24. Quell
Chapter twenty-four
Quell
T he car slows as we round the last bend in the coastal road; the tires crunching over gravel and sand, like some memory of a holiday I never took.
I catch my breath at the first glimpse of the house through a gap in the pines.
Not a cabin. Not some safe house with blackout curtains and reinforced doors.
This is a sprawling, weathered house, stone and wood, as if the coast itself has grown a home.
Sunlight flashes on wide windows and a wraparound porch.
Ivy climbs one corner, its green fingers reaching for the slate-blue roof.
The ocean glitters beyond, a low, steady roar that’s followed us the last mile.
“Talon,” I say, not tearing my eyes away as we roll to a stop. “What is this place?”
He doesn’t answer at first. He just kills the engine and sits there, hands on the wheel.
Five days of driving; switching cars, taking back roads, sleeping in cheap motels with the curtains pulled tight, and I’ve gotten used to the tense line of his mouth, the constant checking of mirrors, the way he never seems to relax.
But now there’s something else on his face.
Not relief. Something softer. Reverence, maybe.
“My grandparents’ house,” he signs, voice low, almost careful. “Used to be, anyway. Now it’s mine.”
I look at the house again. This isn’t a hiding place. It's a home. Talon’s home.
“I didn’t know you had grandparents.” It sounds stupid as soon as I say it. Of course he has grandparents. But Talon always seems like he’s just appeared one day, fully formed, with nothing behind him but guns and shadows.
His mouth twitches. Not a smile, but close. “Had. They’re gone.”
We get out. The salt wind hits me, full of pine and ocean. It tastes different here. Cleaner, maybe. Real. I stretch, feeling the ache in my legs from hours in the car. The sun is honest, not filtered through city haze. Warm on my skin.
Talon goes to the trunk and grabs the bags; two each, everything we have left.
I follow him up a path made of flat stones, half-sunk in sand and beach grass.
My shoe catches on the edge. Up close, I see more: the faded blue shutters, sea glass wind chimes on the porch, the wooden railing worn smooth by years of salt and storms.
Three steps onto the porch. The boards creak under us. Talon sets the bags down and digs out a key, an actual key, big and old, tarnished brass. No keypad, no scanner, nothing high-tech. Just a key.
“No one knows about this place,” he says, fitting it into the lock. “Not Vincenzo. Not anyone from that life. When I left, I cut everything. No calls, no visits, no trail. Nothing that could lead here.”
The lock turns. The door swings open. Sunlight pours in, catching dust motes that spin like tiny stars. The air inside is salt and wood and quiet, just waiting.
“How long’s it been?” I step inside.
“Eight years. Twelve since they died.”
I look at him, surprised. “You kept it all this time?”
He nods, eyes flicking around the room, cataloging every detail. “I paid a local guy to check it once a year. Roof, windows, whatever. I never came back. Wasn’t safe.”
“But now it is?”
He meets my gaze. “No. Just safer than anywhere else. And my folks would have wanted you to see it.”
That lands like a punch. They would have wanted you to see it. Me. The artist. The dreamer. The guy who’s seen through Talon’s eyes for years before we ever met. Now I’m standing in the home of the people who loved him, before he became a weapon.
The entryway opens into a big, open room with a high, peaked ceiling.
Furniture stands around draped in white sheets, like ghosts waiting for us to wake them.
One wall is all built-in bookshelves, crammed with old books, their spines faded and sun-bleached.
A stone fireplace takes up most of the far wall, and windows look out over a deck and a strip of private beach. The waves roll in, steady and endless.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, which sounds weak, but it’s all I have. It is beautiful, but it's so much more than that. It's more than I've ever had in my life.
Talon moves past me, pulling sheets off furniture.
Underneath are worn leather couches, a coffee table with a tide chart carved right into the wood, and armchairs aimed at the view, not each other.
The dust makes me sneeze, but beneath it, I catch something else, a trace of lemon oil, maybe, or just the memory of it, soaked into the wood.
“My grandmother was an artist,” Talon announces, yanking another sheet free. “Not professional. Just for herself. She painted the sea. Said it never looked the same twice.”
I stare at him. He’s never told me anything about his past. Not ever.
“There’s a studio upstairs,” he adds, not looking at me. “North windows. Good light. You could use it if you wanted.”
My throat closes up, and I fight back tears. This isn’t Talon the killer; this is the man hidden underneath. The man who has been buried for years under the deadly exterior. “I’d like that.”
We go through the house together, pulling sheets off, opening windows to let the sea air in.
Every room is something new, a sunroom with dead plants and wicker chairs; a dining room with a table for twelve; a kitchen with cracked terra-cotta tiles and copper pots hanging from a rack.
Everything feels solid. Permanent. Like it could survive anything.
“Your grandparents built this place?” I ask, running my fingers over the kitchen counter.
Talon shakes his head. “Grandfather inherited it. His family had money. Old money. His father was supposed to be a banker or a lawyer, something proper. Instead, he married my great-grandmother, who had nothing to her name but her true love for him, and they moved out here to scandalize everyone.”
He says it with a warmth I’ve never heard from him before. I turn to reply but stop before I can get a word out. He’s standing by the window, sunlight in his hair, making it look almost soft. Almost gold. Without the city, without the constant threat, he seems not relaxed, but more here. More real.
“They sound amazing,” I say.
“They were.” He opens a window, and the salt air rushes in, making the old curtains billow. “My grandparents took me in when my parents died. I was eleven. Angry. Difficult. They never seemed to mind.”
I try to picture it. Talon as a kid, angry and grieving, brought here to this place by the sea.
I entered the foster system before I was old enough to remember anything different, but I'd seen plenty of kids who came with a ‘before’, a history they brought with them as mental scars.
I watched as they ‘got better’ by burying who they were under an armor of defense.
Did he swim in those waves? Help his grandmother in the garden? Climb the pines that shelter the house? I can’t quite see it. I can’t line up the killer I know with the boy he must have been.
We head upstairs, opening windows as we go, letting sunlight flood into rooms that have been sealed up for who knows how long.
The bedrooms are plain, but not in a bad way.
Patchwork quilts, old wooden dressers, views of either the ocean or that twisty road we just drove.
At the end of the hall, we find the studio.
It’s big, almost echoey, with easels still standing where someone left them, jars of brushes, blank canvases stacked in a crooked line against the wall.
“She would have liked you,” Talon says, voice low, watching me as I take it all in.
The words cut right through me, not sharp, not painful, but slicing something open I’ve kept buried for years.
“How do you know?” My voice wobbles, and I hate that he can hear it.
He leans in the doorway, arms folded. “She believed in visions. Dreams. All the stuff you can’t explain but still know is real.” His mouth twists in a way that isn’t quite a smile. “She’d say your gift was the universe’s way of making sure we crossed paths.”
I laugh, a weird, startled sound. “Did she actually talk like that?”
“All the time. It drove my grandfather up the wall. He was all logic and plans, but he’d do anything for her. Including living in this big, impractical house by the sea because she said the light was perfect.”
I walk to the window and look out at the water.
Sunlight makes the waves glitter, each one folding over the last, on and on.
Suddenly, it all hits me. Not just the running, or the fear, or the constant checking over my shoulder, but everything before that, too.
The dreams. The deaths. The loneliness of seeing through someone else’s eyes and never knowing why.
“Is this real?” I ask, not turning around. “Are we actually safe here?”
I feel him behind me, not touching, but close enough that his warmth reaches my back.
“For now,” he says. “Nothing lasts forever. But this place… it’s the closest thing to home I’ve ever had.”
Home. The word just hangs there, huge and breakable at the same time. I turn. We’re close, golden afternoon light making everything softer.
“Thank you,” I say. “For bringing me. For trusting me with all this.”
His eyes lock on mine, steady. “You’re the only one I’ve ever trusted with any of it.”
The moment stretches, sharp and gentle. I reach up, fingertips grazing his jaw, feeling the roughness there.
We haven’t touched since that night in the apartment.
Too busy running. Too busy surviving. But now, here, with nobody watching and nobody chasing, I feel everything I’ve been holding back come rushing in, hot and impossible to ignore.
“What was your name?” I ask, my voice barely above a whisper. “Before you were Talon?”
He goes still. I think he might just leave it there, but then his eyes search mine, looking for something I can’t name.
“Alfie,” he confesses finally. “Alfred Thomas Harrington the Third, if you want the whole thing. Named after my grandfather and his father. Although they were known as Alfred.”
I blink. The name doesn’t fit him at all. He’s all sharp lines and danger, and Alfie sounds like a kid from some old book.
“Alfie,” I repeat, and a laugh slips out before I can stop it. “You really, really don’t look like an Alfie.”
He raises an eyebrow. “No?”
“Not even a little bit. Maybe an Alfred if you were wearing a tuxedo and pretending to be a butler. But Alfie?” I shake my head, lips twitching. “That’s a golden retriever puppy, not…” I gesture vaguely at him, at the size of his shoulders, the way he just stands there, solid and quietly confident.
He grins, something sharp and teasing in his eyes. “Maybe you’d rather call me Daddy instead.”
I cough, nearly swallowing my tongue. My face goes up in flames so fast I think I might pass out. “You did not just say that.”
He just arches an eyebrow, his mouth twitching with a smirk he’s not even trying to hide. “I’m just saying. One of those fits better.”
My heart thuds so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
The air in the room feels different now, thick and sparking with something I hadn’t expected.
This is new territory, not just the house, not just the uneasy truce, but this banter, this side of Talon, or Alfie, I haven’t seen before. He’s letting himself play.
“I’ll, uh, have to think about it,” I say, aiming for cool, missing by a mile.
His smile softens, but it’s still knowing. “Take your time. We’ve got nothing but time and paint.”
He moves past me, shoulder bumping mine, and I shiver. It’s not the sea breeze, either; it's him. It's how happy he makes me feel. Happy, cared for, and loved.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s air out the master bedroom. The sheets will need replacing.”
I follow, still burning, still reeling from the way he just casually dropped that line.
The hallway light catches his face, making him look younger, or maybe just less guarded.
Here in this house, with the ocean outside and the past pressed into the walls, he’s changing.
Or maybe just coming back to himself after years of being someone else.
Either way, I want to know all of it. Every name, every version, every story.
And as we continue from room to room, opening windows and letting in sunlight and salt air and the endless hush of the waves, I realize there’s time. For all of it.