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"They have to be looking for him, right? This is a boring town. Why else would they stay?" Like Lain, I kept my eyes on the men. They'd stopped just outside the door to the bookstore and were talking. The youngest of the three seemed oddly upset, a frown marring his features. Whatever argument he was making, he was obviously getting steamrolled by the other two.

"You might be surprised," Lain muttered, but just shook his head when I tilted my head in confusion. "It's nothing. But yeah, they're probably looking for Typhon. I have no idea who they are, but they're giving me soldier vibes."

I could easily see the third man in a war meeting, ruthlessly giving out orders to the other two.

"What should we do? I feel like we can't just ignore them and hope they go away."

"I definitely don't think they're going to go away until they find what they're looking for. Give me a second." He darted over to his table and grabbed his phone, but instead of a text like last time, he pulled up his contacts and called someone. They must have answered on the first ring, unlike me, who stared at the screen in horror any time someone called and just waited for it to go to voicemail.

"Hey, Ori."

I glanced over at Lain again. I knew he was friends with the owner of Esoteric Oddities, the metaphysical shop at the other end of the strip from us, and he'd texted Ori last time, but I didn't quite understand how they could help.

"Yeah, they're back in town. They're about to head into Alex's store. Want me to head over?" He paused for a moment, then nodded, even though Ori couldn't see him. "Okay, I'll keep an eye out. See you later."

He hung up, but stayed unusually quiet, tracking the three men as they wrapped up whatever argument they were having and headed inside.

"What did they say?" I prompted after a few seconds. Anxiety crawled beneath my skin, and I suddenly needed to see Typhon and know he was okay. I grabbed for my phone to check the security cameras, only to remember that I'd never turned them back on in the back.

"Ori is going to send someone over to the bookstore to check on Alex."

"Do they have any idea who these guys are?"

"If so, they didn't tell me." Lain sounded as frustrated as I felt.

The anxiety clawed at me, transforming into a strange, reckless idiocy the longer I watched the bookstore. Those men were a danger to Typhon. I needed to know what they were doing.

"I'll be right back," I blurted and was out the door before Lain could recover enough to stop me, hurrying across the street to the bookstore.

This is insane.

You're going to get yourself killed.

If these are actually soldiers, you're going to get disappeared.

Why are you so stupid?

For once, the voice of doubt was easy to push down, buried beneath my worry for Typhon. I knew if I let myself think about this, even for a second, I'd turn around, so I just focused on my destination and blocked out everything else.

The bell over the door to A Likely Story tinkled gently when I entered, but no one was at the front of the shop to hear it. I could make out voices toward the back, though, and crept toward them, hiding along the tall bookshelves to the right of the shop.

A Likely Story was split in two by a wall of open shelves. They were filled with plants, knickknacks, and a few random books, visible from both sides. The front half of the space was the main bookstore, with tall shelves of books, while the back was dedicated to reading those books. Armchairs and couches were scattered around beneath the skylights and next to the windows, providing cozy nooks to read in.

When I'd been younger, before my life imploded, I'd spent hours in the back half of the store, curled up by the window with an endless stack of books. Back then, Alex's aunt, Lizzie Rowencourt, had owned the place. It'd passed to him when she died seven or eight years ago and he hadn't changed anything. Lizzie had been a staple of the town for as long as I could remember, and she'd told me once that she and her sister had been born here.

I couldn't get any closer to the back without exposing myself, thanks to the open shelving, so I pressed against the tall bookshelf behind me. I hadn't thought to grab my phone, and I regretted it the moment I tuned into the conversation.

The two men, Garth and David, if I recall correctly, had been mostly friendly to me. It'd been an obvious façade, but they'd at least attempted to fake civility.

That wasn't the case here. A voice I didn't recognize, probably the third man, was speaking to Alex, his voice a rough, aggressive whisper. I hated how familiar that tone was.

"Look, Copeland, we're not stupid," he snapped. "We know what you can do and what you have done. You really expect me to believe you had nothing to do with any of this?"

"I don't really care what you believe. It won't change the fact that I have no idea what you're talking about."

I didn't know Alex well, but what I knew of him suggested he liked confrontation about as much as I did, so hearing him stand up for himself like this was a welcome surprise. I guess dating a cop was rubbing off on him.

"So that boyfriend of yours just happened to get mysteriously injured right around the same time that all of this started happening?" The same man kept pushing, and the way he sneered the word 'boyfriend' made my skin crawl. Great. Not only was this guy an asshole, but a homophobic one, too.