.

Someday, I think.

Maybe someday.

Or maybe tomorrow.

Something about this town makes you believe in wild things.

CHAPTER 3

LIZA

Wednesday morning arrives the way Wednesdays do: unremarkably.

Coffee is half off at the library café, which means my free will is already dangerously low before I've even opened my front door.

To my surprise, I find an arrangement behind the deadbolt of my apartment door, as if deposited by a passing ghost.

Tulips, but not the generic grocery-store kind. These are black as midnight and glinting with tiny flecks of gold dust, sleek-stemmed and faintly ominous.

For a second, I assume the usual suspects: the local florist trying out a new dye, or my neighbor Mrs. Penrose, whose life goal is to out-garden the rest of the building by any means necessary.

But there's no card, no sender's mark, and when I lift the vase, the water is infused with a scent I can't place.

Not floral. Not chemical.

Something like pepper and honey and the crisp crackle of fresh-cut paper.

I take them inside.

My apartment is a converted attic over the old bridal boutique, the kind of space with slanting ceilings and a spiral staircase that everyone claims to want until they crack their skull on the fifth morning.

I pour the mysterious water down the sink, rinse the stems, and relocate the bouquet to the kitchen table, where it sits like an art installation daring me to comment.

I tell myself it's probably a leftover from the festival committee. Decorations do tend to migrate home with me after late-night cleanup shifts.

But even as I think it, it feels like a lie.

I shower, dress, and argue with my own hair for twenty minutes before giving up and clipping it back.

At the last second, I lean in and sniff the flowers again, half expecting some kind of prank perfume.

They smell sharp and a little mournful, like velvet and burnt cinnamon.

I ignore the prickle at the back of my neck and carry on.

The walk to City Hall is less than ten minutes, and I use every second to talk myself down from the ledge of paranoia.

Blackthorn Bay is not the kind of town where people stalk you with flowers.