Page 10 of Marked

“He’s coming back tomorrow to look at my car properly. Seems nice enough.”

“Coming back?” Luke’s voice was doing that thing where it mixed concern with judgment. “To your remote murder cottage? Alone?”

“As opposed to what? The crowds of witnesses in this thriving metropolis?”

“Don’t sass me when I’m worried about you.” He paused. “What’s he look like?”

I rolled my eyes. “Really? That’s your concern right now?”

“Hey, if you’re going to get murdered by a local, he should at least be hot.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

“Wait! I’m serious—I couldn’t find anything about this town online, and Eomma’s been chanting your name all day. She says she has a bad feeling.”

“Luke—”

“Don’t ‘Luke’ me. And text me every hour or she’ll drive up there herself to perform a full protection ritual.”

“Imo(Aunty) rituals are scarier than the National Guard.”

“Right? She’s already got her prayer beads out. I swear she has a sixth sense for when I’m worried about you.”

“Tell her I’m fine, and her favorite almost-son promises to text regularly and avoid any obvious murder scenarios.”

“You better. Or we’ll both be getting cleansed into next week.”

I hung up, grinning despite myself. Luke’s family superstitions were oddly comforting tonight. I pulled my laptop from my bag, setting it up on the coffee table. At least there was Wi-Fi—another mysterious courtesy. The blue light from the screen felt comforting, modern, safe. A barrier between me and whatever memories this place wanted to drag up.

“Just until I figure out what’s going on,” I promised the cottage at large, burrowing into my sleeping bag. “Just until things feel less…”Dangerous? Familiar? Watched?

The living room felt safer somehow. More neutral. No weird shadows from diamond-patterned windows, no half-remembered warnings about not looking back. Just me, my sleeping bag, and the reassuring glow of modern technology.

The cottage creaked and settled around me, its familiar yet strange noises both soothing and unsettling. Somewhere upstairs, a floorboard groaned.

I pulled my sleeping bag tighter around me and definitely didn’t think about shadows or running or why my mother never mentioned the Stones.

I pulled up Google Maps, trying to get my bearings. Cedar Grove wasn’t even big enough to show up as more than a tiny dot, buried between vast stretches of national forest. The nearest real city, Bellingham, was technically only an hour away—if you could call it “away” when the only route there involved narrow mountain roads that disappeared under snow half the year. The map showed a deceptively simple line between here andcivilization, but it didn’t show the patches with no cell service, the hairpin turns that became death traps in bad weather, or the miles of dense forest pressing in from all sides. Even Bellingham felt too woodsy, too close to all this wilderness.

“Let’s see what civilization has to offer,” I muttered, opening multiple tabs. Job listings, apartment rentals, anything that screamed ‘concrete jungle’ rather than actual jungle. The glow of online job boards felt like a lifeline to the normal world.

Seattle. Los Angeles. San Francisco. Vegas. Places where the trees at least had the decency to stay in designated parks, where no one would look twice at a half-Asian guy with weird eyes, where buildings blocked out any view of the mountains. I started firing off applications like digital SOS signals, trying to ignore how the cottage seemed to grow quieter with each submission, like it was holding its breath.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” I told the walls. “This is temporary. Just until I find something far, far away from any place that has grove or forest in its name.”

The apartment listings in major cities were depressing—everything either cost a kidney per month or looked like it had last been updated when Mom was my age. Still, I bookmarked a few possibilities. A shoebox studio in downtown Seattle. A questionable sublet in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. Even a possibly haunted room share in LA’s Koreatown.

A loud creak from upstairs made me jump.

“Just the house settling,” I whispered, pulling my sleeping bag tighter. “Totally normal old house noises that have nothing to do with weird memories or suspiciously helpful maintenance men or…”

I forced my attention back to the screen.Studio apartment, utilities included, only slightly murderous vibesseemed like a perfectly reasonable option compared to this place. Even if itmeant living on ramen for the foreseeable future. Even if it meant starting over completely.

Even if something deep inside me whispered that leaving might not be as simple as packing up my Honda and hitting the road.

The cottage creaked again, this time from somewhere near the stairs. I pulled my sleeping bag up to my chin, the soft glow of my laptop screen suddenly seeming very inadequate against the pressing darkness.

“Just until I sell this place,” I promised myself, trying to ignore how the words felt hollow. “Just until I find something in a nice, normal city where the biggest wildlife threat is pigeons.”

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