Blades Out (The Hollowgrave Wraiths #2)

Chapter 1

Olivia

The kettle hissed behind me as I wrestled my hair into a messy ponytail, the elastic snapping against my fingers.

The apartment still smelled faintly of fresh paint and old tenants' regrets, but it was mine.

All six hundred square feet of peeling linoleum, thrift-store curtains, and a bathroom sink that hissed like it resented being woken up.

I didn't love it.

But I loved what it meant—freedom.

Morning light filtered through the crooked blinds I'd hung myself, leaving golden bars across the mismatched furniture I'd hauled up three flights of stairs piece by piece.

The couch sagged in the middle, upholstered in a shade of brown that suggested someone's grandmother had died in 1987.

The coffee table wobbled on uneven legs I kept meaning to fix.

The walls breathed when the neighbors fought—which they did, loudly, at two in the morning most Thursdays.

None of it matched. None of it was new.

All of it was mine.

I checked my phone while the kettle screamed. The screen lit up empty. No new messages. The ache settled into my chest like an old friend taking up residence, familiar and unwelcome. I scrolled anyway, just to be sure, just in case someone had thought of me overnight.

They hadn't.

I poured water over instant coffee—the cheap kind that tasted like burned cardboard but cost three dollars for a month's supply.

Steam rose and fogged the window above the sink, the one that looked out onto the brick wall of the building next door.

Sometimes I caught glimpses of other people's lives through their windows. Mostly I saw bricks.

The A/C unit rattled to life in the corner, drowning out the sounds of traffic below. It leaked condensation onto the floor in a puddle I'd learned to step around. I'd put down a towel. It helped.

I drank the coffee black, standing at the counter because sitting felt like I had time to waste.

Last night I'd woken at three to check the deadbolt again, then the chain, then the window locks.

The darkness in the corner by the bathroom had seemed deeper than usual, shaped wrong.

I'd lain awake until the shapes resolved themselves into a laundry basket and a coat rack and the harmless geometry of cheap furniture.

But that was last night.

This morning I checked the locks out of habit, not fear. That was what I told myself. The deadbolt. The chain. The doorknob twisted to confirm it held.

I grabbed my bag—canvas, secondhand, fraying at one strap—and left early. Being late terrified me in ways the dark corners never could.

The drive into Hollowgrave proper never got easier.

I gripped the steering wheel as my ancient Honda Civic rattled over cobblestones that had no business existing in the twenty-first century.

The town sprawled before me like something out of a fever dream—Victorian architecture crammed against brutalist concrete, church spires piercing the low-hanging fog that never quite burned off, even at noon.

Gargoyles leered from courthouse eaves. Iron lampposts lined streets that curved without logic, as if the city planners had been drunk or possibly cursed.

Everything here looked like it was auditioning for a horror movie.

The GPS gave up two turns back. I navigated by memory now, following the route I'd driven three times this week already, practicing.

Past the cemetery with its crooked headstones.

Past the diner with the flickering neon sign that read "E T" because the "A" had died sometime during the Reagan administration.

The stadium rose ahead, impossible to miss.

Hollowgrave Arena squatted on the edge of downtown like a beast mid-crouch.

Concrete and steel, brutal in its geometry, with banners hanging limp in the still air.

THE HOLLOWGRAVE WRAITHS in letters ten feet tall, purple and black, the team logo—a spectral figure clutching a hockey stick—snarling from every surface.

The parking lot stretched vast and mostly empty at this hour, dotted with trucks and beat-up sedans that belonged to people who showed up early because the work demanded it.

I pulled into a spot near the back. Cut the engine. Sat there.

This was it. My new journey. No safety net, no backup plan, no one waiting at home to ask how my day went. I'd left all that behind—the people who said they loved me but loved control more, the friends who weren't really friends, the apartment I'd shared with ghosts of who I used to be.

This version of me sat alone in a parking lot in a town that looked like Halloween vomited on a history textbook, about to walk into a job I'd fought for with everything I had.

Nobody had handed me this. Nobody was holding my hand.

I grabbed my bag and got out before the fear could catch up.

The glass doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss.

"Help you?" The security guard didn't look up from his crossword puzzle, pen tapping against the folded newspaper.

I fished out my ID from the depths of my bag; the laminated card still stiff and new. "Olivia Bennett. I'm starting today—at the cafe?"

He squinted at the photo, then at my face, like he was comparing passport photos at an international border. Finally, he grunted and waved me through. The turnstile clicked as I pushed past, my bag catching on the metal bar before I yanked it free.

The interior swallowed me whole.

Hollowgrave Arena didn't believe in subtlety.

The main corridor stretched wide enough to drive a truck through, walls plastered with decades of hockey history.

Championship banners hung from the ceiling, purple and black fabric rippling in the artificial breeze from industrial air vents.

The smell hit me immediately—ice and rubber, sweat baked into concrete, the ghost of a thousand beers spilled in celebration or despair.

Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in a sterile glow that somehow made the shadows deeper.

I passed a concession stand, shuttered and dark. A janitor pushed a mop across tiles that had seen better decades. The sound of skates on ice echoed from somewhere distant, rhythmic and sharp.

I should have asked for directions.

The corridors branched like veins, each one identical. I took a left, then a right, following signs that contradicted themselves. Administration this way. Locker rooms that way. Ice level—an arrow pointing in three directions simultaneously.

Then I stopped.

A wall of photographs stretched before me, frames packed so tight they formed a mosaic of frozen moments. Players mid-slapshot, coaches screaming from the bench, fans with faces painted in team colors. Years of history crystallized in glossy prints.

And there, third row from the top.

Him.

My heart forgot how to beat properly, stuttering in my chest like a malfunctioning engine.

Rhys Ackerman stared out from the photograph, younger but unmistakable.

Long black hair pulled back, tired eyes that looked like they'd seen too much and cared about too little.

He wore the Wraiths jersey, number obscured by the angle, his expression flat and unreadable even in what should have been a victory shot.

The caption beneath: Assistant Coach - Former Defenseman - "The Eraser"

My fingers found the strap of my bag, gripping until my knuckles ached.

I didn't know he'd played hockey. Not back then, when he'd—when he'd done what he did. When he'd stepped in, when everyone else had looked away, when I'd been too young and too scared and too small to understand what it meant that someone had seen me drowning and pulled me up, anyway.

He'd saved me.

And he was here. In this building. Maybe down one of these corridors, maybe standing rinkside right now.

I could see him. Thank him. Tell him that I'd made it, that the girl he'd helped all those years ago had?—

No.

I forced myself to breathe.

He wouldn't remember. Why would he? I'd been a kid. One face among thousands. A problem he'd solved and forgotten by Tuesday.

The cafe sat tucked into the east wing, practically hidden behind a concrete pillar and a faded banner advertising last season's playoff run. A hand-painted sign hung crooked above the entrance: The Penalty Box.

I pushed through the door.

Stainless steel counters gleamed under harsh overhead lights, reflecting my distorted face back at me.

The hum of industrial freezers filled the space with white noise, punctuated by the rhythmic drip of a coffee machine that gurgled like it was drowning.

The air tasted burned—espresso someone had forgotten to descale weeks ago; the residue baked into every surface.

"You Bennett?"

The girl behind the counter didn't look up.

She moved like someone whose body had memorized every motion, refilling napkin dispensers while simultaneously restocking straws and wiping down the espresso machine with her free hand.

Mid-twenties, maybe. Sharp ponytail pulled so tight it looked painful.

Her name tag read Jenna in faded Sharpie.

"Yeah. Olivia."

"Great." Jenna tossed me an apron—black, stained, smelling faintly of old milk. "Put that on. Register's pretty straightforward. Don't overthink it."

I tied the apron strings, fingers fumbling with the knot twice before it held.

Jenna moved to the register, flipping the screen toward me with one hand while the other wiped condensation from the display case. "Rule one: don't flirt with the players."

I blinked. "I wasn't planning to."

"Good. Keep it that way." She grabbed a rag and attacked a phantom stain on the counter with aggressive circular motions. "Rule two: don't give the players anything for free. No exceptions. I don't care if they promise you tickets, autographs, a damn pony. They pay full price."

"Got it."

"Rule three—" Jenna paused, straightening. Her expression shifted, something tired sliding into her features. "If Rhys Ackerman shows up, just give him his black coffee and pray he doesn't talk."

My stomach dropped. "O-Oh. Got it. He's, uh… the coach?"

Jenna stopped wiping the counter. For the first time since I'd walked in, she actually looked at me. Really looked like she was reassessing whether I was worth the effort of training.