Page 141 of At First Spark
Hadley notices when I stop pretending not to watch.
“See,” she says, pointing across the coffee table at Holt like he’s a museum exhibit she personally curated. “Everyone thinks he’s all serious now, but deep down, he’s still a menace.”
Holt lifts his brows. “Deep down.”
“Fine,” she says. “Shallow down.”
I laugh, and both of them look at me at once. It shouldn’t feel like a trap.
“What?” I ask.
Hadley grins. “You’re staying.”
It’s something I can’t respond to cleanly. Before I can try, the lights flicker once. Outside, the wind picks up hard enough to rattle the back windows.
Holt is on his feet before the second flicker fully settles, moving toward the hall where the weather radio sits. Hadley’s grin disappears instantly, replaced by the same watchful sharpness that lives underneath all the sisterly chaos. Rook, who has been half asleep by my feet, stands and points himself toward the back door with a low whine.
The power holds.
Holt checks the locks again even though he already did. Hadley closes the curtains tighter. I stand in the middle of his living room and realize all at once that I have started reading his fear by the way he turns it into useful motion.
That should make me feel worse. Instead, it makes me move too.
I grab the flashlight from the kitchen drawer before he can ask. Set candles on the coffee table. Fill another bowl with water for Rook. Small things. Practical things. The same instinct that has always driven me toward work, just redirected now into protecting a space that suddenly feels too precious to leave vulnerable.
By the time the first hard rain hits the roof, all of us are quiet. Not tense exactly. Just listening.
The storm moves in slower than the last one, but there’s something more electric in it. More force gathered under the surface. Wind bends the trees at the far edge of the yard and sends something metallic banging softly near the barn.
Rook goes rigid. The hair along his spine lifts in one uneven line. Holt notices at the same time I do.
“Hey,” he says, crouching slightly, voice low and calm. “What is it?”
Rook barks once, then bolts for the back door. Hadley is already moving, but Holt gets there first, grabbing the handle just as the dog launches hard enough to force it open the second he cracks it.
“Rook!”
Rain and wind slam into the house in one cold burst. The dog is a dark streak across the yard before either of us can think.
“Dammit,” I breathe, already moving.
Holt catches my arm before I make it halfway to the porch. “Wait.”
“I’m not waiting.”
“Lark.”
The way he says my name should stop me. It almost does. Then lightning cuts across the field, white and immediate, and for one horrifying second the whole property is visible at once—the trees bent under wind, the lane slick and glistening, the barn doors shifting, and something else.
Movement near the far side of the property line gone the second the dark comes back. My pulse slams hard enough to make me dizzy.
“Holt,” I say.
He has already seen it. I know because the look on his face changes in the same instant.
Hadley steps up behind us, all traces of game-night ease gone. “What?”
No one answers right away because the storm is breaking open above us. And because whatever just moved near thetree line did not look like an animal. Something that smells, unmistakably, like the beginning of a fire.
