The moment the crowd heard that voice, something changed. Since I was still facing them, I could see it happen. The tension broke. The people that had been staring at me so intently before lowered their eyes and turned away. Haden and the old man touched their hats and said “ma’am” to the newcomer. Then they all went back to shopping as if nothing weird had happened.

It was disturbing to think that maybe what had happened wasn’t weird to them.

I turned to meet my savior.

A middle-aged woman was standing a few feet inside the store’s front doors. She had brown-gray hair that fell slightly below her shoulders in loose, unaccountable waves that had to be natural. Anyone with a curling iron would’ve enforced some order on them. She wore simple, cheap clothes, but they fit her trim body well enough that they appeared elegant. There was no make-up or jewelry, and a smattering of freckles covered her face. Her lips were tight and straight, her cheekbones were prominent, and she had the deepest set of down-turned eyes I’d ever seen. The outside edges were low, and the lids drooped over them, giving her a look of perpetual sadness.

She tried to smile at me. One edge of her lips twitched.

“Good morning,” she said. “Emerra Cole, I presume?”

I nodded.

She walked up to me and put out her hand. Each movement was paced and as minimal as she could get away with. It looked like she was living with a tight budget of energy. I recognized the signs from my time in the hospital and hospice.

“I’m Lily Carver,” she said.

That name. I’d heard it recently.

As we shook, I said, “Would you be the Mrs. Carver who reserved the room at the motel for us?”

The edge of her lips twitched again. It did nothing to dispel that sense of permanent sorrow. “That’s right. Olene mentioned me to you, did she?”

“She did. And thank you.”

“Mr. Gladwyn will be glad to hear that you got in safely. Have you had a chance to see the preserve?”

“Only part of it. We got back to our motel later than we thought we would.”

The checker had gone back to scanning my groceries while Mrs. Carver and I talked, but there was still a lot of food on the belt. Mrs. Carver’s eyes drifted over the mess.

“I see you’re picking up some supplies,” she said.

I gazed at the collection. “Yeah. I hope it’ll be enough.”

If you knew that I was shopping for two people, it would have looked excessive, but I had to keep a wolfman from getting hungry. Before I’d left the mansion, Igor had taken me aside to explain: whatever I thought I needed to keep Conrad content, double it.

“Do you have a car, Miss Cole?” Carver asked.

“No, I borrowed Ms. Durand’s four-wheeler.”

“You might have some trouble getting this all back there.”

I blinked, looked at all the groceries again, then put a hand to my forehead and sighed. “Yes, I probably will.”

Half of it. That’s how much I could stack in the basket on the four-wheeler. And I would’ve only figured it out when I was standing in front of it.

Slap that genius degree right into my palm. I’d earned it.

“I’m heading out that way myself,” Carver said. “Would you like me to drop some of them off for you?”

“That would be wonderful of you,” I said with obvious, heart-felt sincerity.

“I’ll leave them outside your door and tie the tops up tight,” Mrs. Carver said. “Hopefully, that’ll keep out most of the critters.”

She reached for the bags that had already been filled.

“Don’t you need to do some shopping?” I asked.

“No,” she said as she pulled them toward her. “I ran into a friend on the street. She told me that there was a stranger in town.” Carver finished grabbing all the handles and looked at me. “I thought it was probably you and came in to introduce myself.”

She smiled. This time it was a full bend of her lips, not a twitch at the edge of her mouth, but it looked as unnatural as the newly painted facades on the stores, and it disappeared after only a second.

She hoisted the bags up, pulled them off the counter, and let their weight pull her arms down.

Concerned about her budget of energy, I said, “Would you like me to help carry those out to your car? I mean, they’re kind of my fault, after all.”

Mrs. Carver paused, then the edges of her down-turned eyes crinkled up with tiny lines. Part of my attention perked up with interest, as if it’d been confronted with some puzzling new piece of reality. I let it puzzle while I listened to her answer.

“Thank you, Miss Cole, but I can handle this. I know I don’t look it, but I’m strong.”

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

I blushed and stammered, “I-I didn’t—um…”

Of course, I did think that, or I had, and it was both rude and assumptive of me.

Without a trace of concern, Mrs. Carver said, “Say hello if you run into me out in the preserve. I’m not there often, but I get out there every once in a while.”

I nodded. Nodding was good. I rarely said things I’d regret when I nodded.

She nodded back and left.

When she was outside the door, the perked-up portion of my brain presented me with its realization:

That was her smile. When her eyes crinkled up, that was the only time she looked happy.

Well, not happy, but…less sad.

I frowned and turned back to face my checker. They looked down shyly.

I didn’t mind when people watched me like that. I was used to that.

I crossed my arms and leaned on the check-writing counter (a defunct technology, if ever there was one). “Thank you for speaking up back there.”

Jay made an inarticulate noise and said, “Yeah. Sorry about that. They’re not bad people, really. Town’s nervous right now. That’s all.”

“Is there a reason why?”

Jay stopped. There was a bemused look on their face. “I don’t know.” They shrugged and went back to scanning and bagging. “It’s a small town, so we’re wary of strangers.” They glanced up at me. “Is that normal?”

An odd sense of surprise echoed around my skull. Jay hadn’t asked that ironically or to tease me. It was a genuine question, and from the way they said it, I thought they probably wanted to know the answer.

“I don’t know,” I lied. “I’ve only been in a few small towns.”

Jay looked down to hide their frown and shrugged again.

Why had I said that? It was true that my experience of small towns wasn’t vast, but no matter how generously you defined “normal,” Fort Rive wouldn’t make the cut. But I didn’t feel comfortable saying it. I didn’t want to call attention to it, in case something noticed.

“I take it you’re a local?” I said.

“Yes, ma’am. Born and raised less than a mile from here.” They offered me a friendly smile. “The town’s still trying to decide if I’m trouble or not. Any year now, they might think of me as one of them.”

I grinned—one troublemaker to another.

Jay scanned the last item and rang up my total. I stifled a wince when I heard the number, but I knew that Big Jacky wouldn’t even notice it leaving his bank account. He had more than enough money, and this was nothing new; he fed me and Conrad every day.

A touch of shame made my stomach tighten, but I dismissed it and ran my card.

“Does your store deliver groceries?” I asked.

Jay let out a one-breath laugh. “I don’t think we’ve ever been asked that before. But we could arrange it.”

“What would that take?”

“Easy enough. You’re staying out at the motel with Ms. Olene, right?

“Yeah.”

“I’ll give you my number. Text me if you can, but if you’re out in the dead zone, you can use a landline to call—”

I interrupted. “Dead zone?”

Jay paused while bagging the bread. “Yeah. Out in the preserve. Phones don’t work out there. There’s a rumor that radios don’t always work.” Another shrug. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never owned one.”

Slowly, quietly, testing each word, I said, “Does that mean that you’ve been out in the preserve?”

Jay’s lips disappeared when they pressed them together, and they shifted their weight away from me. I wasn’t a friendly stranger anymore. I was a threat.

I smiled and waved my hand. “Never mind. It’s not important.” I leaned forward and confided, “This is my first time in a swamp. I’m nervous about the snakes.”

They relaxed. “You know that April is the start of gator mating season, right?”

“And…that’s a bad thing?”

Jay chuckled as they finished bagging the bread and reached for the next thing in line. “Anyway, call me. I’ll pick up. We’ll get your order, and if I can’t run your groceries out to you, I’ll find someone who can.”

“Thank you, Jay.”

For a moment, they looked confused, then a hand went to their name tag and a wry smile appeared on their face. It was a cute look for them.

“Right,” they said. “You can read.”

I put out my hand. “I’m Emerra Cole.”

Jay nodded to me as we shook. “Welcome to Fort Rive, Emerra. I hope you enjoy your visit.”

As I gathered up the second half of my purchase, I said, “Do you mind if I ask…”

Jay cocked their head.

I pointed at them. “Guy or girl?”

They looked down for a moment, then raised their head again. “G-girl.”

My brain made note of the infinitesimal stammer, and the oh-so faint shade of pink in her cheeks.

She added, “Thank you for asking.”

We grinned at each other. Two poor fools who probably got more than our fair share of that question. Forget fellow troublemakers—we were practically sisters.

After she gave me her number, I thanked her for her help and wished her a good day. Before I could take more than a step, she blurted out, “Be careful out there.”

I hesitated. “In the town?”

“In the preserve,” Jay said.

My magical eyes kicked into gear. I could see, just behind her eyes, a tension that looked like faded lightning sizzling across the surface of a clear blue lake.

My skin crawled, and I felt a ghostly weight on my shoulders. When I turned to look, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the old man who’d tried to warn me about the preserve. He’d taken the place behind me in line. The weight was his eyes boring into me.

I looked at Jay. “Thank you. I will.”

I headed out to the four-wheeler. Once the groceries were loaded and secured, I drove back to the motel, feeling thoughtful and unnerved by my experience.

When I got back, the groceries that Mrs. Carver had dropped off were waiting in front of my motel room door with all their tops tied. The only critter that had found them was Jasper. The cat was sitting beside them, scowling.

“Ms. Durand said I could bring in some food,” I reminded him as I pulled the rest of the groceries out of the four-wheeler, “so stop glaring at me like that. I’ve had enough people glaring at me today.”

The end of his bottle brush tail flicked as he rose to his feet and sauntered away—probably to snitch on me. I put down one arm’s worth of groceries so I could get to my key.

When I opened the door, Kappa launched himself at me with a joyful cry.

I staggered back into the door frame while laughing and hugging him to my chest. It was pure relief to see a face that was nothing but friendly.

“Hey, buddy!” I said. “How did you sleep?”

Conrad had been sitting on the couch, doing something with his phone. When I came in, he got up and walked over to help me with the bags.

“You’re here!” Kappa cried.

“Of course I’m here!” I said. “Where else would I be?”

Conrad took the bags I was still holding. “Kappa was worried about you.”

“But I left a note saying where I was going,” I said.

“I think he was worried you were going to get lost since we’re out of our territory.” Conrad put his burden down on the TV stand and went back for the groceries that were still outside. He paused next to me. “Come to think of it, I was worried too.”

Between the mocking look on his face and his overly concerned voice, I knew he was teasing me. He was so subtle about his teasing that it had taken me a few months to learn to recognize it reliably. When I did, I discovered that my sweet, shy wolf-boy had a smarty-pants streak that was a mile wide.

“There’s only one road out and back!” I cried. “How am I supposed to get lost on that?”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.” He grabbed the rest of the bags and hauled them inside. “Did you learn anything in town?”

I hesitated. What had I learned? Nothing, really. I’d been handed a tangle of impressions, but no facts. There were warnings, worry, wariness—a lot of w words—but it would be hard to explain the concerns that were settling through my body like sand drifting to the bottom of…a…a…

A swamp, my mind supplied.

Conrad had gone quiet to watch me while I thought.

I raised my chin. “Yes. We have to watch out for horny alligators.”