by Snow, Nicole
I can’t let anyone see me.
Sure, a few people glimpsed me now and then over the years. But as long as it’s just flashes, they can treat me like an urban legend. The twisted myth, the monster in the woods, all scars and arcane tattoos.
But if anyone sees me long enough to be sure, to report it, that’s when I’m boned. That’s when the cuffs come out.
I can’t go back to fucking prison.
Never again.
If I’m a beast, I was never meant to be caged.
From the shadows, I take in the destruction out front. The storefront window looks shattered, glass shards winking like a mirror image of the sky, bright points on black. A pink Beetle that I know belongs to Deanna Bell is roped off in its own pointless circle of crime scene tape, the passenger window broken out.
Shit.
I know Deanna lives alone, ever since she moved back here and got herself an apartment. Not much choice when the old mansion—her father’s place—was turned into the local Heart’s Edge History Museum.
Besides a couple part-time teenagers and supply runners from Spokane, she runs the shop by herself.
Why smash the passenger window?
If you were going after Deanna, you’d hit the driver’s side.
Unless it was meant to intimidate. Random, crude vandalism.
I wonder, taking in the chaos visible through the broken shop window.
Whoever came here tried to scare Deanna. Stop her from even thinking about making a break for her car and escaping.
They must’ve snatched her here, using another vehicle. It’s the reason her car would still be in the lot. The only reason for this chill down my spine, this thing some might call premonition, but I label instinct.
The only other logical explanation in the scattered evidence and echoes of violence is that someone broke into the shop and Deanna fled, then lost herself in the woods trying to escape.
My brows furrow.
There’s one last option, but I already know Langley and the search teams from out of town won’t turn up with Deanna’s body in a day or two, a victim of random violence.
Bull. Nothing in Heart’s Edge is ever that random.
When someone dies, there’s a reason.
And Deanna’s not dead, I tell myself firmly.
Maybe because I couldn’t stand it if she was.
She’s like the little sister I should’ve had, and after I failed to protect Clarissa...
Dammit, no. I can’t stand that the girl might’ve been murdered in cold blood on my watch.
Deanna’s my responsibility.
This entire town is my responsibility.
Even if I haven’t seen her face-to-face in years, I know Deanna Bell. Know how well she knows Heart’s Edge and its wicked secrets.
She grew up here, just like me.
Just like Warren, and Blake, and Holt, and Jenna.
Just like Clarissa.
Deanna’s more likely to get lost between her own living room and kitchen when she knows these woods almost as well as I do. She’d spent years in Spokane, yeah, but you never forget your old childhood stomping grounds.
So if she’s not here, not home, not dead, isn’t it obvious what happened?
Taken.
Possibly taken hostage by someone who’s going to regret it dearly.
The shop might give me answers. A hidden clue, a coded message, more details left in crumbs of evidence that Langley likely isn’t qualified to nibble.
I slip around the back of the shop. The front is too visible, and there’s still some part of me hard-coded to law and order that says not to cross that bright-yellow crime scene tape.
Still, I’m perfectly okay with picking locks.
Reaching into my coat pocket, I fish around till I find something I can use. It’s a slender awl, long and almost needle-like, used for wood etching, but it’ll do—though I’ll be pissed if I wind up snapping it.
Tools like this are hard to come by when you live off rare cash and can’t set foot in a single store in a fifty-mile radius.
I don’t get a chance to try the lock. A sudden noise from the far side of the building has me bolting up, retreating back into the darkest shadows against the wall.
Is that...?
Someone retching, I realize.
Loud, hoarse, and most definitely not happy about their guts, judging by the swearing coming from the mouth of the alley.
I should go.
Make myself invisible again and leave this crap to the police. Missoula will send someone sharp. They’ll get to the bottom of it. For all I know, in a week Deanna will be home, and this will all be forgotten save for a brief headline splash.
But whoever I’m hearing sounds like they’re gagging. Possibly choking.
A rough sigh scrapes out my lungs. The shit I do for this town...
Whatever. I’ll make sure they’re okay, and then disappear.
I make just enough noise as I round the corner of the building that they’ll hear me coming, scuffing my boots so they’ll pick up on my footsteps without being scared out of their skin.
Still, when I stop at the end of the alleyway and realize who it is, I’m not sure who flinches more.
Me—or Blake’s sixteen-year-old daughter.
Andrea Silverton.
I can smell moonshine on her. Strong. Overwhelming. Stinging my nose.
It’s that clear rocket fuel some of the local kids brew, though they think their parents have no idea.
She’s not old enough to be drinking.
But I’m sure she’s figuring that out awful fast, considering the mess she’s left and the way she wipes at her mouth sourly as she eyes me with wary eyes from beneath her crop of half-shaved, defiantly rainbow-dyed hair.
“Go away, you creep,” she slurs.
For a second I cock my head. Do I really look so hideous in the open like this?
Usually, though, when people meet the infamous monster of Heart’s Edge, there’s wild screaming.
She’s just tipsy, but that doesn’t stop her from fumbling her keys from the pocket of her patch-covered jean jacket and clutching them between her knuckles, thrusting them at me like a kitten and staggering a step back. Her breath clouds gently in the cooling evening air. “I don’t h-have any...sch...m-money.”
I hold up both hands.
“I’m not here for your money, Andrea.” I shouldn’t have let her name slip, to most people in this town I’m a stranger. It’s out now, and I continue calmly. “Just want to make sure you’re okay. Where’s your old man?”
I’m lucky she’s drunk enough—and upset enough—to take the question at face value and not even think to ask how I know her name, or her father.
Her face screws up into a sullen scowl.
She’s flushed with anger, not just booze.
“He’s at the stupid radio station again,” she mutters, letting her keys drop to dangle limply from her fingers. “Like he thinks he’s some kind of hotshot shock jock or something and he’s like...” Her shoulders sag. “He’s making us look stupid. With his dumb advice line. I mean, advice? He’s so dumb. So dumb. Nobody should be asking him anything.” She lets out a moan. “Everybody at school laughs at him...”
I get it now.
Blake’s embarrassing his daughter, and she doesn’t know if she wants to defend him or be furious with him.
So all she can do is rebel, act out the way teenagers usually do. Nothing says teen spirit more than getting drunk and doing things you shouldn’t.
I let my hands drop. “He’s gonna be upset if he gets home and you’re not there.”
“I don’t care!” she yells. “Clark...Clark Patten dared me...he dared me and Lucy Ardent, and Lucy was a big fat cluck-cluck chicken but I’m not. I’m gonna get photos of the crime scene and the dead body. Just you wait.”
My eyes widen. My heart stops. My blood rages.
“Dead body?” I repeat, and Andrea slumps against the wall. “What’re you talk
ing–”
“There’s gotta be one, right?” She glowers at me, her eyes dilated and hazy. I wonder if she can even make me out, or if I’m just a huge blur to her, one she doesn’t match up with all the local legends about Nine. “They wouldn’t put this much crime scene tape up if there wasn’t a stiff in there!”
I breathe out a sigh of relief as my heart remembers how to beat again.
Fuck, she’s just guessing. I should’ve known.
Kids’ rumors always grow in the telling.
If there was a body, Deanna’s dead body, Langley wouldn’t have left the crime scene unguarded.
I’ve got to figure out what happened, though, before those rumors spiral out of control and turn from idle speculation into small-town gossip. That crap has a way of bending the truth and jumping well beyond Heart’s Edge.
And I can’t have anything scaring Clarissa into coming back here. Not after the way she ran. She must have a happy life somewhere, a peace she never found with me, and I won’t be the reason it goes up in smoke.
I won’t be her ruin again.
I’ve already brought enough destruction.
And after the dustup over Gray a few months ago nearly turned this town into a hotbed of death and destruction, the whole place is still on edge—especially with no real explanations. At least nothing anyone believes about why the old theater burned down.
I’d bet if you told anyone I had something to do with it, they’d believe you.
And, of course, I did have something to do with that, but not the way most people think.
But I’m not talking, and the hero of the day, Doc—Gray Caldwell—has kept his mouth shut for good reason.
No one here needs to know how close Heart’s Edge came to experiencing disaster again.
For the second time in less than ten years.
I’m still worried Galentron will try for number three.
And if those fucks succeed, I’ll be the only one left alive because I’m the only one immune to their shit.
That company has infected this town like poison. Deanna’s disappearance is just another sign of how deep the rot could spread.
I have to bring her home alive. I will.
But first I need to get Andrea off the street.
Or else Blake will shit kittens and a few low-grade explosives when he finds out his underage daughter was stumbling around alone after dark, shitfaced on rotgut moonshine and trying to find a corpse that I hope with every part of me doesn’t exist.
“Hey,” I coax. “There’s no dead body. It was just a smash and grab. I already checked. Boring, right? So maybe you should just go home.”
She pouts. “I can’t go home. Clark, he’ll...he’ll think I don’t have any fucking stones at all.”
“He doesn’t need to know. Where the hell is this kid, anyway? He couldn’t come down here himself? Seems like you’ve already earned your street cred. Plus you look like you really want to brush your teeth.”
“Oh my God.” Andrea grimaces and swipes the back of one hand across her mouth. “Yuck!”
“Exactly.”
She looks up and stares at me then. I’m thankful she’s drunk enough not to question who I am, or why I’m dressed in black from head to toe, my face shrouded in a hoodie that’s way overdone for keeping warm.
The girl isn’t stupid. I’ve watched Andrea grow up from afar, and she’s tough and fearless and smart, but maybe she could learn to worry a little more about being alone in a dark alley, drunk, with a very large, very spooky man looming over her.
Heart’s Edge isn’t usually the kind of place where you have to be afraid of things like that.
But you can never be too safe.
And I damn sure can’t leave the daughter of a man who used to be one of my closest friends out here to fend for herself.
“C’mon, little badass,” I growl, offering her my gloved hand. “I’ll walk you home, and we’ll figure out how to make Clark jealous you came out here tonight when he didn’t.”
* * *
Years Ago
“Hey! Hey, Tiger!”
I look up, stopping the scritch-scratch of my pocket knife over the branch I’m whittling.
I don’t know what it’ll be yet. Haven’t decided because I want it to be something small and pretty, but I’m real clumsy and sometimes Dr. Ross gets mad at me for having a knife so I can’t practice as much I’d like.
He’d be furious if he knew I was outside, too.
He doesn’t like it when I go out on my own where people can see me, sneaking through the cellar door that I always manage to open no matter how he locks it.
Wandering around where I might say the wrong things.
But I’ll be a good boy today. I’ll keep my mouth shut.
I just want to be in the sun.
And I just want to see them again, as Blake and Warren and Jenna and Deanna and Clarissa come barreling down the scrubby hill to the creek, all full of laughter and smiles.
They’re beaming at me like I’m some big, exciting secret. I need that so much I don’t even care if Ross will hurt me later, if he catches me when I sneak back in.
I don’t care that Blake messes up my nickname because he thinks Leo means Tiger instead of Lion.
I just care that it’s warm and bright outside, and they’re here, crashing into me. Out here, it’s all giggles and play and the only time I ever get to feel like I have a family.
Warren’s our ringleader. He’s already taller than everyone else, brave and fierce even if he’s so skinny he’ll snap in a strong wind. He hooks an arm around my neck and noogies me lightly, grinning.
“Whatcha working on there, dude?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say, but as I see Clarissa hanging back behind the others, watching me shyly, pretty in her floaty yellow sundress with her hair pulled up in a messy twist like she’s trying to look grown-up...I get ideas.
I think I know.
I want to carve a flower. Yeah, yeah, it’s silly, I know, but it’s not for me.
I’ll give it a stem so delicate it weighs nothing, petals as thin and soft as paper.
I’ll make it super real, except it won’t ever wilt and die.
And when it’s done, I can give it to Clarissa Bell.
* * *
Present
With a bittersweet ache in my bones, I stand across the street from Blake’s sprawling ranch style house. The windows are dark, and the porch light isn’t strong enough to reach over and pierce the shadows beneath the trees concealing me.
Still, as she climbs groggily up the porch steps, Andrea pauses, looking back, searching the night to see if I’m more than a figment of her drunk brain.
“God, you’re him, aren’t you?” she calls out softly.
She’s more sober now, after the slow stumbling walk home through back streets where I wouldn’t be seen—and after nervously asking me You won’t tell my dad? only to nod quickly when I said As long as you promise not to do this again.
Yeah, no, she told me. Like...somehow the booze tasted worse than puking.
I’d just laughed at her.
Her eyes are wide now, though, her voice a bit awed. “Holy crap. You’re...you’re the monster,” she says. “You’re Nine.”
I don’t say anything. I can’t confirm it. No use in whipping her into a frenzy.
But I won’t deny it, either.
“Oh my God,” she strangles out. “That’s so cool. Clark will never believe this!”
I smile faintly and slip my hand into my pocket.
There’s a half-finished carving I was working on, one with a design that makes it easy to carry around to keep me busy on long nights.
It’s a coin, a carved wooden medallion, barely bigger than a quarter.
On the back, there’s the start of an etching, a blooming tree with gnarled branches, small and detailed, barely an outline for what I want the finished piece to look like.
On the other side, though, is a 3D relief of a dr
agon with looping coils, seeming to rise out of the wood as if it’s clawing free to become flesh, every scale and whisker and curving tooth carved out one tiny splinter at a time.
To me, it’s the beast that’s choking Heart’s Edge. The secrets. The truth.
To Andrea, it’ll be her proof that she saw me.
Hell, maybe it’ll make her the popular girl at school. I know how flippant high school pecking orders can be.
So I bend, set the wooden coin on the ground, exaggerating my movements enough to make sure she sees it.
She gasps, darting off the porch toward me.
But by the time she’s dashed across the street to where I stood, I’m gone.
I retreat into the thicker trees that lead up into the foothills, watching as she stares left, then right—then notices the little pale circlet of pine wood against the grass and dark earth, glowing in the moonlight.
Smiling, she bends and picks it up, her eyes widening, her lips parting as she turns the coin over with a breathless sound.
She grins, and just like her old man, her smile looks wide and lopsided.
“Cool,” she breathes.
She’ll be okay.
I stay just long enough to make sure she gets inside and locks the door. Blake should be home from whatever stupid shit he’s doing at the radio station soon. I’ll have to see if I can get a signal and tune in from my lair, because I’ve got to hear this. It’s hard not to laugh.
Blake? An oversized human Labrador, giving people advice?
That big dummy.
Smiling fondly, I shake my head and turn to make my way through the trees, running parallel to the main road through town. I can’t linger here. Andrea’s fine, and it’s time to focus on what I really came here for.
As much as I’ve enjoyed this trip down memory lane, it’s not why I’m here.
There’s still work to be done tonight.
* * *
I’m surprised I don’t find the man everybody still calls “Doc” and his wife Ember at The Menagerie. To me, he’ll always be Gray, the friend who saved my life two times and counting.
Hell, I thought I knew what workaholic meant back when Doc opened his vet practice in town and did damn near nothing else for the better part of a decade.