Chapter 8: Suspicion
Chapter 8: Suspicion
POV: Stella Morris
Location: Pine Hollow / The Last Pine
Timeline: One year ago
I stood in front of the heavy wooden door of The Last Pine, Grandma Dorothy's paper bag of breakfast in one hand, Wyatt's phone tucked in my jacket pocket.
I knocked twice.
Waited almost half a minute.
Nothing.
I knocked again, a little harder this time.
The door pulled open from the inside.
Wyatt filled the doorframe. Shirt on, but untucked, hanging loose at the sides. Hair like he'd just rolled off a pillow and decided that was good enough.
His eyes weren't fully open. He let out a long yawn behind the back of his hand, then looked down at me with a sleepy, unfocused gaze.
Then he stopped.
His eyes opened a little more. His gaze moved from my face to the paper bag in my hand, then back to my face. One eyebrow went up.
"If I'd known it was you," he said, voice rough with sleep, "I wouldn't have bothered getting dressed."
My expression didn't change.
I'd grown up around people who couldn't care less about covering up.
This wasn't enough to get a reaction out of me. And last night, I'd only looked because his build was interesting from a sculptor's standpoint. Nothing more than that!
I held the bag out toward him.
He took it and stepped aside.
"Come in."
The smell hit me the second I crossed the threshold. Stale alcohol, thick and settled into the walls. I sneezed immediately, pressing the back of my wrist against my nose.
Bar stools crooked against the counter, a few coasters kicked across the floor, empty bottles still sitting on two of the tables.
Tyler and another guy I didn't recognize were crammed together on the couch, asleep in positions that looked deeply uncomfortable.
I glanced at Wyatt.
He'd already noticed me looking. He paused, rubbed the back of his neck, and said nothing for a beat or two.
"Upstairs." He didn't explain. Just pointed at the stairs and handed me one of the bags. "Eat up there."
He led me up.
The second floor opened into a wide room that served as both living space and workspace.
A long table sat near the window, surface clear and organized, a few thick binders stacked at one end.
The couch was dark gray, cushions barely dented. The whole floor had a particular kind of order to it.
Wyatt turned to go back downstairs. He paused at the top step, glanced back.
"Make yourself at home," he said, like it wasn't a big deal. "Don't just sit there being weird about it."
Then he was gone.
I sat down, opened the bag, and ate.
When I finished, I didn't call for him.
He said make yourself at home. So I looked around.
The low cabinet beside the long table held a row of bottles — different labels, some opened, some still sealed.
Next to them sat an ashtray with two or three half-smoked cigarettes stubbed out inside.
And beside the ashtray, half-hidden under the edge of a notepad, was a lighter shaped like a cat.
The paint on the corners had worn through to bare gray metal underneath.
I picked it up and turned it over in my fingers.
Flipped the lid open with my thumb and struck it once. A small flame jumped up, and the lighter made a sound.
Meow.
I blinked.
Struck it again.
Meow.
Closed it. Opened it.
Meow.
I couldn't help it. I smiled.
I kept the lighter in my hand and kept looking around the room.
That was when I saw the wall.
Guns. An entire wall of them.
Each one mounted on its own bracket, lined up in rows, maintained with obvious care.
The ones along the top were large — heavy frames, long barrels, the kind of size that wasn't meant for anything casual.
I moved closer.
The stocks showed real wear. Scratches in the metal, the kind left by actual use, not display.
A few of them had a faint sheen along the barrel where someone had gone over them with oil more than once.
I worked my way slowly along the wall.
Every gun was dark. Black frames, deep gray metal, surfaces that absorbed light instead of reflecting it.
Except one.
Silver. The whole thing — barrel, frame, stock — cast in the same pale metal all the way through, no wood grip, no black finish.
It sat at an easy reach height, set slightly apart from the rest, like it had a different purpose than the others.
I stopped about two steps away from it.
Something moved through me from the inside out. A thread running from that gun straight to the tips of my fingers.
My right hand touched the barrel.
The burn detonated at the point of contact.
A current that drove straight into the bone and didn't stop, like a brand pressed down and held there, the pain tunneling inward with every second.
I screamed.
I wrenched my hand back and stumbled two steps, shoulders hitting the edge of the long table behind me. I looked down.
The skin had already started to react. A faint, scorched pattern across the pads of my fingers.
My weapons instructor's voice surfaced from somewhere in the back of my memory.
Silver has a strong physiological draw for our kind. And it's one of the most effective lethal threats we face. The two things exist together, and they always will.
I hadn't taken that particularly seriously at the time. I'd never actually encountered silver before.
It wasn't theory anymore.
Why does a bar owner have a silver weapon?
The thought hadn't finished forming when I heard footsteps — fast, on the stairs.
The door swung open. Wyatt came in with a broom still in his hand.
He swept the room in one look, found me in under a second, and crossed the floor in three strides. The broom got leaned against the wall without him looking at it.
"What happened? You okay?"
I pulled my hand back behind me. Too slow.
He'd already seen it.
His brow pulled together. He went quiet for a moment.
Then he lifted his gaze from my hand to the wall.
He looked at it for a long time.
Long enough that I became aware of my own heartbeat, the way it had picked up without my permission and wasn't settling back down.
When he looked at me again, there was something in his expression I couldn't read clearly.
"Just now," he said. His voice was measured. "You touched the silver one?"
My heartbeat stopped dead.
