The glass rattled before I heard the sound.
Just a soft tremor at first, a shiver through the old bedroom window of my rented house on the edge of town. I froze halfway through unpacking a box of therapy workbooks, fingers still hooked around a spiral-bound manual. Outside, the North Edge wind was a low, constant hush through pine needles, the same muffled roar I’d been listening to since I arrived that afternoon.
Then it came again.
Three knocks. Precise. Hollow.
My heartbeat jumped into my throat. I told myself it was old wood shifting in the cold or some bird being stupid, but my body knew better. Every hair along my arms lifted like I was standing under a static-charged sky.
I set the workbook down carefully on the bed and walked toward the window, bare feet catching on the rough grain of the unfinished floorboards. The digital clock on the nightstand threw a square of red light over the wall: 2:13 a.m.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
The local realtor’s voice came back, too bright as she’d handed over the key. "North Edge has its… stories. Ignore the old-timers if they mention the Midnight Caller. It’s just mountain folklore. Kids banging on windows for kicks."
Three more knocks. Not playful this time. Measured. Like someone who knew the exact weight to use to reach bone.
I stopped two steps from the window. My reflection stared back at me in the black glass: pale face, dark curls in a messy knot, an oversized North Edge High hoodie I’d grabbed from the thrift store in town, sleeves swallowing my hands.
On the other side of my own eyes, darkness. No porch light. No streetlights out here. Just woods and the thin sliver of a cloud-smeared moon.
"Who’s there?" My voice came out steadier than I felt.
Silence.
I swallowed. "If this is some stupid hazing ritual, I’m not—"
Something scraped the glass, slow and deliberate, from one side of the window to the other. Not nails. Not exactly. The sound raised a memory I couldn’t place—metal on stone, or bone on bark—sharp enough to make my stomach tighten.
Everything in me screamed to back away. Instead, I did what I always do when fear edges too close to panic: I breathed in for four, held for four, exhaled for six. The familiar pattern cut a groove through the adrenaline. Ground yourself, Sky. Reality check: new town, new job, weird neighbors.
Except this neighbor had chosen 2:13 a.m.
"I’m calling the police," I lied, because there was no service out here and the landline installation wasn’t scheduled until tomorrow.
The knock that answered that was softer. Almost… amused.
I hated that my legs carried me those last steps, hated that some part of me needed to see what waited beyond the glass. I curled one hand around the curtain and yanked it aside.
Nothing. Just my own ghost-pale reflection and the dark smudge of pines.
But something was there. I felt it. A pressure on the other side of the fragile pane, like a presence leaning close enough that if I breathed, it would fog the dividing line between us.
A whisper slid through the wood and glass, threading directly into my ear without passing through air.
"Found you."
The word was low and rough, scraping over syllables like they weren’t meant for a human tongue. Male. Familiar in the way nightmares are familiar—you don’t remember them until you’re right back inside them.
A wave of heat swept through me, too sudden, too deep. My fingers dug into the curtain. For one disorienting heartbeat I wasn’t in my bare, half-unpacked bedroom. I was somewhere else: damp earth under my palms, breathless laughter caught on mist, a shadowed figure between trees saying my name like a promise.
Except… no. That was impossible. I didn’t have that memory. I’d never—
The whisper curved again, soft and possessive. "Sky."
My name shouldn’t have sounded like that. Like an answer to a question I didn’t remember asking.
I stumbled back, heart racing now. My heel caught on an open box. I went down hard, air knocked out of me. The ceiling swam. For a second I thought I’d pass out; black edged my vision.
By the time I pushed up on my elbows, the pressure at the window was gone.
No more knocks. No whispers. Just the wind and the old house creaking like bones settling in their graves.
The clock still glowed 2:13.
I sat on the floor until my breathing decided to listen to me again. Every counselor knows the script: observe, don’t catastrophize, look for a rational explanation. Sleep deprivation. Stress. New place. My brain stitching together ghost stories into auditory hallucinations.
Except my skin still tingled where the word had brushed my ear.
Found you.
I slept in the living room with the overhead light on, blanket thrown over the couch and my suitcase as my pillow. Every time the house made a noise, my gaze flicked to the black rectangle of the front window. Nothing knocked there.
When my alarm chimed at 6:30, my first morning as North Edge High’s new psychologist, I welcomed the distraction like oxygen.
The school sat on a flat shoulder of the mountain, low and brick and too quiet when I pulled into the staff lot. Fog clung to the pines that surged up behind the athletic fields, their trunks disappearing into pale gray. A gust of air slid under my jacket the second I stepped out of the car, cool and sharp with the smell of damp earth and something metallic underneath.
Blood.
I shook the thought off immediately. Overactive imagination courtesy of three hours of sleep and one ghost voice.
Inside, fluorescent lights hummed. The main office was small and functional: bulletin boards crowded with flyers, a trophy case full of dust and winning seasons, a front counter where a woman with steel-gray hair and a cardigan covered in glittery owls typed with aggressive efficiency.
She glanced up when the door swung shut behind me. "You’re Sky Mitchell."
"Guilty." I forced a smile, holding my welcome folder like a shield. "First day of school therapist hell."
One corner of her mouth twitched. "I’m Denise. Attendance, phones, and keeping this place from falling apart. Principal Hart’s expecting you." Her gaze flicked over my shoulder, then sharpened. "And speaking of the devil…"
The office door behind her opened.
He was taller than I expected. That was my first thought. Not the most original, but my brain seemed to short out for a moment cataloguing him: charcoal suit, white shirt, no tie. Dark hair, cut close. Broad shoulders that made the doorway seem narrower than it was.
Lyeton Hart.
His eyes found me with unnerving precision, literally one second after he stepped into the room like he’d known exactly where I’d be standing. They were a strange, pale hazel, almost colorless in the fluorescent light, framed by lashes too dark for someone with his controlled, bland expression.
Not bland, I corrected before the thought finished. Contained.
"Ms. Mitchell." His voice was low and even. No question mark. Just certainty, like he’d been rehearsing my name.
Heat prickled at the back of my neck. I shifted my portfolio to my other hand. "That obvious?"
He scanned me in a quick, efficient sweep—boots, jeans, simple sweater, hair twisted into something that at least suggested intention, even if I’d done it in a gas station bathroom the day before. It wasn’t a leer. It was an assessment.
Predatory, a part of me supplied.
"You matched the file," he said. "And you look like you didn’t sleep." He gestured to the inner office. "Come in. We’ll go over your role. Denise will show you to your room afterward."
"Wow, North Edge hospitality," I murmured as I followed him. "Do I get coffee before the performance review?"
He didn’t answer. Or he ignored me. Hard to tell with a man whose shoulders seemed carved out of granite.
His office was spare: desk, two chairs, a single framed photograph of the school in winter. No family pictures. No plants. No clutter. A large window look out over the back field and the tree line beyond, the glass slightly fogged where the inside warmth met the outside chill.
He closed the door behind us with a soft snick that sounded far too final for my liking.
"Sit," he said.
I lifted a brow. "You know, if you bark an order like that to a psychologist on her first day, she’s obliged to ask how often that works for you."
Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. More like a muscle remembering it used to know how.
"Please," he amended.
I sat.
He rounded the desk, dropped into his chair, and steepled his fingers. For a moment, he just watched me. It felt less like a principal evaluating a new hire and more like… something else. A hunter deciding if the creature in front of him was dangerous or already on a leash.
The comparison made no sense. I pushed it away. "Look, Principal Hart—"
"Lyeton is fine."
"Lyeton," I repeated, overrunning a tiny stutter of surprise. "I know the basics from the job description, but if you have specific concerns—"
"You moved into the Everett place." He cut cleanly across my sentence.
I blinked. "Is that… a problem?"
His gaze cooled, if that was possible. "It’s isolated. We don’t recommend new staff choose that end of town."
"Realtor said it was quiet." I tried to match his neutrality and failed; my laugh sounded thin in the small room. "I like quiet."
He stared for a heartbeat too long. Then: "What time did you wake up last night?"
The question landed like a pebble in still water—small, but the ripples were instant, widening. My hand tightened on the arms of the chair.
"Excuse me?"
"What time," he repeated, "did you wake up?"
The clock’s red numbers flashed behind my eyes. 2:13.
"Is this a standard part of the onboarding process?" I asked slowly.
"Answer the question, Ms. Mitchell." Firmer, now. That crackle of command in his voice vibrated in my chest in a way I hated.
"Around two-thirty," I hedged. No way I was volunteering the exact minute, or the fact that someone—or something—had whispered my name like it belonged to them.
His jaw went hard. "Did you hear anything?" When I hesitated, he added, in a low, precise tone, "Knocking. On the glass."
My skin went cold.
"You’re starting to freak me out," I said. "If this is, like, the adult version of the Midnight Caller legend, I’m not impressed."
"It’s not a legend." The words came out clipped, sharp enough to cut. He stood so abruptly his chair squeaked. Pacing once to the window, he looked out at the trees as if expecting them to answer.
I watched his back, the way the fabric of his shirt stretched over the play of muscle across his shoulders. Tension rolled off him so strong it tightened the room.
"You will," he said without turning, "ignore anything you hear on your windows or doors after dark. You will not open them. You will not speak back. You will not look for who’s there."
A chill pulled through my spine, slow and certain.
"That’s oddly specific." I tried for dry, but my voice tasted of metal. "Should I also sprinkle salt across the threshold and invite the neighbors in to prove they’re not vampires?"
He turned then. His eyes were no longer colorless; something hot and frightening lit behind them, banked like coals under ash.
"This isn’t a joke," he said quietly. "We have rules here. They exist because whenever someone breaks them, someone else dies."
The silent office seemed to tilt. I gripped the chair a little harder.
"Okay, now you’re really above my pay grade." My throat felt too tight. "You don’t seriously expect me to believe there’s—what, a supernatural boogeyman doing door-to-door sales at two a.m.?"
"I expect you to follow my instructions." He took a step toward me, then another. Not looming, exactly, but his presence pressed into my space like gravity. "You’re not from here. You don’t know the patterns yet. But you will listen when I tell you how to stay alive."
My pulse hammered fast enough that I could feel it in my fingertips. "You can’t order me—"
"I can," he said, and this time there was no space for argument in his tone, "and I am."
His gaze dropped briefly to my throat, where my hoodie’s collar gaped just enough to show a hint of skin. Heat flashed along that strip as if his eyes had touched me. When he dragged his gaze back up, his expression was shuttered again, but not quick enough to hide the flash of something raw.
Possessive, that traitor part of me named it.
What the hell.
"You have no authority over what I do in my own house," I managed. "If someone’s playing pranks, I can call the police—"
"The police won’t come that far up the mountain at night." He cut across me again, softer this time, but the softness was worse. "And if they did, it would only make things worse."
"Things, plural," I said. "Do you hear yourself?"
He exhaled, a sound like he was counting backward from ten. For a moment, I saw what my students saw: an unflappable principal, all rules and calm authority. But under that, something else coiled tight. Guilt, my therapist’s brain supplied. Fear.
"You were hired to take care of this school’s emotional mess," he said. "You’re going to see things in these kids—trauma, nightmares, stories about the woods. You’ll want to tell them it’s all in their heads."
"Isn’t it?" I heard the thinness of my defiance, but I clung to it.
He took another step, close enough now that I could see the faint scar along his jaw, pale against his skin, as if something with teeth had once tried to take a piece of him.
"Don’t tell them that," he said quietly. "Don’t dismiss what they know. And don’t open your window. Ever. I’m not asking, Ms. Mitchell. I’m telling you what it will take to keep you breathing until June."
My laugh cracked. "Is North Edge really that bad on budget they can’t afford streetlights and basic safety briefings without the horror-movie monologue?"
His eyes searched my face. For what, I couldn’t tell. Compliance. Fear. Recognition.
"What did you hear last night?" he asked, soft now.
I looked away, at the foggy glass of his office window. Out there, the pines stood dark and close, as if listening.
"Nothing," I lied.
Silence stretched. The clock on his wall ticked, each second heavy.
"Lying," he said, and there was a strange certainty in it, like a sense that went beyond his senses. "You’re better at it than most, but you’re still doing it."
I bristled. "You don’t know me."
"I know enough." His gaze slid briefly to my hands, where my fingers had curled to fists without me noticing. "You are not here by accident, Sky Mitchell. This town chews up people like you. I’m trying to keep it from happening again."
Again.
The word hit something buried in me, something that flinched without understanding why.
"Then maybe don’t start by telling me what to do in bed," I snapped. "If you’re worried about my safety, maybe install some damn lights near my place. Or a camera. Or—I don’t know—send out a memo instead of stalking my REM cycle."
His jaw worked once, then stilled. "I’ll have maintenance look at the access road lighting."
I stared. It wasn’t an apology, but it was… concession.
"And," he added, "I’ll drive you home tonight."
"Absolutely not." The reaction was immediate, flaring from somewhere stubborn and scorched by too many controlling men.
"You don’t have a choice." He said it simply, like a fact about the weather. "Until I know for certain that the pattern hasn’t started again, you don’t go up that mountain alone after dark."
"Pattern," I repeated, my voice dropping. "You keep saying that like I should know what it means."
His gaze didn’t waver. "You will. I hope you don’t. But you will."
A knock sounded, sharp against the office door. The tension in the room snapped like a frayed wire.
"Yeah?" he called, voice flattening back into principal-mode.
The door cracked open and a woman my age or a little older poked her head in. Short dark hair, red lipstick, a stack of papers hugged to her chest. Her eyes flicked from Hart to me with quick curiosity.
"Sorry to interrupt," she said. "I’m supposed to show our new psychologist around before the wolves—I mean, students—descend."
I seized the lifeline. "Hi. Sky Mitchell."
She stepped in fully, sticking out a hand. "Mara Collins. English teacher, chronic overcommitter, town cynic."
Her fingers were warm and real around mine. I held on a second longer than necessary.
Hart—Lyeton—had gone still behind his desk again, that cold mask snapping back into place. "Ms. Collins will orient you," he said. "We’ll finish this conversation later."
My stomach dropped at the promise curled in those words.
As I followed Mara out into the hall, away from his intense gaze and the suffocating stillness of his office, I could still feel the echo of his voice in my bones.
Don’t open your window.
Last night’s whisper curled up from wherever I’d shoved it, stroking the inside of my skull.
Found you.
Mara nudged me with her elbow, voice low. "So. Has anyone told you yet not to listen if something knocks after midnight?" she asked, half-laughing, like she expected me to roll my eyes.
My breath hitched before I could stop it.
Her smile faltered. "Oh," she said, studying my face more closely. "So this just got a lot less theoretical, huh?"
In the principal’s office behind us, I felt, more than saw, the weight of Lyeton Hart’s attention still hooked between my shoulder blades.
I didn’t answer Mara. I wasn’t sure which terrified me more: the thing that had whispered my name in the dark… or the man who seemed to have been waiting for it.
