No One But Me (The Castle Rock Inferno #2)

Chapter 1

Belle

The cash register drawer clanged shut. Forty-three dollars. I stared at the crumpled bills and loose change, then at the notebook where I'd tracked every transaction for the past month. The numbers formed a pattern—downward, always downward, like water circling a drain.

Rain drummed against the front window. Beyond the glass, Main Street stretched empty and slick under the streetlights.

The arena's glow painted the low clouds orange in the distance.

Fight night. Which meant everyone with money to spend was three blocks over, drinking overpriced beer and screaming themselves hoarse.

I turned back to my kingdom of yellowing paperbacks and warped hardcovers.

The floor lamp in the corner cast a warm light over the reading nook Mom had insisted on—two mismatched armchairs she'd reupholstered herself in faded burgundy fabric.

My handwritten recommendation cards dotted the shelves: If you loved Station Eleven, try this.

Perfect for fans of Circe. The mildew smell lingered near the back wall despite three different dehumidifiers.

The landlord kept promising to fix the leak.

I kept believing him because I had no other choice.

This place was mine. Not Dad's, not the bank's—not yet, anyway. I'd scraped together Mom's life insurance money, her savings, everything she'd hidden from him before the cancer took her. Turned it into something real. Something that couldn't be gambled away or drunk or pissed into the wind.

I ran my finger along a spine. Beloved. The pages fell open to a passage I'd read a hundred times, back when I thought literature might save me from becoming my parents.

Books were honest. People weren't.

I twisted the deadbolt and flipped the sign. Seven-thirty on a Thursday. If someone wanted books this badly, they could come back tomorrow.

The cart of returns sat near the fiction wall. I wheeled it over, started slotting paperbacks back into their alphabetical homes. Atwood. Banks. Butler. The familiar rhythm usually settled my mind.

Instead, my shoulders tensed.

I paused, fingers resting on a tattered King novel. The silence pressed wrong—too thick, too deliberate. Like the building was holding its breath. The rain outside should've filled the gaps, but it didn't. The sound seemed muffled now, distant.

Something was watching.

I straightened. Scanned the aisles. Shadows pooled between shelves where the lamp didn't reach, but nothing moved. The front window showed only wet pavement and the dim shapes of parked cars. Empty.

"Get it together," I muttered.

Three cups of coffee and four hours of sleep. That's all this was. Exhaustion playing tricks. I turned back to the cart.

Scrape.

My hands stilled. That came from the alley side—near the employee bathroom and the storage room. Not inside, but close. Right against the brick, maybe. A footstep on gravel. Or fabric brushing the wall. The distinct sound of someone trying to stay quiet and failing.

I stared at the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. The storage room had a narrow window that faced the alley, protected by rusted bars Mom had installed after a break-in attempt years ago.

Raccoon. Probably. They got into the dumpster three times a week.

Or one of those arena drunks who couldn't find their car, decided to piss behind my store because the world was their urinal.

My feet stayed planted. The storage room key hung heavy on the ring in my pocket.

People who ran bookstores learned when to mind their own business.

You saw things—customers pocketing merchandise, teenagers getting handsy in the poetry section, grown men crying over self-help books at two in the afternoon.

You learned to look away. Keep your head down.

Lock your doors and let the night sort itself out.

I grabbed another book. Shelved it. Listened.

The storage room window was old. Warped glass in a frame that hadn't closed flush since before I bought the place. Through it, shapes distorted—raindrops became oil slicks, streetlights bled into halos.

A shadow passed. Just once. Tall. Wide-shouldered. Moving slow across that murky glass like ink spreading through water.

Then it stopped.

I froze.

My hand hung in the air, still reaching for the next book on the cart. My breath caught somewhere between my lungs and throat. Not fear—not yet. Something older than that. The same thing that made rabbits go still in tall grass when the hawk's shadow crossed overhead.

It's nothing.

I forced my hand to move. Grabbed the paperback. Shelved it between Morrison and Murakami.

It's always nothing.

This town wasn't dangerous. Not really. You got bar fights on weekends. Domestics the cops pretended not to hear. The occasional smash-and-grab at the gas station when some kid needed drug money. But nothing that ever touched me. Nothing that came looking.

Just someone cutting through. Taking shelter from the rain.

I reached over and switched off the reading nook lamp. The warm glow died. Shadows claimed half the store, turned the shelves into dark monoliths. The second lamp stayed on—the one near the register, spilling harsh fluorescent light across the counter and front window.

I moved three steps left. Put my back to the mystery section. From here I could see both the storage room door and that warped window in my peripheral vision. The register sat within arm's reach. Under it, the aluminum bat I'd never needed.

Rain pattered. The fluorescent bulb hummed.

Outside, beyond that distorted glass, something waited.

I couldn't see him clearly—just the suggestion of shape. Broad. Still. Not pressed against the window like someone trying to peer inside. Not moving at all.

Just... there.

Watching.

My pulse knocked steady against my ribs. I kept my breathing even. Didn't look directly at the window. Pretended to straighten books on the nearest shelf while every nerve in my body tracked that motionless shadow.

People ran. Or they screamed. Or they called the cops.

I did none of those things.

I waited.

Because running meant he'd know I'd seen him. Screaming meant I was prey. And the cops? They'd show up in twenty minutes, find nothing, and I'd be the paranoid woman who wasted their time.

So I stood there in my bookstore, surrounded by stories about people braver than me, and I didn't move.

I moved to the display table. Straightened the stacked paperbacks—three copies of The Night Circus, two Mexican Gothic, one Piranesi with a cracked spine I should've pulled weeks ago. The covers aligned. Corners flush. My fingers trembled just enough to make the stack uneven on the first try.

I tried again. Got it right.

The "Staff Favorites" sign hung crooked on its tiny easel. I adjusted it. Once. Twice. The cardstock refused to sit level. The tremor in my hands made the task impossible, turned something simple into a test I kept failing.

You're being ridiculous.

I left it. Grabbed the chalk from behind the register and crossed to the sandwich board near the door. Tomorrow's quote. I always wrote them the night before—gave customers something to see first thing, made the store feel curated. Intentional.

The chalk felt slick between my damp fingers.

You're not sixteen anymore.

I wrote: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."—Maya Angelou

The letters came out uneven. The 'a' in 'agony' wobbled. I steadied my wrist against the board and finished. Good enough. It would do.

This town doesn't produce monsters.

Monsters lived in books. In fairy tales my mother used to read before she got sick, when I still believed happy endings were something you could earn through goodness or patience or sheer stubborn hope. Beasts that turned into princes. Wolves that wore grandmothers' faces. Demons trapped in lamps.

This was Castle Rock. Population twelve thousand. We produced foreclosures and failed marriages. Alcoholics and factory workers. People who peaked in high school and never left. We had an NHL team that saved this place every year in terms of tourism and our economy. We didn't produce monsters.

I set the chalk down. Wiped my palms on my jeans. The dampness wouldn't come off—nervous sweat mixing with the rain I'd tracked in earlier.

The storage room window remained dark. That shadow—if it had ever been real—was gone now. Probably wandered off ten minutes ago while I stood here inventing threats out of nothing.

I didn't believe in fairy tales. Especially not beasts.

The rational part of my brain knew this. Understood it. Accepted it as fact.

But my hands kept shaking, anyway.

My phone buzzed against the register counter. The screen lit up.

Dad.

I swiped to answer before the second ring. Always did.

"Hey."

"Belle. You still at the store?" His voice came through thin and reedy, each word measured like he was rationing breath. That wheeze underneath—I'd learned to track it like a barometer. Tonight it sat high in his chest, tight and wet.

"Just closing up. What's going on?"

"Nothing, nothing. Just checking in." A pause. The sound of him shifting, fabric rustling against the phone. "How was today? Good crowd?"

The lie formed automatically. "Yeah. Pretty steady. Sold three hardcovers this afternoon."

"Good. That's good." He believed it. Or pretended to. Hard to tell anymore which version of Dad showed up on these calls—the one who'd built a construction company from nothing, or the shell who'd gambled it into dust. "Listen, about what we discussed. The bank situation."

My jaw tightened. "Dad—"

"It's being handled. I talked to Jim yesterday, he's working with the lender. We've got options." Each sentence came with a pause, like climbing stairs. "Just takes time. Paperwork. You know how these things go."

I didn't. Not really. He'd kept me out of it until the damage was done, until his "opportunities" and "sure things" had carved holes too deep to hide. The store's loan was in my name. The liability sat on my shoulders. But the mistakes? Those were his.