Rowan's grip on my hand tightened. "You should have woken us."
"You needed sleep." Julian set the mugs on the dresser. He was still standing in the doorway, his body angled half-in and half-out of the room, as if he hadn't decided yet whether he belonged in this particular scene. I recognized the posture.It was the same one I'd had at their front door the first time Rowan invited me over, the same threshold calculation.
Rowan lifted the edge of the blanket. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
Julian looked at the open space beside me, then at Rowan, then back at me. The pause lasted long enough for me to feel every second of it. Then he crossed the room and got into the bed.
He settled on my other side, his back against the headboard, his body close but not touching. The mattress dipped under his weight and I could feel the warmth of him through the sheets, a different warmth than Rowan's. Rowan was heat like a furnace, constant and aggressive. Julian was warmth like a room you'd been away from and just come back to.
For a minute, nobody moved. The three of us just sat there in the grey light, listening to the apartment breathe.
Then Julian's hand found mine under the covers. His fingers laced through mine, careful and deliberate, and I felt something shift in my chest that had nothing to do with the paranormal. It was the first time Julian had reached for me. Every other touch between us had been incidental, accidental, or mine. This one was his. He was choosing it.
I didn't look at him. I was afraid that if I looked at him, he'd pull away, the way a wild animal retreats when you acknowledgeit's come close. I just held his hand and let the contact say what neither of us could.
Rowan noticed. Of course he did. His thumb paused on my knuckles for a fraction of a second before resuming its slow rhythm. He didn't comment. He just shifted his weight slightly, settling deeper into the bed, and the three of us sat there in a silence that felt, for the first time, like something we were building together instead of something the town was filling with ghosts.
"Whatever played that piano," Julian said, "it knew the melody. It wasn't random. It was the same note the melody starts on. Like a calling card."
"Or an invitation," I said.
"Or a threat," Rowan said.
Julian's fingers tightened around mine. "It's in the instrument now. Not just in my head. It's physically in the piano. I could feel it when I walked past this morning, like the wood was humming."
"So we get rid of the piano," Rowan said.
"That won't stop it." Julian's voice was steady but I could feel the tension in his hand. "If it can play without me, it doesn't need the instrument. It just likes using mine. Taking something I love and making it into a weapon. That's personal, Rowan. Whatever this is, it's choosing targets."
The word landed in the room and stayed there. Personal. Whatever Dominic had left behind, it wasn't ambient. It wasn't just the town being the town. It was choosing targets. Julian's music. My guilt. And whatever Rowan carried that he wouldn't name.
"We need to talk to Theo," Julian said. "He's been photographing things he won't show us. I think he knows more than he's saying."
"Theo always knows more than he's saying," Rowan muttered. "It's his whole personality."
I almost laughed. It wasn't funny, not really, but the sheer normalcy of Rowan being annoyed at Theo while the three of us sat in bed processing a haunting felt like the most human moment I'd experienced in weeks.
Julian must have felt it too, because his thumb moved across the back of my hand, a slow, grounding stroke that mirrored Rowan's on the other side. I was held between them, my left hand in Julian's, my right hand in Rowan's, and the weight of it was the closest thing to safe I'd felt since I arrived in Hollow Vale.
"I'm not leaving," I said. I wasn't talking about the apartment.
twenty
JULIAN
I stood in the center of the kitchen, watching the steam rise from a pot of salt water. This was my sanctuary, the only room in Hollow Vale that felt like it belonged to me. Rowan was leaning against the counter, his massive frame making the apartment look like a dollhouse, while he watched me chop garlic. It was the first time we'd all been here together, really together, and the air didn't feel thin for once. It felt crowded. In a way that made my chest tighten with a strange, terrifying heat.
"Don't look so worried, Julian," Theo said, breezing through the door with two bottles of wine tucked under his arm like they were prizes he'd won at a fair. He set them down on the table, the glass clinking with a cheerful, domestic sound that felt almostblasphemous in this town. "I brought the expensive stuff. If we're going to play house, we're going to do it with a high alcohol content."
Rowan didn't move, but his gaze shifted to the doorway, tracking the last arrival. Oleander stepped into the room and the rhythm of the space faltered. He stood in the doorway with his shoulders pulled up to his ears, apologizing for existing without saying a word.
"I didn't know what to bring," Oleander murmured, his voice barely carrying over the hum of the stove. He looked at the wine, then at the spread of ingredients on the counter. "I'm sorry. I should have..."
Theo snorted, stepping into Oleander's space and plucking the scarf from around his neck before he could protest. "You brought yourself, Voss. That's insufferable enough for one evening."
Then Rowan let out a low, huffing sound that might have been a laugh, and the tension broke. I felt my own mouth twitch. Oleander blinked, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he realized he wasn't being scolded. He laughed, a soft, breathless sound that made the kitchen feel five degrees warmer, and just like that, the shadows in the corners seemed to retreat.
"Sit," I said, gesturing toward the table with a wooden spoon. "If you're going to be insufferable, you might as well do it while being fed. Rowan, stop brooding and open the wine. Theo, quit stealing the bread."
