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Because I’ve spent years making sure nobody needs anything from me that I can’t safely give.

Because my brother once trusted me to stay beside him, and I disappeared.

I say none of that.

“Waste of time.”

Nora studies me for a moment, and I brace myself for another question.

She doesn’t ask one. Instead, she shrugs one shoulder and fixes her gaze through the windshield. “Okay.”

I frown. “Okay?”

“You said not to make plans involving you, so I won’t.”

That should be a relief. It isn’t.

Nora hops out of the truck as I park outside my cottage. I follow her with the fern and her groceries because apparently my body has forgotten that I shouldn’t be encouraging Nora Moon.

She crosses to her cottage and climbs the porch steps, holding the door open for me. “You can put them inside.”

I follow her as far as the threshold. “No.”

Her eyebrows lift. “I don’t bite.”

The wolf reacts to the word.

I ignore him.

“Hewit, I’m not asking you to move in. I’m asking you to put a fern in my living room.”

“I’ll leave it here.”

She watches me set the groceries and plant carefully beside the door, no longer teasing. “Okay. Thank you.”

I straighten, nod once, and walk to my cottage. At my door, I look back.

Nora is still on the porch. She raises a hand.

I don’t wave. But I stand there until she goes inside.

Chapter 8

Nora

By the end of my second week in Screaming Woods, I’ve learned that the town has two speeds.

The first is ordinary, same as any other small town.

People go to work, children complain about school, delivery vans block half of Nightjar Row while shopkeepers lean out of their doors and shout instructions. Someone at Lucky Bean forgets to restock lids, and Melinda reacts as if civilization itself has failed.

The second is Screaming Woods ordinary.

That includes a woman levitating three grocery bags because she forgot to bring a cart, a gargoyle sunning himself on the roof of the pharmacy, and a handwritten notice outside Conjure and Crumb warning customers that the Doom Donuts are “mildly prophetic until Wednesday.”

Apparently, the trick is not to ask too many questions. I’m getting better at that.

The wolf book Alice gave me is sitting on my kitchen table. I’ve read the first ten chapters, telling myself it’s because the information is genuinely interesting and not because my neighbor happens to turn into a wolf. A very large white wolf, if the town gossip I’ve carefully avoided encouraging is accurate.