6. Voices in the Night
Chapter six
Voices in the Night
Week three in Magnolia Creek, and I was learning the patterns.
The town had its rhythms, predictable as a heartbeat once you knew how to listen.
The morning rush at The Daily Grind, when the line snaked past the pastry case and Mel's hands never stopped moving, pulling shots and steaming milk with the efficiency of someone who'd done it ten thousand times.
The afternoon quiet at the design studio, when Lila put on jazz and we worked in companionable silence, the only sounds the click of mice, the hum of the ancient air conditioner, and the occasional death rattle of the coffee maker that she refused to replace.
Evening walks through the historic district, when the light turned golden and the shadows stretched long across cobblestones worn smooth by a century of footsteps.
I was learning which streets had the best magnolia trees, their blooms heavy and sweet-smelling in the humid air.
Which shortcuts avoided the tourist crowds that gathered near the antique shops and the ice cream parlor with its hand-painted sign.
Which storefronts had been here for generations, their facades unchanged since the 1800s, and which were new arrivals, trying to fit into a town that didn't change easily or quickly.
And I was learning which details marked this place as something older and stranger than it first appeared.
The iron fences around certain properties were engraved with symbols I didn't recognize.
Not quite Celtic, not quite runic, not quite anything I could find in my late-night searches, scrolling through occult websites and historical archives until my eyes burned.
They curved and interlocked in patterns that seemed almost organic, like vines frozen in metal, like something living that had been caught mid-growth.
Some of them matched the Thornwood crest I'd seen on the courthouse ironwork, a wolf's head surrounded by magnolia blossoms. Others were different, belonging to other families, other histories I didn't know yet.
The historic cemetery had a section that was always locked, separated from the rest by a fence topped with those same strange symbols.
The stones there were unmarked, smooth granite slabs with no names, no dates, no inscriptions.
Just gray stone and silence. But someone maintained them.
Fresh flowers appeared regularly, wildflowers mostly, the kind that grew in the preserve.
And the grass was always trimmed, even when the rest of the cemetery went a few days between mowings.
The preserve that bordered the Thornwood estate was fenced with wrought iron, the posts inscribed with sigils that caught the light.
They curved and interlocked in patterns that seemed almost alive, and no matter the angle of the sun, they gleamed with an intensity that seemed more than natural.
It seemed impractical and expensive for what should have been simple land management.
No one walked into the preserve after dark.
No one even seemed to look at it after sunset, their eyes sliding past as if the treeline wasn't there, like their brains refused to acknowledge its existence.
I asked Lila about it once, while we worked on a branding project for a local winery.
"The preserve? It's protected land." She didn't look up from her screen, her voice carefully neutral in that way I was learning to recognize. "Has been for generations. The Voss family maintains it."
"But the sigil-marked fencing—"
"Keeps the deer out, I think." She said it too quickly, the words rehearsed. "I've heard deer have an aversion to certain metals. It's a thing."
It was not a thing. I'd looked it up that night, scrolling through wildlife management sites and agricultural forums until two in the morning. Deer had no particular aversion to iron or any metals. If anything, they were more likely to rub their antlers against metal posts than avoid them.
But Lila's tone made it clear the subject was closed, so I filed it away with everything else I was collecting. The oddities. The inconsistencies. The questions no one wanted to answer.
I noticed the way certain people moved.
There was a subset of Magnolia Creek's population that seemed to know each other without speaking, who communicated in glances and slight nods across crowded rooms. They shared something, some quality I couldn't quite name.
A way of holding themselves. A particular awareness of their surroundings that went beyond normal attention.
Dex Fontaine ran the auto shop on Main Street, a weathered building with a hand-painted sign that said "Fontaine & Sons" even though I'd never seen any sons.
He had shoulders like a linebacker and moved with the same predatory grace I'd noticed in Callum, that economical efficiency that suggested every muscle knew its purpose.
When he came into The Daily Grind, the other customers made space without seeming to realize they were doing it, shifting aside like water parting around a stone.
I watched him one morning, really watched him, the way I used to watch subjects before designing their brand identity. Cataloguing details. Looking for the truth beneath the surface.
He scanned the room before choosing a seat, his eyes moving in a systematic sweep that covered every corner, every exit, every occupied table.
He positioned himself with his back to the wall and a clear sightline to both doors.
When someone new entered, his head turned slightly toward the sound, even though his back was to the entrance.
His nostrils flared, just slightly, the same way Callum's did.
It was the same thing I did. The same hypervigilance. The same constant calculation of threat and escape.
Except his didn't look like trauma. It looked like training.
"Local family?" I asked Mel after he'd left with his coffee, a to-go cup that seemed small in his massive hand.
She smiled, showing those too-sharp canines that I'd stopped trying to explain away. "You could say that."
"That's not really an answer."
"It's the answer you get." But she said it kindly, her dark eyes warm, like she was protecting me from something rather than shutting me out. "Some questions are better left unasked around here, sugar. At least until you've been here long enough to understand the answers."
"How long is that?"
She considered me over the espresso machine, steam rising between us like a veil. Her expression was thoughtful, assessing, the same way Rowena had looked at me that first day. Like she was seeing something in me I couldn't see myself.
"You'll know when you know."
I started keeping a list.
Not on paper. That felt too paranoid, too much like the person I was trying not to be anymore, the person who'd documented Marcus's behavior in hidden notebooks, building a case file I'd never had the courage to use. But in my head, I noted:
The symbols on the fences. The locked cemetery section.
The way Mel's canines were just slightly too pointed, too sharp for human teeth.
The predatory grace certain people shared, that fluid economy of movement that looked more animal than human.
The "pack" slip from Rowena and Jasper, and the way his face had flickered when he said it.
The territorial markers Eli had mentioned.
The full moon warning, delivered so casually, like it was normal to warn someone about energetic wildlife.
The howling I heard some nights from the preserve, too coordinated to be random, too rhythmic to be anything but intentional.
How the brothers knew where I was... They appeared around corners just as I was thinking about them. The way my skin hummed when they were nearby, like my body was tuned to a frequency I couldn't consciously hear but could feel in my bones.
None of it added up to anything rational.
But patterns were my job. Taking disparate elements and finding the visual language that unified them. Looking at a company's scattered values and distilling them into a single, coherent image.
What image was Magnolia Creek showing me?
I was photographing the magnolia tree, something I did every few days now, tracking how the light changed through its branches at different times of day, when I saw them.
All three brothers crossing the yard together.
They moved differently than normal men. That was the thing I kept coming back to.
There was a coordination to them, an unconscious synchronicity that went beyond family resemblance.
Callum led, shoulders set, gaze fixed on the treeline, every line of his body announcing purpose.
Jasper flanked to his left, his usual easy grace sharpened into something more focused.
Eli brought up the rear, his attention sweeping the perimeter in steady arcs, missing nothing.
Like wolves running in formation. The thought surfaced unbidden, and I couldn't push it away.
They were heading toward the preserve.
Callum wore a gray t-shirt that clung to his torso, still damp from whatever work he'd been doing.
The fabric stretched across his shoulders, and I could see the definition of muscle beneath, functional strength built for labor rather than vanity.
His jaw was set, his focus absolute. There was something magnetic about the way he moved, like gravity bent slightly in his direction.
Jasper was laughing at something, his curls falling into his eyes, that familiar smile playing at his lips. Even from this distance, I could see the mischief in his expression, the charm that radiated off him like heat. He moved with loose-limbed grace that made everything look effortless.
Eli walked with his hands in his pockets, watching, listening, those sharp eyes missing nothing. He was the stillest of the three, the most contained, but there was something coiled about that stillness. Like he was always processing, always calculating, always three steps ahead.