Page 10 of Wild Thorns

But something made me pause at the window before bed, looking out at the preserve. The moon was rising, fat and silver, and beneath its light I could see movement at the tree line. Three shapes, large and dark, moving in formation through the shadows.

Too big for dogs. Too coordinated for deer.

I watched them disappear into the darkness, and I thought about Jasper's warning. Things get energetic around here during the full moon.

The howling started ten minutes later.

Chapter four

And the Thunder Rolls

The storm came on a Thursday.

I'd been watching it build all afternoon, the way you watch something inevitable approach. The sky went grey first, a flat slate color that pressed down on the town like a lid. Then green, that particular sickly yellow-green that meant hail was possible, tornadoes were possible, the kind of weather that made everything go quiet and watchful. Then dark purple-grey, bruised and heavy, clouds stacking on clouds until the horizon disappeared entirely.

By evening, the rain was coming down in sheets so thick I could barely see the magnolia tree. The wind made its branches sway and dip like it was dancing to music I couldn't hear, white blooms tearing loose and scattering across the yard like fallen stars. Lightning cracked across the sky in jagged white lines, and the thunder that followed shook the walls of my apartment, rattled the windows in their frames, made my coffee cup vibrate on the desk.

I was trying to focus on the Morrison project, but my attention kept sliding to the storm. There was something mesmerizing about it, something that felt almost personal. Like the weather was putting on a show just for me.

Louisiana storms are different, Lila had warned me. They mean it.

The lights went out mid-keystroke.

Complete darkness. The hum of the refrigerator cut off mid-note. My laptop screen became the only light in the room, casting blue shadows on the walls that made the space feel suddenly unfamiliar, suddenly strange.

"Power outage," I said to no one, because apparently I was becoming the kind of person who talked to herself. "Great."

The silence was louder than the storm. Without the white noise of electricity, every sound amplified: the rain hammering the roof, the wind howling around the corners of the building, the creak of old wood settling. The darkness pressed against the windows like something alive.

I grabbed my phone and shook it to activate the flashlight. The beam cut through the dark, showing me the familiar shapes of my furniture, my boxes still half-unpacked, the lamp from the flea market sitting on the counter where I'd left it.

The landlord's email had mentioned something about the breaker tripping in storms. Something about the old wiring being "temperamental," which I'd filed under things I'll deal with when relevant and promptly forgotten.

Relevant had arrived.

I pulled on a windbreaker and headed for the door. The breaker panel was probably in the main house, or maybe in one of the outbuildings. I'd figure it out. I was capable. I could handle a breaker in a storm.

I was halfway down the exterior stairs, rain soaking through my cardigan in seconds, when I saw the light.

Not lightning. A flashlight, steady and deliberate, coming from the landing below. Someone was standing at the bottom of my stairs, pointing a proper flashlight upward.

I stopped. My heart lurched—that old threat-response my body produced at any unexpected presence, any strange man appearing where I hadn't expected one.

"It's Eli," said a voice from behind the light. Calm. Measured. "The breaker trips in storms. I came to check."

The flashlight lowered, and I could see him now. Or the outline of him, anyway.

Tall, like his brothers, but holding himself differently. Eli embodied stillness—not passivity but choice, a deliberate absence of motion rather than having nothing to move toward.

"That was very thoughtful," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I expected. "I don’t know where the breaker box is."

"I know." He said it simply, without elaboration. Just acknowledgment of a fact. "Come on, I’ll show you where the panel is."

Eli Voss was not what I'd expected.

Which was unfair, because I hadn't known what to expect. I'd barely glimpsed him in the past few days, a figure in the background, a door closing as I came around a corner. He'd been a gap in the pattern of brothers, the one I hadn't met, the one Jasper described as taking notes on pie and thinking about things that happened three hundred years ago.

Now he was standing on my landing in the rain, holding a flashlight and a toolbox, wire-rimmed glasses spotted with water droplets, dark hair plastered to his forehead because he'd apparently walked over without bothering to find an umbrella.