Page 14 of Where The Devil Kneels

The footsteps stop suddenly. It feels like the whole house is waiting with me. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a shadow in the library doorway—just long enough to notice someone’s size before it disappears. Whoever it is wanted me to see them, but not to know who they are.

I throw my hands up. “Seriously?! That’s all I get?” My voice cracks, going all squeaky at the end. “You’re gonna stalk me and take my stuff and play bodyguard, but you can’t even show your damn face?”

The only response is the quiet creak of wood as someone moves through the house's hidden spaces. I feel the pressure of someone watching me. Whoever is here has given me just enough proof to know I’m not imagining things, but still stays out of reach.

I run to my room and slam the door so hard the floor shakes. My hands tremble as I fall onto my bed, my heart bouncing between fear and, though I hate to admit it, curiosity. Part of me wants to grab my things and leave this strange house. But another part, the side that always needs answers, wants to stay and find out who the Watcher is and why they’re interested in me.

I grab my head in both hands and just sit there, totally wiped out. Tomorrow. I’ll figure out tomorrow if I’m gonna bail or stick around and deal with whoever’screeping in the walls. Right now, my brain’s fried trying to wrap itself around the fact that someone’s been watching me this whole time, and I can’t tell if they’re keeping me safe or just waiting to pounce.

I can’t sleep for shit. Every time I drift off, the dreams get stranger. Hallways that go on forever, shadows with faces, eyes watching me from every corner. One second I’m the bug under the telescope’s lens, and the next those same eyes are shielding me from threats I can’t quite make out — blurry shapes that dissolve before I can see what they are. I thrash around, sheets twisting around my legs, while rain starts tapping at the window. Soft at first, then harder, like it’s trying to get my attention. I’m just starting to crash from pure exhaustion when something shifts. The sounds outside change in a way I can’t name. My eyes snap open. I’m wide awake.

The bedroom is pitch black, rain streaming down the windows in silvery rivulets. For a moment, I can’t identify what woke me. Then it comes again, a muffled hiss that doesn’t match the rhythm of the rainfall, followed by hushed male voices carried on the night air. My muscles tense as I push myself up on my elbows, ears straining to separate the sounds from the steady drumming of rain.

That’s when I smell it, the sharp, distinctive odour of gasoline wafting through my partially open window, cutting through the clean scent of rain. My blood turns to ice water in my veins. Intruders. Outside my house. With gasoline.

I slide from the bed, bare feet silent against the wooden floorboards as I creep toward the window. My heart hammers against my ribs so violently, I wonder if the sound might give me away. Pressing my back against the wall, I inch closer to the glass, careful to stay hidden in the shadows as I peer out into the darkness.

Through the rain-streaked panes, I make out several figures stalking across my front lawn, their movements jerky and predatory. My heart slams against my ribs as I recognize what they’re doing. One tilts a gasoline can, the liquid gushing out in a thick stream that splashes up his boots. Another hunch near my porch steps, the sudden violent flare of a lighter casting demonic shadows across a face I’ve seen sneering at me in town, the butcher’s son with dead eyes that now gleam with anticipation as he watches the flame dance between his fingers.

“-the hell are you waiting for?” A voice cuts through the rain, muffled by the glass. “Torch the damn door and let’s bounce.”

My throat closes. I’m scrambling for my phone, hands shaking so bad I drop it twice. Who the hell do I even call? Cops are twenty minutes out, if they bother showing up at all. I could grab the baseball bat under my bed and go charging out there like a complete lunatic — but there are three of them, they’ve got gasoline and lighters, and shit. By the time anyone gets here…

The thought dies in my brain as another figure steps out from the shadows at the side of the house. He’s taller than the others, moving like some big cat on a slow stalk, and my stomach does this ridiculous flip. My mouth goes dry watching him just… walk toward those assholes. No yelling. No running. Just coming at them like he’s got all the time in the world. And damn him. He’ll show himself to these random dickheads but won’t give me the time of day? Something hot and angry twists in my gut, tangled up with that same stupid heat I felt reading his journals.

I press my face against the glass, breath fogging the window as I watch it all go down. The tall figure steps into a sliver of moonlight. I still can’t see his face, but something about him hits me like a gut punch. Those wide shoulders. The way he stands, the ground belongs to him. It’s him. My Watcher.

The tallest vandal sees him first, his body goes rigid, a strangled “Fuck!” cutting through the rainfall. His friends whip around, fumbling their gasoline cans and lighters onto the wet grass as they stagger backward. My Watcher moves toward them with the steady inevitability of an approaching storm. His lips move, forming words that don’t reach my window but hit the intruders like physical blows. They bolt in three different directions, tripping over their own feet, abandoning their half-finished crime like prey fleeing a predator.

Within seconds they’re gone, swallowed by the dark beyond my property line. My Watcher stays motionless in the yard, rain streaming off a heavy coat. My hand finds the window latch. I could be down those stairs and out the door in thirty seconds — face him while he’s right there in the open, demand answers. My legs tense. But before I can move, his head tilts up. His gaze finds my window without a second’s hesitation. My breath catches. He knows exactly where I am. Exactly which window I’m standing at.

I should duck away, pretend I saw nothing, but I remain frozen, locked in this distant connection through glass and rain and darkness. My reflection in the window betrays me; the corner of my mouth has curved upward without permission. I catch myself smiling at him and quickly press my lips together, unsettled by my own reaction. When did he transform in my mind from The Watcher to MyWatcher? After what feels like an eternity, he gives a single, deliberate nod before turning and melting back into the shadows at the edge of the property.

I don’t sleep again. Instead, I drag the armchair to the window, cocoon myself in the thickest wool blanket I can find, and keep vigil. Hours crawl by. My eyes burn, and I have to remind myself to blink. The darkness outside softens, bleeds into grey, then blooms with the weak morning light. Somewhere between my third and fourth hour of staring, the rain stops, leaving everything outside slick and gleaming, as if the world decided to rinse away the evidence of what could have happened.

I force myself outside at dawn. The rain’s washed everything clean, like the night is trying to pretend it never happened. My bare toes curl against the damp grass as I scan the yard, half-expecting to find nothing but morning dew and my own paranoia. Part of me wants to believe I dreamed it — the gasoline smell, those figures, him — but then I spot it. Evidence scattered across my lawn like breadcrumbs, leading somewhere I’m not sure I’m ready to go.

I pick my way across the lawn like I’m in some twisted scavenger hunt. There’s the evidence: spray paint can tossed by the steps, some douchebag’s lighter winking up at me from the wet grass, and a gas-soaked rag hanging off one of my bushes like the world’s shittiest Christmas ornament. Each piece they dropped tells the same story: someone wanted to torch my house last night, and someone else told them to fuck right off.

Near the driveway, I spot a balled-up piece of paper and grab it. My hands are still shaking like crazy as I flatten it out. “GET OUT WITCH,” it says, with my address underlined three freaking times underneath. My gut does this awful drop thing, like when you miss a step on the stairs. Some asshole in town hates me enough to try to burn my house down with me in it.

And someone else put themselves between me and that.

I drag myself around the yard, gathering up each bit of trash those assholes left behind. When I reach the side of the house where he stepped out of nowhere like some dark guardian angel, something stops me cold. There in the mud is a footprint, massive compared to mine, pressed so deep it’s like he stood there forever, waiting for me to find it. The rain should have washed it away, but instead it’s preserved perfectly, like a message. He wanted me to see this. My heart does a stupid little skip as I realize he left it for me to find, proof I’m not crazy, that he’s real, that last night actually happened.

I crouch beside it, my fingertips suspended just above the mud’s edge. Not some half-heard creak or scribbled page I could have imagined, here’s proofpressed into the earth itself. I can almost see him again: rain streaming off broad shoulders as he faced those men, that deliberate tilt of his head finding me through glass and darkness, acknowledging me with a single nod that said everything without a word.

I sink to my knees beside his footprint, my fingers trembling as they trace its outline in the mud. “Thank you,” I breathe, the words ripping from somewhere deep and primal inside me, my voice breaking as tears blur my vision. My protector, my shadow, my watcher, whoever he is, just saved my life, and suddenly I need him to hear me with an urgency that burns through my veins like wildfire.

The sun breaks through the clouds, throwing my shadow right across that footprint as I stand. My brain is a complete mess — half of me terrified that someone knows me well enough to show up exactly when I’m in deep shit, and the other half just stupidly, embarrassingly grateful they did. What would his voice sound like? Low and rough? Quiet? Would his skin be warm if I reached up and touched his face? God, what is wrong with me. I’m standing in wet grass fantasizing about a stranger who is either stalking me or saving me — and honestly, maybe both.

Trudging back to the house with my arms full of trash, I glance up at the watchtower windows. Nobody there, or nobody I can see, but that prickly feeling between my shoulder blades says otherwise. And the weird thing? I don’t hate it anymore. A week ago, I was jumping at every creak and shadow. Now it’s almost like having a bodyguard. A seriously messed-up, zero-boundaries bodyguard who goes through my stuff and won’t show his face — but still.

Someone’s got my back. And until I figure out why, until I crack whatever weird connection keeps us locked in this freaky little game of peekaboo, I’m staying put.

Chapter seven

Reluctant Allies