Chapter 9 Mira #2
My hand tightened on the door frame. Lucian said no one in town knew about this cabin. So how the hell was Cateline standing on the front porch?
“How did you find this place?”
“I have my sources.” She shrugged, all false casualness.
“Wait.” My eyes narrowed. “Did you follow Percy?”
I meant it as a jab. A sarcastic shot to see her squirm.
But guilt flashed across her face before she could hide it.
Oh my god.
“You actually followed him.” I stared at her. “You stalked a man to his home. That’s... you realize that’s unhinged, right? You have a problem.”
“The whole town’s been talking about the bookshop girl and her three firefighters.” She sidestepped the accusation without denying it. “I just had to see for myself.”
“Well, you’ve seen. Goodbye.”
I moved to close the door, annoyance in my veins, but her hand shot out to stop it.
“Percy danced with me at the lantern festival, you know,” she said, as if someone had asked. Her smile widened. “The whole night. He couldn’t keep his hands off me.”
My brain snagged on the words.
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “Lantern festival? That’s real? It happened recently?”
Cateline stared at me as if I’d sprouted a second head. “Uh, yes. It’s the town’s annual thing. Every fall. Duh.”
My pulse stuttered.
The lantern festival was real.
An actual event that happened. Which meant the flashes I’d been having, the string lights and the music and their faces in my head… those weren’t fever dreams. Definitely not trauma brain manufacturing comfort from nothing.
They really are memories.
Real memories of a real week that someone stole from me.
The realization hit me and rearranged everything I thought I knew. All this time I’d been half-convinced I was losing my mind. Seeing things that never happened. Feeling connections that didn’t exist.
But they did exist. The festival happened. I was there.
Which meant everything else might be real too.
I looked at Cateline with new eyes. She was still smirking, waiting for a response, completely unaware that she’d surprisingly helped me.
“You’re lying,” I said. My voice was surprisingly steady. “Percy danced with me.”
Her smirk faltered. “Excuse me?”
“At the festival.” The fragments were still blurry, but I remember the first vision. “He danced with me. Not you.”
Irritation twisted her features. She recovered quickly, tossing her hair over one shoulder with practiced ease.
“Well, I guess we’ll see who he chooses at the Founder’s Day celebration.” Her smile went cold. “Two weeks from now. And when he sees you for what you really are, a temporary distraction he felt sorry for, he’ll come back to someone who actually belongs with him.”
“Don’t fool yourself.” I leaned against the door frame. “You’ve probably asked him to events a dozen times by now. And he still hasn’t noticed.” I tilted my head. “That’s why you resorted to stalking, right? Following him to a cabin in the woods because asking nicely wasn’t working?”
Her composure cracked.
“At least I’m not some desperate slut spreading her legs for three men at once.”
The words hung between us, venom dripping from every syllable.
“What’s the problem?”
Solomon’s voice came from behind me. I turned. He stood in the hallway, arms crossed, those pale eyes fixed on Cateline with an expression that could freeze fire.
Cateline’s face went pale. “I was just leaving.”
“Good.” Solomon moved to stand beside me in the doorway. “And don’t let me hear you say the word slut to Mira ever again.”
I watched Cateline’s soul leave her body.
“This location stays private,” Solomon continued. “If word gets out about our place, I’ll know exactly who talked.”
Cateline retreated down the porch steps with one last glare at me but without another word. Solomon closed the door with a thud and I heard her car start outside.
The silence dragged between us.
My mind was still reeling from Cateline’s accidental confirmation. The fragments I’d been dismissing as trauma-induced hallucinations were actual pieces of a week they have been telling me about.
“I’ll cook lunch,” Solomon said, already turning away and I was pulled back to reality.
Then it hit me. My eyes squinted at him.
“Solomon.”
He stopped.
“You said you’re going for a run.” I kept my voice casual.
“Yes.”
“So how did you get here so fast?”
A pause. Barely noticeable, but I caught it.
“I told you I’d be quick. I just needed air, I’m not going to leave you here alone that long. I was already heading back.” He still wasn’t facing me. “Heard raised voices.”
“And you heard Cateline call me a slut?” I watched the line of his shoulders, the way they’d gone rigid. “You weren’t in the room. I didn’t even notice you came in.”
He turned then. Those silver eyes met mine, and for a moment, panic crossed there. Gone before I could blink, but I saw it.
“I’m a quiet person.”
It was true he moved very silently but the excuse landed flat. We both knew it.
I replayed the moment in my head. Cateline’s venomous words. The split second of silence before Solomon’s voice cut through. No footsteps or door opening. He’d just appeared, fully present, as if he’d materialized out of nowhere.
“Right,” I said slowly. “You’re just... quiet.”
“Yes.”
He was a terrible liar. For a man who gave away nothing, his tells right now were screaming. He wouldn’t even hold my gaze.
“Okay.” I let the word sit.
His expression shifted. Relief, maybe. Or its opposite.
“I’ll start on lunch.” He moved past me toward the kitchen, and I let him go.
I stood in the entryway and listened to the sounds of cabinets opening, water running. Normal sounds. The soundtrack of a life that made sense.
But nothing else made sense.
I sank onto the couch and pressed my palms against my eyes until colors burst behind my lids.
The wolf in the forest. Moonlight on black fur. Bones cracking, shifting, becoming a shape I couldn’t name before the knocking pulled me back.
Solomon hearing a conversation from fifty feet away. Appearing without a sound. Knowing exactly what Cateline said when he couldn’t possibly have been close enough to hear it.
Percy dancing with me at a festival I couldn’t remember, a memory that had surfaced without explanation. A memory Cateline just confirmed was real.
The way all three of them looked at me. The pull I felt toward each of them, different flavors of the same impossible want. The way my body recognized them before my mind caught up.
None of this was normal.
But the journal entry made sense. The one I’d written before the drugs and the fire and the stolen week.
“I believe them now after seeing it with my own eyes and I…”
What was it that I saw? That I trusted them enough to write it down?
I picked up the journal from where it had fallen and ran my fingers over the unfinished sentence. The ink had dried mid-word, frozen in the moment before everything changed.
Whatever happened that week, the answers weren’t going to come back on their own.
I needed to find the missing pieces myself.