Page 8 of Before the Bond
Stella scanned her memory. “Aside from Dereknotgetting a bullseye in darts, no.”
“Hey!” a person who was most probably “Derek” yelled at the back, offended.
“Something bothering you, honey?” she asked me.
I told her what I told everyone else. Unlike the others, however, she didn’t immediately brush it off.
“Interesting,” she said, cleaning a spare glass. “I heard nothing about it. But you let me know if something like that happens again. People here are harmless but…”
She paused. Then she shrugged. “Better to be careful, right?”
“I’m not worried about myself. I’m more worried about the man.”
Stella shook her head. “Well, I’ll let you know if anything comes across my radar.”
“Thanks.” The word came out flatter than I meant it to.
Stella seemed to clock this. She watched me with an expression I couldn't quite read — amused, maybe, or something adjacent to it — and then shifted.
She gestured vaguely in the direction of the window. "If you're going to be here for a few weeks, you should know the landscape.”
I turned to where she was looking. The fog and dusk created a dark silhouette of the mountain range.
“Most of the mountain on the north side is privately owned,” Stella remarked. “That’d be the Ashwoods.”
“Ashwoods?”
“Old money, private, basically never seen in town." She paused. "Three of them, from what I hear. Brothers around the same age, minus the youngest. He’s apparently sick. Rarely leaves the estate."
“The Ashwoods don’t come down for nobody,” another barfly said. “Tells ya, place is haunted.”
“Or cursed.” Yet another remarked.
Stella ignored them. “Even if they weren’t, I’d be careful going up the mountains. They probably keep to themselves for a reason.”
I wished I could tell Stella I wanted no business with the mountains ever. But that would mean explaining everything else, and that was something I simply couldn't do.
We talked for another twenty minutes. By the time I stood to leave, Stella had already saved her number in my phone under "your only friend in this town" and told me “The Tap” had a proper trivia night on Thursdays. She expected to see me there. I told her I'd think about it. She told me that wasn't how it worked.
I was still smiling when I stepped back out onto the sidewalk.
It was evening once I got out. I stood there for a moment and looked at the place where the mountain rose up behind the buildings.
Now that my mind was quieting again, I remembered why I didn’t want this assignment to begin with.
It wasn’t that it was new. No, that was never the case.
It wasn’t new enough.
Greyhollow looked familiar. Not this town specifically, but the landscape of it. The density of the old growth. The way the fog held at a certain height.
For a brief moment, I heard screaming. I heard running. I saw a flash of red.
I pressed my jacket closer to me. I shook the image out of my head.
I needed to remind myself that I wouldn’t be here long. I was good at that. I had been good at it for seven years.
My phone rang, startling me out of whatever I'd been about to think. My agency coordinator, Daisy, was on the other end.
