Page 31

I make coffee. Because that's what a functional person does after a faceless woman leaves footprints beside her pillow.

Probably.

Gage folds himself into a kitchen chair that looks like doll furniture under him. Sid leaps into his lap and settles in like he pays the mortgage.

I glare at the cat. "Your loyalty is a disgrace."

Sid tucks his paws in and purrs.

"He likes me," Gage says.

"He likes that you run ten degrees hotter. Not the same thing."

The corner of his mouth twitches.

I turn back to the pot before that does anything to me.

I pour two cups and set one in front of him. Black, no sugar, because I know his order and I resent knowing it.

"You remembered."

"Unfortunately."

Our fingers almost brush on the handle. I pull back first.

Coward.

We drink in the quiet. Sid purrs. The kitchen is almost warm, almost safe, and that's worse than the footprints, because I can feel how badly I want to stay in it.

I set my cup down.

"Talk."

He stares into his coffee like the answer's floating in it.

"There are things about this town you don't know."

"Riveting start."

"I'm trying."

"You're bad at it."

"Yes." He says it flat, and it startles a breath out of me. "What came in last night wasn't lost. It wasn't random. Something's interested in you."

Cold slides down the back of my neck. "Something. Not someone."

"No."

"An animal?"

"No."

I wrap both hands around my mug. "Then what."

His eyes come up and hold mine.

"Something else."