Chapter 14
fourteen
ROWAN
The air in the bar was heavier than usual, the kind of pressurized stillness that comes right before a storm breaks. I watched the door. I'd been watching it since Julian started his first set, my hand wrapped around a glass of rye I hadn't touched.
When Oleander finally appeared, he looked tired. He carried himself the way he always did, like he was trying to take up as little space as possible. He saw me and hesitated. I kicked out the stool beside me.
He sat down without a word. He still smelled like that apartment. Like dust and cologne that didn't belong to him.
"You're quiet tonight," I said.
"I'm always quiet, Rowan," he replied. "You're just usually the one doing the talking. Or the... other things."
"We aren't talking about the other things tonight. Not yet. We're talking about this place. You look like you've been seeing things you can't explain."
Oleander leaned his elbows on the bar, his fingers tracing the wood-grain. "Theo took me to the East Side today. To the sinking building near the old church. He said the decay is intentional. That it follows a pattern."
I took a slow sip of the rye, letting the burn ground me.
"Theo likes to put pretty names on ugly things.
It's a defense mechanism. He thinks if he can frame the rot, he can control it.
But the town doesn't care about his framing.
It's alive, Oleander, like a wound. It breathes, it festers, and it remembers. "
"Is that why the fog behaves like it's hunting?" he asked. "I watched it this morning. It avoided the street with the hardware store entirely, but it sat on my doorstep for three hours."
"It knows where the guilt is thickest," I said, turning my head to look at him. "The fog avoids Main Street because there's too much noise, too much ordinary life. But it loves the abandoned churches. It loves the houses where people sit alone with their secrets."
He was silent for a long time.
"Why do you stay?" he asked. "You talk about this place like it's a war zone. You're a protector, Rowan. I see the way you look at Julian. I see the way you look at the door. So why stay in a place that's trying to eat you?"
I reached for my glass and stopped. He was looking at me with that unguarded honesty he carried everywhere, and I couldn't lie to it.
"Because I did something here I can't undo," I said.
"Leaving feels like running from it. And in Hollow Vale, if you run, the thing you're running from just grows bigger in the rearview mirror.
I'd rather be here, where I can see it. Where I can stand between it and the people who don't know how to fight yet. "
Oleander just nodded. He reached out, his hand hovering near mine on the bar, not touching but close enough that I could feel the static of his presence.
"Okay," he said. "I understand staying for the ghosts. I think I'm doing the same thing."
We sat in that silence until the music from the corner stopped. Julian had finished his set.
Julian slid onto the stool on my other side. For a moment, the three of us sat in a line, and the tension between us shifted into something I couldn't name.
"You played the melody again," Oleander said, turning to Julian. His voice was soft.
"It wouldn't let me play anything else," Julian replied. He reached over and took a sip of my rye. "It's louder tonight. I think it likes that you're here, Oleander. I think it's trying to introduce itself."
"That's a terrifying way to put it," Oleander said, but he smiled. It was small and fragile, but it was there.
The door opened again and Theo came in, his camera bag swinging against his hip. He saw us and headed straight for the bar, sliding onto the stool next to Oleander. He looked at the three of us, his amber eyes bright.
"Well, look at us," Theo said, a nervous smirk playing on his lips. "The four horsemen of the local apocalypse, all lined up and ready for a drink."
Oleander laughed. A real, genuine sound that cut through the gloom of the bar. It was so unexpected that I turned to stare at him. His face opened up when he laughed, and for a second he looked like a completely different person.
Julian caught me looking. Under the bar, his knee pressed against mine and I pressed back.
"So," Theo said, leaning forward to catch my eye. "Are we actually going to get a drink, or are we just going to sit here and look atmospheric? Because I've got film to develop and a very strong urge to celebrate whatever the hell this is."
"It's a disaster, Theo," I said, finally picking up my glass.
"The best kind of disaster," Oleander murmured, his eyes meeting mine.
I raised my glass and took a long drink. Julian's hand found the small of my back before he turned to talk to Theo. The four of us sat there in the dim light of the bar, and for the first time since Oleander had arrived in this town, the silence between us felt like something worth keeping.