“So I told him,” Kate said, waving her fork, “honey, that’s not how you check for a leak, that’s how you make the six o’clock news.”
She’d arrived that afternoon with three suitcases and a laugh that filled rooms she hadn’t been invited into yet, mid-story about a gas station in Nevada that Allison was ninety percent sure was a lie.
Her father sat at the head of the table the way he sat everywhere: straight-backed, measuring.
Her mother passed the green beans with the kind of smile that looked practiced in a mirror.
Victoria laughed the polite kind, the dinner-party kind.
Chris didn’t.
He was looking at his sister the way Allison had seen him look at receipts that didn’t add up.
Allison pushed pot roast around her plate and tried to figure out when her family had started feeling like a word problem she was supposed to solve.
Underneath the gravy, the dining room smelled like something she couldn’t name something sharp, like metal left too long in the rain.
“Allison.”
She looked up.
Her father was watching her, patient and unreadable.
“How’s school?” he asked.
“Fine.” She tried a smile.
“Good.
Made some friends already.”
“Already?” Kate leaned in, delighted.
“Look at you.
I was the weird new kid for a month.
Who’re the lucky ones?”
“Just people.
Lydia Martin.
She’s really smart.
And there’s this guy, Scott, he’s sweet.”
Her mother’s hand paused over the butter dish.
Just for a second.
“Scott,” Victoria repeated, like she was filing it.
“Is he in your classes?”
“A couple.
He’s on the lacrosse team.”
Chris nodded, still watching her.
“Good kid?”
“Yeah.
Really good.” Allison felt the table’s attention sharpen, which made no sense she’d just said he was nice.
“He helps people.
Like, actually helps.
There was this thing with an inhaler and he just”
“Lacrosse,” Kate cut in, bright and easy.
“Your dad used to play.
Badly.”
“I played fine,” Chris said.
“You played like a tax accountant.
With a stick.”
The moment broke.
Victoria smiled real this time and the table breathed again.
Allison took a bite of pot roast and tried to unknot the feeling that she’d just been steered.
“Anyone else?” Kate asked.
She was smiling at Allison like they were girlfriends, like this was just gossip.
“Come on.
New town, fresh faces.
Give me something.”
Allison thought about it.
Lydia didn’t count Lydia was everyone’s friend and no one’s.
Jackson was Lydia’s, which made him landscape.
Stiles was loud and funny and possibly unhinged, but in a way that felt safe.
“There’s a transfer,” she said.
“Emory.
Lives on our street, actually.”
Her father’s fork stopped.
Kate’s smile didn’t change.
“Emory,” she said.
“That’s a good name.
Old name.
What’s he like?”
“Quiet.
Nice.
Keeps to himself mostly.”
Allison looked at him.
He was cutting his pot roast with the same careful attention he gave everything, the muscle at the corner of his jaw ticking once, twice the tell he had for something already decided and not yet said.
“Yeah,” she said slowly.
“Mostly.
He talks if you talk to him first.
He’s just I don’t know.
Self-contained, I guess.”
“Self-contained,” Kate said, like she was tasting it.
“I like that.
Sounds like a boy with a plan.”
“I think he’s just shy.”
“Maybe.” Kate took a sip of wine.
“Four doors down, you said?”
Allison hadn’t said.
She felt the metal-smell sharpen.
“Yeah,” she said.
“The house with the blue truck.
His mom works late a lot.”
Chris and Kate traded a look.
It was fast a glance, nothing but Allison caught it.
The kind of look adults used when they thought you couldn’t read a room, the kind that said we’ll finish this later over a child’s head.
She set her fork down.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” her father said.
“That wasn’t a nothing look.”
Victoria touched her wrist.
“Sweetheart”
“I’m not five.” Allison pulled her hand back, gentle but firm.
“If there’s something wrong with the neighborhood I should probably know about it.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” Chris said.
He said it the way you’d say the brakes are fine right before a long drive.
Kate leaned back in her chair, watching Allison with something that looked like approval and felt like a test.
“Your dad worries,” she said lightly.
“New town, new people.
He just wants to make sure you’re making good choices.”
“I am making good choices.”
“I know you are.” Kate’s smile was warm and empty.
“That’s why he worries.
Good choices are the ones that get complicated.”
Allison looked between them her father’s careful face, her mother’s manicured silence, her aunt’s brightness that had teeth under it and made a decision.
“Emory’s nice,” she said clearly.
“Scott’s nice.
Lydia’s terrifying but she’s smart and I like her.
I’m not going to stop talking to people just because you won’t tell me why I should.”
Silence.
Then her father nodded, once.
“Fair enough.”
“Chris” Victoria started.
“She’s right.” He looked at Allison, and for a second she saw something that looked almost like pride.
“You’re old enough to pick your own friends.
Just”
He stopped.
Started again.
“Just be careful,” he said.
“Beacon Hills isn’t like other places.
People here things happen here.
I need you to trust that if I’m asking questions, it’s because I care, not because I doubt you.”
Allison felt the knot in her chest loosen a fraction.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay.” He almost smiled.
“Now eat your pot roast.
Your mother made it from scratch.”
The table settled.
Kate asked about lacrosse practice.
Victoria mentioned something about a parent-teacher night.
But Allison kept thinking about the look.
The one her father and Kate had traded when Emory’s name came up.
Self-contained, Kate had said.
A boy with a plan.
Emory Voss, four doors down: quiet smile, careful distance, always cataloging exits without seeming to.
Scott: golden-retriever energy, constitutionally incapable of lying.
And her family kind, careful, rule-following had just circled both of them like sharks testing the water.
And she decided, there in the warm bright dining room with the pot roast going cold on her plate, that whatever her family suspected, they were wrong.
Emory was just a shy kid trying to survive high school.
Scott was just a sweet guy who liked lacrosse and couldn’t work up the nerve to ask her out yet.
And if her father and her too-bright aunt wanted to see monsters in quiet boys, that was their problem.
She wasn’t going to feed it.
“Pass the beans?” she asked.
Victoria handed them over, smiling.
Across the table, Kate met Allison’s eyes and winked.
Allison smiled back, the strange doubled feeling of having just won something and lost something in the same breath.
Later, after the dishes were cleared and Allison had gone upstairs to finish homework she wasn’t going to start, Kate and Chris stood in the kitchen.
The dishwasher hummed.
The house settled.
“She’s loyal,” Kate said.
“That’s good.
Loyal daughters don’t ask the wrong questions.”
“She’s sixteen,” Chris said quietly.
“She’s not part of this.”
“She’s an Argent.
She’s part of it whether you tell her or not.” Kate leaned against the counter, all easy lines and bright danger.
“So.
The transfer.
Four doors down.
Quiet.
Self-contained.
Smells wrong to you?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“But you’re watching.”
“I’m always watching.”
Kate’s smile was a blade.
“Good.
Because if there’s another one in this town, and it’s living on your street”
“I’ll handle it.”
“I know you will.” She pushed off the counter, patted his shoulder like they were still kids planning something harmless.
“Just remember.
We hunt those who hunt us.
And sometimes they look like shy boys with nice smiles.”
She left him there, humming something tuneless, her footsteps light on the stairs.
Chris stood in the blue-white kitchen and thought about the boy four doors down.
The one who’d transferred in the week the bodies started.
The one who moved too careful and never forgot a name.
The one his daughter had just decided, with all the fierce certainty of sixteen, to trust.
He’d give it a week.
Maybe two.
Then he’d know for sure whether Emory Voss was what he seemed, or whether Chris would have to break his daughter’s heart to keep her safe.
The dishwasher clicked over to rinse.
Chris turned off the light and went upstairs, already planning the conversation he hoped he’d never have to have.
Four doors down, a boy with a wolf in his chest slept the shallow sleep of the hunted and dreamed of alleys and grateful ghosts.
Between them, the street lay quiet.
For now.
// ═══════════════════════════════ //
// MIRROR SERVER ONLINE //
// Read more chapters for FREE — running live on unwrittenrealm.com //
// ═══════════════════════════════ //
[ System Notification: Simulation Update ]
They are the best way to support the series and keep the updates coming.
Want to accelerate your synchronization?
For those who want to see what happens before the
Observer:
Weekly Updates: New simulation data is uploaded every week.
Stay ahead of the timeline and support the project today.