The tightening had been holding for a week and Daniel hadn’t slept through a single night of it.
The sensation was a pulling, a drawing, the particular drawing of a price that was winding itself up like a spring, and the spring was getting tighter, and the release was going to be catastrophic.
He sat at the diner counter with cold coffee and a plate of eggs he wasn’t eating and tried to remember what a full night’s sleep felt like.
His body remembered but his mind didn’t, the particular forgetting of a man whose body was keeping score while his mind was trying to ignore the game.
Granny came by and refilled his coffee without asking.
Granny had stopped asking three days ago, when Daniel had refused food for the third time and the refusal had been polite and the politeness had been worse than rudeness would have been.
“You need to eat,” Granny said, and she said it the way a woman who had been feeding people for fifty years said it, which was to say without hope and without surrender.
“I will,” Daniel said.
He would not.
The tightening was in his stomach now, or felt like it was, a nausea that wasn’t nausea, a pressure that wasn’t pressure, the particular sensation of a body that was waiting for a blow and didn’t know when the blow was coming.
Mrs.
Hennessey was at her booth with her tea and her hip cushion and her eyes on Daniel, and the eyes were worried, and the worry was a weight.
She wanted to ask if he was well and she didn’t ask because she knew he would say yes and the yes would be a lie and the lie would hurt her more than the truth would have.
He was grateful for her not-asking and the gratitude was a small thing, and the small things were the only things keeping him upright.
Graham came in at noon.
The sheriff’s uniform was pressed and the sheriff’s face was tired and the sheriff’s eyes found Daniel at the counter and held for one beat, two beats, the length of a man who had stopped trying to place the face and had settled for watching it.
Daniel watched Graham cross the diner and sit two stools down and order coffee and eggs, and the tightening behind Daniel’s sternum didn’t move.
The tightening was not connected to Graham.
The tightening was connected to the price, and the price was still unset, and the fact that the tightening didn’t move when Graham was in the room was evidence of nothing, and Daniel filed it as nothing, and the nothing was going to become everything.
He decided, sitting at the counter with cold coffee and the sheriff two stools down and the tightening holding steady behind his ribs.
He decided to deal anyway.
When the next ask came, when the next Mrs.
Beasley came, when the next wish shaped itself in the air between a person and their need, he was going to close the deal.
He was going to close it knowing the price would be cruel.
He was going to close it knowing the price might be worse than the help was worth.
He was going to close it because closing it was what he had been brought here to do, and refusing to close it was refusing to be what the kit had paid for, and the kit had paid for him with his own life, with his own fall, with the Brooklyn kitchen and the lightbulb and the chair and the counter and the blood on the back of his skull that he couldn’t feel because he was already in Storybrooke when it hit.
He was a dealer.
He had been a paralegal.
The paralegal read contracts and the dealer closed them.
The paralegal was still in there, reading the fine print, noting the hidden clauses, circling the parts where the contract said one thing and meant another.
But the dealer was in there too, and the dealer was stronger, and the dealer had been fed three times now, and the dealer was hungry.
Graham finished his coffee and left.
The bell over the door was too loud.
The tightening behind Daniel’s sternum was still holding, and the holding was a promise, and the promise was: the price is coming.
The price is coming soon.
The price is going to be worse than anything you have paid so far, and you are going to pay it anyway, because you are a dealer, and dealers pay their debts, and the debt is the only thing between you and the throne.
Ruby came by to clear Graham’s plate and she stopped at Daniel’s elbow.
“You’re staring at his coffee cup like it’s going to tell you something,” she said.
“It’s not going to.
It’s a coffee cup.
It’s been a coffee cup for twenty-eight years and it’s not going to start being something else now.” “I was thinking.” “You’re always thinking.
Thinking is your full-time job.
The cannery is just something you do with your hands while your head is somewhere else.” She stacked Graham’s plate with her own plate and the plates clinked and the clink was the particular clink of a waitress who had been stacking plates for years and had opinions about it.
“You know, people in this town don’t think enough.
They just.
do.
They do the same things every day.
They walk the same routes.
They order the same coffee.
Nobody asks why anything is the way it is.
You ask why.
I’ve been watching you ask why for two weeks now.” “What do you think I’m asking why about?” Ruby set the plates down and turned to face him fully.
“You’re asking why the curse exists.
You’re asking what’s behind it.
You’re asking if it can be broken.” She said it flatly, the way a woman said something she had been thinking for a long time and had never said out loud.
“Most people don’t talk about the curse.
Most people don’t even know it’s there.
But you know it’s there.
You knew it was there the first day you walked into the diner.
I could see it on your face.” The hum under his sternum was very still.
Ruby had just said the word “curse” as if it were a real thing, as if she believed in it, as if the wolf inside her knew it was real even if the waitress couldn’t quite admit it.
“You’re not wrong,” Daniel said.
It was the most honest thing he had said to her.
It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was a piece of the truth, and the piece was enough.
“I know I’m not wrong,” Ruby said.
“What I don’t know is what you’re going to do about it.
And I don’t know if I want to be around when you do it.” She picked up the plates and carried them back to the kitchen, and Daniel sat with his cold coffee and the tightening behind his sternum and the understanding that Ruby was closer to the truth than anyone in this town except Mr.
Gold.
The wolf was waking up.
The wolf was going to remember who she was.
And when she remembered, she was going to look at Daniel and see the dealer, and the seeing was going to change everything.
He stayed at the counter until Granny turned the sign to CLOSED and then he walked home in the dark and the tightening was still there, and the price was still coming, and the dealer was still hungry, and the hunger was the shape of the next deal, and the next deal was already taking shape in the diner conversations he had overheard that morning — a woman whose child was sick, a man whose business was failing, a girl who wanted to leave Storybrooke and couldn’t find the town line.
The wants were everywhere.
The wishes were waiting.
The dealer was ready.
The paralegal was still reading the fine print, but the dealer was already reaching for the pen.
⟦ THE LEDGER HE CANNOT READ ⟧ STILL OWED — one price.
Seven days in transit.
Collection will not be announced.
HELD AGAINST IT — no collateral was offered at closing.
The magic therefore chooses freely.
NOTED, three wishes are already in the room.
A sick child.
A failing business.
A girl who cannot find the town line.
⟦ THE LEDGER CLOSES ⟧ ※ ────────────────────────── ※ The lattice whispers: more chapters thread free at unwrittenrealm.com.
※ ────────────────────────── ※ A wish costs nothing to make.
A review costs less.
Both shape what comes next.