Faylan surfaced slowly, like something pulling her up through thick water.
Awareness came in pieces.
A dull ache along her shoulder. The faint chill of air against her skin. The quiet—too complete, too still to belong to her house.
Her eyes opened.
Wrong ceiling.
That was the first clear thought.
The second hit a heartbeat later.
Right. Of course it is.
Memory followed without mercy.
The alley.
The thing with red eyes.
The word vampire said out loud like it meant something real.
Cassius—
She pushed herself upright too fast, breath catching as her body protested. Her hand went straight to her shoulder, fingers brushing over the bandage.
…huh.
That was not what she expected.
It hurt, yeah—but not like it should. Not sharp. Not raw. More like something already halfway done healing, like her body had skipped a few steps without asking permission.
Faylan peeled her hand away, frowning slightly at the clean gauze.
“That’s… suspicious,” she murmured.
She swung her legs over the edge of the sofa, pausing there for a second as the room settled into focus around her.
Same place.
Same quiet, tucked-away room.
But empty now.
No Cassius.
No presence.
No low, watchful stillness sitting just under everything like it had the night before.
Gone.
Faylan glanced toward the door, then back at the table, then around the space again like he might’ve just… stepped out for a second.
He hadn’t.
Of course he hadn’t.
A small exhale slipped out of her.
“Figures,” she said, softer this time. Not annoyed exactly—just… noting it.
He didn’t feel like the kind of person who stayed.
Her gaze dropped briefly, unfocused, as something else settled in.
Everything felt… clearer.
Edges sharper. Sounds more distinct. Even the quiet wasn’t empty—it had layers now. The faint hum behind the walls. The soft shift of her own movement. The rhythm beneath it all—
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Still there.
Still steady.
Still wrong.
Faylan scrubbed a hand over her face and reached for her phone.
The screen lit up.
And immediately—
Yeah. That tracked.
12 missed calls — Dad
7 missed calls — Rowan
She winced.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
“Okay, that’s… a lot,” she muttered, scrolling.
Rowan (Ro):
Fay, answer me.
Your dad called again.
This isn’t like you.
Where are you?
Why can’t I find you?
Faylan.
She paused there.
That line again.
Why can’t I find you?
Her brows pulled together slightly.
That wasn’t just worry.
That was… specific.
Weirdly specific.
Faylan tapped out of it and checked the next thread.
Dad:
Please come home.
We need to talk.
Faylan.
Answer me.
You’re not safe.
Her jaw tightened.
Not safe.
That word sat heavier now.
Not dramatic.
Not overprotective.
Just… accurate.
Which was deeply inconvenient.
She exhaled slowly and opened the last message thread.
Seina:
Hey.
You okay?
Dad’s spiraling.
Ro too.
You don’t have to come back yet but can you just let me know you’re alive?
Faylan’s shoulders eased a fraction without her meaning them to.
Same situation.
Different tone.
Seina didn’t push.
She just… waited.
Faylan typed quickly this time.
Faylan:
I’m alive.
She stared at it.
Added:
Just needed space.
Sent.
The reply came fast.
Seina:
Okay.
I’ve got you.
Just… something feels weird today. Be careful?
Faylan’s fingers stilled.
Something feels weird.
A quiet, humorless breath left her.
“Yeah,” she murmured. “That’s one way to phrase it.”
Her phone buzzed again—Rowan, no doubt—but she set it down this time instead of checking.
She couldn’t deal with him yet.
Not when his version of concern came with questions she didn’t have answers for.
Not when she didn’t have answers.
Faylan leaned back slightly, staring at the far wall as the night replayed—not scattered now, not blurred, but sharp. Too sharp.
The way the creature moved.
The way Cassius had moved faster.
The way he’d looked at her like he was holding something back with both hands.
The way he hadn’t lied to her.
That part stuck.
Annoyingly.
Because it made everything harder to dismiss.
Faylan pushed to her feet, rolling her shoulder carefully.
Still sore.
Still real.
Just… less than it should be.
Her gaze flicked toward the small sink, catching her reflection in the dull metal.
She stepped closer.
Tilted her head.
Her eyes stared back at her—moss green, same as always.
But not.
There was something threaded through them now.
A faint, silvery brightness beneath the color.
Not glowing.
Not obvious.
But there.
Watching her.
Faylan held her own gaze for a second longer than she meant to.
“…we’re going to talk about that later,” she decided quietly.
Because right now?
No.
Absolutely not.
She grabbed her jacket, slipping it on carefully over the bandage, the fabric settling into place like armor she didn’t quite trust.
Her phone buzzed again.
Ignored.
The room felt too small suddenly.
Not physically.
Just… like it had served its purpose.
Like staying here any longer would mean thinking too much.
Faylan moved to the door and paused, her hand resting lightly on the handle.
For a moment, she just stood there.
Listening.
Feeling.
That strange awareness was still there, humming under her skin—but softer now. Muted, like something had dulled it overnight.
Cassius.
He’d said he could keep her from being noticed.
For now.
Faylan exhaled slowly.
“So that’s a timer,” she murmured.
Great.
No pressure.
She tightened her grip on the handle.
Then pulled the door open—
—and stepped out into a morning that felt just a little too quiet, like the world had shifted and no one had bothered to explain the rules.
The motel walkway was damp with morning fog.
Faylan stepped out and paused long enough for the door to shut behind her with a soft, final click. The air outside was cooler than she expected, carrying that wet, gray Greythorne chill that settled into fabric and hair and stayed there no matter what the forecast said. Somewhere below, a car idled for a few seconds before pulling out of the lot. The rusted ice machine by the office hummed like it had a personal grudge against silence.
For a moment, she just stood there with one hand in her jacket pocket and the other resting carefully against her side, letting the morning hit her properly.
It didn’t feel like morning.
It felt like the afterimage of something.
Like the world had already started the day without her and she was arriving halfway through, late to a conversation everyone else understood.
Her shoulder gave a dull, complaining throb beneath the bandage. Not enough to slow her down. Just enough to remind her that last night had not, in fact, been some kind of beautifully deranged stress hallucination.
Vampires were real.
Cassius was one.
The thing in the alley had tried to tear into her.
And somehow, deeply offensively, her biggest problem this morning was still that she had no actual plan.
Faylan made it halfway to the metal stairs before her phone buzzed again in her pocket.
She almost ignored it.
Almost.
Then she sighed, fished it out, and checked the screen.
Ro: If you’re awake, answer me.
Ro: Please.
Ro: I told your dad I hadn’t seen you.
Ro: That was a lie, by the way, in case you’re ever grading me morally.
Ro: Faylan.
She stared at the messages for a second, then let out a breath that might have been a laugh if it weren’t tangled up in too many other things.
That was so painfully Rowan.
Worried. Guilty. Slightly funny against his own will.
Her thumb hovered over the keyboard.
She could answer him.
She probably should answer him.
Instead, she locked the screen and tucked the phone away again with a muttered, “Later.”
Because if she started with Rowan, she would have to start with everything. The bar. The alley. The blood. Cassius. The fact that her entire life now had categories like higher and lower vampires and bloodline visibility and things that should not exist but apparently do.
And she wasn’t ready for Rowan’s voice yet. Especially not if he sounded hurt.
Especially not if he sounded scared.
Faylan descended the stairs slowly, one hand brushing the railing more for balance than she wanted to admit. The parking lot below looked washed out in the pale daylight, every cracked line in the pavement visible now, every rust stain, every cigarette burn near the curb. Pine Haven had somehow managed to look even sadder in the morning.
A woman in a pink robe stood outside room seven smoking and staring into the fog like it had personally wronged her. A little farther down, a man in work boots scraped frost-thin moisture off his windshield with an old rewards card, moving with the quiet misery of someone who had been awake too long already.
No one looked at Faylan.
She appreciated that.
She crossed the lot and headed for the sidewalk, shoving both hands into her pockets as Greythorne stretched out ahead of her in muted grays and dull greens. The town looked normal in daylight. Not cheerful, exactly—Greythorne would rather die than look cheerful—but normal enough to make last night feel impossible if she didn’t think about the bandage hidden under her jacket.
Unfortunately, she was thinking about it.
And the letter.
And Cassius’s hand on her wrist.
And the way he had said It makes me careful.
Faylan tightened her jaw and kept walking.
No.
She was not doing this.
She was not wandering around town thinking about the mouth of a vampire like some kind of emotional idiot with a death wish.
She had more urgent problems.
Like her mother dying for a protection spell.
Like the fact that her blood apparently “carried.”
Like the word Houses written in her mother’s hand like a threat.
Her pulse stirred faintly under her ribs.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Faylan slowed without realizing it.
There it was again—that strange, measured rhythm that felt less like a heartbeat now and more like a signal. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t even scare her the way it had at first.
It just… pointed.
Her eyes lifted automatically.
Ahead of her, a narrow street curved toward the older part of town where the library, the church archives, and a cluster of antique municipal buildings sat in faded stone rows like a set of bad decisions preserved for historical value.
Faylan stared down that street for a long moment.
A thought arrived so cleanly it felt placed there.
Records.
If her mother had hidden things, then maybe she had also left traces. A name. A date. Something older than Daniel’s fear and Rowan’s half-answers. Something printed, buried, filed away, forgotten by everyone except the people who weren’t supposed to forget.
Liora Vance.
The name pulsed through her memory.
She hadn’t seen it long. Just a glimpse in the attic. A scrap of something old. Enough to stick.
Vance.
Her mother’s name before Hart.
Faylan’s mouth tightened.
That was not nothing.
She was still standing there, half-lost in thought, when her phone buzzed again.
This time she gave in and looked.
Seina: Did you eat anything?
Faylan blinked.
Then, despite herself, smiled a little.
Not where are you.
Not what are you doing.
Just:
Did you eat anything?
Sister language for: I’m worried and pretending not to be dramatic about it.
Faylan typed back immediately.
Faylan: No.
A pause.
Then she added: Don’t start.
The reply came almost insultingly fast.
Seina: Too late.
Seina: Please get food before you decide to investigate your supernatural identity on an empty stomach.
Faylan barked out a startled laugh right there on the sidewalk.
A man walking past with a coffee glanced at her briefly, then kept moving with the practiced indifference of someone who lived in a town full of strange women talking to themselves.
Fair.
Faylan typed back:
Faylan: Rude that you know me so well.
Seina: I try.
Faylan stared at the screen for a second longer than she needed to.
Then typed:
Faylan: I’m okay.
A beat.
Really.
The typing bubble appeared. Vanished. Appeared again.
Then:
Seina: I know you’re lying a little, but okay.
Faylan exhaled through her nose and tucked the phone away.
That one hurt.
Not in a bad way.
Just in the way being known always did when you were actively trying to fall apart privately.
She adjusted her jacket over the bandage, wincing slightly as the fabric pulled. Her body still felt strange. Not sick. Not weak. If anything, too alert. Like the edges of her skin had become better at listening than the rest of her.
As she turned toward the old part of town, a movement across the street caught her eye.
A black car.
Parked where it hadn’t been a second ago—or maybe she just hadn’t noticed it before.
Its windows were tinted dark enough to reflect the street back at her in dull, unreadable panels. No driver visible. No movement inside.
Faylan slowed.
Her pulse answered immediately.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Or maybe anticipation.
She stared at the car for one long second.
Then another.
No door opened.
No one got out.
The fog drifted faintly past the hood.
Faylan narrowed her eyes.
“Cute,” she murmured. “I’m not doing ominous-car nonsense before breakfast.”
She turned and kept walking.
Not faster.
That would feel like prey behavior, and she was having a bad enough week without adding that to the list.
Still, she could feel it.
Not eyes exactly.
Awareness.
Something old and patient moving just at the edge of her day.
Greythorne opened around her in pale morning quiet as she headed toward the library steps and the locked archive building beside it, the town looking almost ordinary if she squinted hard enough.
But ordinary was over.
And whatever came next, she had the increasingly unpleasant feeling that she was walking toward it on purpose.
The library sat at the edge of the square where Greythorne’s older buildings began to gather together like conspirators—dark stone, narrow windows, carved lintels blackened by age and weather. In daylight, the place looked respectable in the way old towns liked to look respectable: polished brass plaque by the door, trimmed hedges, flower boxes trying valiantly to make history seem friendly.
It wasn’t working.
Faylan climbed the front steps two at a time, pushing through the heavy wooden doors and into the familiar quiet of the reading hall. Warm air met her first, then the layered smell of paper, dust, old varnish, and whatever tea the librarian always seemed to be drinking somewhere unseen. The hush inside wasn’t silent exactly—pages turning, a cart wheel squeaking faintly across tile, someone coughing softly three aisles over—but compared to the street it felt close enough.
Safe wasn’t the right word.
Still, it was easier to think here.
Or at least it used to be.
Faylan paused just inside the entrance, shrugging out of the worst of the morning chill and trying to look like a person who had not recently learned she belonged to some ancient bloodline designed to ruin her schedule. Her shoulder throbbed dully under the bandage, a quiet reminder beneath the motion of her thoughts. She adjusted her jacket carefully and headed straight toward the circulation desk.
Mrs. Alvarez looked up from behind a stack of returned books with the kind of expression reserved for people who spent too much time in libraries on purpose. She wore silver-framed glasses low on her nose and a dark green cardigan buttoned all the way to the throat, her gray hair pinned back in a twist that never seemed to move.
“Faylan,” she said. “You look tired.”
Faylan gave her a warm smile. “That is because I’m thriving.”
Mrs. Alvarez looked unimpressed. “Mm.”
Faylan leaned one elbow lightly on the desk. “I need access to local records.”
That got a slight pause.
“Specific records?”
“Depends how nosy we’re willing to be.”
Mrs. Alvarez folded her hands. “Officially?”
“Very academic. Very respectable. Extremely boring.”
“And unofficially?”
Faylan hesitated for half a second, then sighed. “I’m looking for anything on the 1974 fire. Newspaper clippings, obituaries, police reports, town records. Old photos if those exist.” She paused. “And anything under the name Vance.”
That last word landed differently.
Mrs. Alvarez’s brows moved almost imperceptibly behind her glasses. Not surprise, exactly. More like recognition she regretted having shown.
Faylan caught it immediately.
Of course she did.
That new, terrible awareness under her skin seemed determined to make her life harder in every possible setting.
“Okay,” Faylan said slowly. “That was a face.”
Mrs. Alvarez’s mouth flattened. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You do,” Faylan said. “Because that was very much a face.”
Mrs. Alvarez regarded her in silence for a moment, then glanced past her toward the reading room, as if checking who might overhear. Her voice dropped when she spoke again.
“The archive room is open for public access during research hours only.”
“That sounds promising.”
“It sounds like policy.”
Faylan smiled without much humor. “Mrs. Alvarez.”
The older woman held her gaze.
Then, with a quiet sigh that suggested she’d already decided against her better judgment, she reached beneath the desk and drew out a ring of labeled brass keys.
“Thirty minutes,” she said.
Faylan blinked. “Really?”
“Do not make me regret being sentimental about your mother.”
That hit hard enough to make her chest tighten.
She swallowed. “You knew her.”
Mrs. Alvarez’s eyes softened for the briefest second. “Everyone knew Elara.” Then the softness vanished, replaced by something practical and severe. “Thirty minutes, Faylan.”
Faylan took the key she was handed.
“Right. Yes. Respectful. Fast. Minimal emotional collapse.”
“Try for quiet emotional collapse,” Mrs. Alvarez said dryly. “This is still a library.”
Faylan almost laughed.
Almost.
She headed toward the archive room at the back of the building, pulse ticking softly beneath her ribs in that same measured rhythm that had become less frightening and somehow more invasive with every hour.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The archive room door was narrow and older than the rest, paint faded around the frame from years of hands and weather and use. Faylan unlocked it, slipped inside, and shut it behind her.
The room smelled like time and neglect.
Metal shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, packed with document boxes, ledgers, bound newspapers, and photo albums protected in plastic sleeves. A single dusty window near the back let in a pale slice of daylight, not nearly enough to brighten the corners. Someone had left a banker’s lamp on a center table, its green shade casting a low pool of amber over the wood surface.
Faylan stood still for a second.
This was what she needed.
Something old. Something concrete. Something that couldn’t smile at her mysteriously or bleed wrong or say Houses like it was a sentence she should already understand.
Records didn’t flirt.
Records didn’t dodge.
Records just sat there and waited to be found.
“Finally,” she muttered.
She set her phone and jacket on the table, careful of her shoulder, and started with the newspaper stacks.
Greythorne Gazette, 1974.
The bindings were stiffer than the newer volumes, the paper inside yellowed and thin enough that she had to turn each page gently. Headlines slipped past beneath her fingers—town meetings, harbor repairs, school fundraisers, weather warnings, the ordinary bones of a year no one expected to become history.
October.
Her pulse gave one hard, uneven kick when she found the date.
The front page headline wasn’t dramatic. It almost made her angrier that way.
FIRE DAMAGES HISTORIC BOARDING HOUSE ON EAST RIDGE ROAD
THREE DEAD, CAUSE UNDER INVESTIGATION
Faylan stared at it.
Three dead.
She leaned closer.
The article was short. Too short. Dry and clipped in that old-journalism way that managed to sound official and suspicious at the same time. It mentioned a late-night fire, structural collapse, damage spreading to nearby outbuildings, a response delayed by heavy fog. Witness names were omitted. Cause pending. Funeral arrangements private.
No names in the opening paragraph.
Faylan’s jaw tightened.
“Of course,” she murmured. “Because why would anything be simple?”
She scanned lower, fingers flattening the page.
There.
At the bottom of the column.
The victims were listed in smaller print.
Her eyes caught on the second name first.
Liora Vance, 23
Everything in her body went still.
Not just surprise.
Recognition.
Not because she knew the woman. She didn’t. She shouldn’t.
But the name hit her like something she had almost remembered before.
The pulse beneath her ribs sharpened.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Faylan lowered herself slowly into the chair at the archive table, the paper rustling beneath her hand. Liora Vance. Twenty-three. Dead in the fire.
Vance.
Same name as her mother.
The room felt smaller all at once.
She flipped through the next few issues, scanning feverishly for anything else. Follow-up reports. Funeral notices. Public statements. But the trail went cold almost immediately. One mention of memorial flowers left outside the church. One vague reference to “a tragic local loss.” After that, the paper moved on like Greythorne always seemed to—covering over its wounds with civic updates and bake sales and council repairs until no one could tell where the scar started.
Faylan sat back, frustrated enough to feel it in her teeth.
“Three dead,” she said softly to the empty archive. “One of them a Vance. No details. No photos. No nothing.”
Her gaze shifted to the shelves of photo records.
Right.
If the paper wouldn’t talk, maybe the town had preserved what it didn’t print.
She stood and crossed to the far wall, fingers running along faded labels until she found what she wanted: Historical Events / Community Archives / 1970–1979.
The box was heavier than it looked.
She carried it back to the table, set it down carefully, and opened it.
Inside were folders, contact sheets, brittle programs, handwritten notes clipped to photographs. Town parade. Harbor reopening. Church fundraiser. Fire damage—there.
Faylan pulled the folder free, pulse rising now not in that strange steady beat but in plain old-fashioned nerves.
The first few photos showed the building after the blaze. Charred beams. Collapsed roofline. Firemen standing in wet coats among smoke-dark rubble. The grainy black-and-white made everything look even more ghostly than it probably had been.
Then she found the picture.
A memorial board outside the church, crowded with flowers and candles.
Three photographs pinned at the center.
Faylan’s breath caught.
The image quality was poor. Old. Faded. But one of the faces was still clear enough.
A young woman with dark hair.
Soft, serious mouth.
Eyes—
Faylan leaned closer.
Moss green, though the photo itself was black-and-white. She knew it anyway. Some things carried through even without color. The shape of them. The light in them.
The woman looked enough like her that the room tilted.
Not identical.
Not in some dramatic reincarnation way.
But enough.
Enough that if someone had called them sisters, no one would have laughed.
Faylan sat very still, fingertips pressed to the edge of the photo.
“Liora,” she whispered.
The air in the archive room changed.
Tiny. Subtle. But there.
The lamp beside her flickered once.
Not enough to go out.
Just enough to notice.
Faylan looked up sharply.
Silence.
Dust in the light.
Paper and age and old shelves standing exactly where they had stood five seconds ago.
Nothing.
Her gaze dropped again to the photograph.
Her pulse answered in that strange measured way, deeper now, like something old in her blood recognized what her mind was still trying to piece together.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
A shadow moved across the thin window glass behind her.
Faylan turned so fast the chair legs scraped sharply across the floor.
The small square of window only showed pale daylight and the blurred shape of tree branches shifting outside.
No face.
No figure.
No reason for the fine cold crawling over her arms.
She stood, every sense suddenly taut.
The room felt watched.
Not by the library.
Not by memory.
By something very much alive.
Her phone buzzed on the table hard enough to make her jump.
Faylan snatched it up instantly.
A text.
Unknown number.
No name.
No greeting.
Just four words on the screen.
Leave the archive. Now.