Page 12 of Welcome to Blackbird Hollow
He’s tall and well-built, his worn-in wool jacket taut across muscular shoulders as he leans against the counter. His treacle-dark hair is cut short, and when he turns to look at me, the warm glow of the desk’s lamp traces his strong jaw with golden fingers. My pulse thuds. He’s handsome, no doubt—a tanned face with crow’s feet around his eyes from gazing into the sun his whole life, a soft-looking mouth that could probably curl into something meaner without much trouble.
I find my gaze dropping to his hands—large, a few white scars here and there, his veins and tendons standing out beneath his skin. My pulse slips lower, down into my belly. But then my fingers curl around the paper with the strange symbol in my pocket, and I look away, moving off to the side. Ishouldwant him to leave so I can speak with the woman at the desk, so Ican get to a computer and the internet, so I can find my next breadcrumb.
But I don’t. I want to know what his thick flannel shirt smells like, if his voice is as worn-in and comfortable as the rest of him, if his name suits him and if it feels nice in my mouth.
And I want to know why, of all the people who could possibly be standing in this lobby in this tiny town right as I rush in looking like a madwoman, it’shim.
“I’ll just load the salt,” the man says as his gaze dips away from me. His voiceisperfect—rough around the edges like old leather, but deep and warm at its center. He strides past me and out into the parking lot. The door swings shut behind him, and the lobby suddenly feels cooler, as if he’s taken the sun with him.
I stand there for a long moment, frazzled and undone, a thousand thoughts running through my mind all at once. With a huff, I look down, gaze catching on the paper scrap clutched in my fingers.
The strange symbol. The tip from Cookie. Whatever’s happening to those hikers, and whatever that means for the conspiracy that I feel like I was born to unravel.That’swhy I’m here. Not to be inevitably spurned by another boyfriend. Not to have another man talk down to me about something I’ve spent years researching. Not to be distracted from my literal life’s work by a cute boy.
No matter how muscular his shoulders might be beneath that plaid jacket or how tingly his voice makes me feel. It’s irrelevant. Fuck, for all I know, Sector has a file on my usual type and sent him my way.
I set my jaw and close the distance to the desk. The woman—Marion, I think—somehow looks both deeply amused and like she wants to disappear into the floor at the same time.
“Hi again,” I say, my voice trembling. She settles her expression and looks at me deadpan, though one eyebrowarches. “I’m a graduate student at OrthCon specializing in extraterrestrial studies. I’m currently working on a grant project about connecting folklore to alien activity. So I was wondering, if you’re local, maybe you could tell me a little about the Fey and?—”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Marion says with a laugh that isn’t mean-natured, though it makes me feel foolish all the same. “I don’t touch that white people shit with a ten-foot pole.”
I freeze, heat rising to my face. At the same moment, I notice the big sticker on the counter’s plexiglass surround that reads “you’re on Indigenous land!” in curly retro font. The heat intensifies as mortification sweeps through me.
“Oh my god,” I mutter, smacking my forehead with my palm. “I’m an idiot. I’m so sorry.”
Amusement twinkles in Marion’s dark eyes, and the corner of her mouth curves up. “Well, you could go talk to your fellow idiot in the parking lot,” she offers, gesturing to where the admittedly hot guy went just a few minutes ago. “He’s probably still loading up salt.”
“Salt,” I echo, understanding turning slow wheels in my head.
“Yep,” Marion replies, and then turns away, pulling the lid off a teapot on her desk and frowning at the color of the steeping brew.
Salt. I’m a hell of a lot closer to the mountains here than I was at university, but it’s a bit early for snow in this climate. There’s only rain in the forecast. I checked. But salt has been used as a protective tool for millennia. Its usefulness is heavily debated in conspiracy circles, but still—that’s a breadcrumb if I’ve ever seen one.
“Thank you,” I manage in something that sounds too much like a squeak. I turn, trip over my own feet, and leave all my dignity on the worn carpet of the Stardust Motel as I jog out into the parking lot.
He’s down around the side of the low-slung building, loading sacks of something heavy into the back of his pickup truck. I take a deep breath and make my way over, absolutely not distracted by the way he’s since removed his jacket and rolled the sleeves of his flannel to his forearms, revealing corded muscle.
“Hey,” I say as I approach, my stomach roiling, nervous energy making my hands tremble. “Marion told me I should talk to you about…about my research project.”
He pauses, leaning against one of the bags he just loaded, fingers drumming on the tailgate of his truck. “She did?” he asks, and maybe I’m imagining it, but a hint of a blush creeps across his cheekbones.
“I’m Alice,” I offer, sticking out my hand. “Alice Blythe.”
He looks at my hand like it might be a snake. After a long, stilted moment, he returns the handshake. “Wyatt,” he replies. “Wyatt Hayes.” His hand is warm, callused, fingers engulfing my much smaller palm. “So, uh. Your project?”
It’s not a question, not exactly, but his words tilt up like it is. My mouth goes dry as I try to find words. Wyatt—ofcoursehis name is Wyatt—grabs another bag and hauls it into the truck bed. I look away from his hands, from the flexed muscles in his forearms.
“I’m a graduate researcher in the extraterrestrial studies department at OrthCon,” I say, the words well-worn and familiar in my mouth. “And I’m—uhm, I’m here on a project. I’m connecting alien activities to regional folklore. Fey folklore, to be specific.”
Wyatt freezes, the line of his shoulders turned rigid. It reminds me of a dog’s hackles going up. I watch his gaze swivel through the parking lot, as if a monster is going to jump out from a muddied Subaru.
“Don’t know if I can help you with that,” he finally says. He stalks toward the side of the building to snatch up anotherbag, but his movements aren’t so easy and fluid now. He looks distracted, almost jumpy.
Interesting.
“Maybe you could just help me with this symbol,” I say, digging into my pocket for the scrap of paper. All six-feet-two-inches of this plaid-shirt-wearing, 100-pound-salt-bag-hauling man slams to a halt. The entirety of his attention falls on my hand in my pocket, like I’m going for a gun and not a somewhat soggy scrap of paper.
“Nope,” he says, exploding back into movement and throwing his hands up. With a loud clang, Wyatt slams the gate of his truck closed, even though I can see there’s still a few more salt bags sagging against the building, and his bed’s only half-full.
