9. Chapter 9
Evie
Sleep is officially off the table. I know this the way I know burnt toast and overdue invoices. My body has decided we’re awake now, and no amount of deep breathing or pillow rearranging is going to override that decision.
So at four in the morning I’m crossing the cottage with an armload of folded towels. I dump them on the bathroom counter and start refolding them. They were fine. Perfect, actually. But my hands need something to do before I start clawing at my own arms.
By five, I’ve moved to scrubbing the floors while Marmalade supervises from the doorway. He sits there with his tail wrapped around his paws.
“This is your fault,” I tell him, attacking the grout between tiles with a brush I normally reserve for truly disgusting jobs.
He blinks slowly, which in cat language translates to something deeply insulting, then wanders off to knock things over in another room.
Now it’s six-thirty, and I’m making my way across the dewy grass between the cottage and the inn. The morning air bites at my cheeks, slipping under the thin, peach cardigan I’d yanked from the hook. I hike the sleeves up for the third time in ten steps.
My raw heels scrape against the back of my sneakers with each footfall. When I fumble with the inn’s rear door key, tiny smears of blood mark the white canvas of my shoes. I stare at them, blinking three times to bring them into focus, then push inside without bothering to wipe my feet.
The Foxglove’s kitchen door opens with its familiar creak, and I don’t bother with the overhead lights. My hand finds the oven dial and turns it to 375. The hiss of the appliance ticking to life is louder than expected, swallowing the brittle silence.
I reach left to the second drawer from the sink, the one that always sticks before giving way.
My hand plunges in, expecting the soft cotton of neatly folded dish towels, but instead meeting crinkly plastic and paper tags.
Someone made themselves tea last night and decided my organizational system was more of a suggestion than a rule.
Fine. It’s fine. Guests are supposed to feel at home here.
I find the towels in the next drawer over and the good mugs shoved onto the wrong shelf.
I pull down the mixing bowls and set them on the counter harder than necessary.
I grab the flour canister, and nearly drop it because someone moved it six inches to the left and my hand expected it to be where it’s lived for years.
I measure out three cups, leveling each one with a butter knife. The white powder poofs into the air, and I breathe in that clean, wheat smell while my brain runs its post-mortem on last night.
The guy didn’t hurt me, threaten me, or so much as raise his voice.
He crouched on my floor, petted my cat, complimented my spice rack, and left when I told him to.
If I strip away the demon nonsense, what remains is a tall, annoyingly attractive stranger with good manners and a flair for dramatic entrances.
Brindlewood has had exactly zero violent crimes in the last decade.
The most dangerous thing that happened here was when Old Gary backed his truck through the garden center display and took out forty dollars’ worth of ceramic gnomes.
This is not a town where women get murdered by handsome strangers.
Nobody even gets mildly inconvenienced here, unless you count the seasonal parking situation near the river walk. Which I do, because it’s atrocious.
Salt goes in next, and I toss a pinch over my left shoulder automatically. Mom taught me that one. I’ve collected superstitions my whole life the way other people collect stamps or grudges, and right now I’m running through all of them, trying to determine which sign I missed.
Cinnamon leaves rusty streaks on my fingertips and under my nails.
I learned to bake from my mom in this order.
Dry ingredients first, always. She used to stand next to me at the counter and say it was just chemistry.
Follow the rules, get predictable results.
That was before Dad left and she stopped entirely, because it was their thing.
The stand mixer groans when I turn it on, and I wince. I should’ve played along. That’s the part that keeps needling me as the mixer thrashes flour into pale clouds. Not the fear or the weirdness. The fact that I might’ve figured out what was happening if I hadn’t screamed at him to leave.
Daisy would’ve been fearless. She practically lives for this kind of encounter.
The unexplained, the strange, the things that hover at the boundary of what’s rational.
She runs ghost tours for a living, and has a bookshelf dedicated to local folklore and unexplained history.
A man claiming to be a demon would have been her personal Christmas morning.
Maddie would have sized him up in about three seconds, decided he was worth her time or he wasn’t, and acted accordingly. She would’ve poured herself a drink, settled onto the couch, and said something devastating enough to make him forget he was supposed to be collecting souls.
I reach for the eggs and knock the carton onto the floor. It hits with a wet crack, and one rolls under the stove into permanent exile.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
The second attempt works, but I crack the eggs too hard, yolk splattering across my knuckles and onto the counter.
I wipe it off with a dish towel and keep going.
Milk next, then melted butter still hot enough to sting through the glass, and vanilla extract that makes my empty stomach fold in on itself.
The wet ingredients hit the dry and the mixer screams in protest. If this ancient piece of machinery finally dies, at least that’s a problem I know how to solve.
Blueberries go in last. I fold them in by hand, dragging the wooden spoon through the batter in careful arcs as purple bleeds into cream. The shade makes me think of his eyes before I can stop myself. That violet-blue that had no business being on a real person. Genuinely, annoyingly gorgeous.
And the truly pathetic part, the one I will take to my grave and never speak aloud, is that the last person to compliment me with genuine enthusiasm was my dental hygienist, and she was talking about my flossing habits.
He was, objectively, the most interesting man who’s been inside my house in years. And I threatened him with bakeware.
Daisy would be horrified. Maddie would never let me live it down. And the honest, inconvenient truth is that I haven’t had sex in so long that my body apparently can’t distinguish between a home invasion and a meet-cute.
I add more blueberries and stop looking at the batter.
Footsteps overhead tell me the Wilsons are up, right on schedule. They’ve been model guests all week, actually reading the check-in information and showing up to breakfast when they say they will.
I pick up the muffin basket and push through the swinging door.
My reflection warps across the polished carafe as I set out the coffee.
Steam carries the roasted, nutty smell of the beans through the room, mixing with herbs from the garden.
The watercolor sunrise over Lake Superior hangs crooked on the far wall, but at least the plates and glasses are lined up properly.
Mr. Wilson appears first, silver hair damp from the shower, and tall enough that he ducks through the doorframe out of pure habit. His wife follows in a pale blue cardigan, reading glasses already perched on her nose.
“Good morning.” I aim for warm and capable, and land somewhere near manic. “Coffee’s ready.”
“Bless you,” Mrs. Wilson says, sitting down. She smooths the napkin across her lap, looks up, and whatever she sees on my face makes her powdered expression rearrange. “Oh, honey, did you sleep at all?”
“Not much,” I admit, pouring coffee and trying not to slosh it everywhere. “One of those nights.”
“We noticed some excitement last night, and weren’t sure what was happening.”
“Oh, that.” I place the carafe down. “I’m so sorry if we woke you. It was just a mix-up. Someone looking for a different house got turned around.”
“The police came, though.” Mr. Wilson accepts his cup, looking more curious than concerned. “We saw the lights from our window.”
Because Lucas Vaughan needed to announce my personal crisis to the entire neighborhood with his light show.
“Small town.” I try for a casual laugh. It comes out manic. “Someone gets lost and suddenly it’s a whole investigation. Very boring in reality, I promise.”
Mrs. Wilson exchanges a look with her husband that I recognize from every medical drama ever made.
“As long as everything’s okay. We were worried about you being over there alone.”
“Really, it was nothing. He was very polite about the whole thing.” The second I say it, I know I’ve made a mistake. Her face confirms it.
“He? So there was a man?”
Fuck.
“Yup.” I’m already backing toward the kitchen. “Can I get you juice? I have fresh orange.”
They both nod, and I escape before the questions can continue.
I bolt through the door and lean against it once I’m safely in the kitchen. I slosh orange juice over both rims while filling their glasses.
When I return, the Wilsons are debating the merits of Brindlewood’s eastern trail versus the steeper northern path.
Footsteps on the stairs cut off my escape as the couple from the Sunrise Room appear.
Her auburn hair is tousled beneath his college hoodie that’s slipping off one bare shoulder.
He’s lanky and half-awake beside her, fingers hooked through her belt loop like he’d follow her into oncoming traffic before remembering to ask where they were going.
They’re so wrapped up in each other that a sharp little stab of envy catches me off guard.
“Morning!” Nina beams at me. “Those muffins smell amazing.”
“Help yourself.” I gesture to the basket and pray they’re too wrapped up in each other to care about my drama.