Page 19 of Mate Night Snack
He led her down the northern trail, one she hadn’t seen before. The trees were younger here, thinner, with honeysuckle climbing their trunks and sunlight breaking through the canopy in long, gold slants. The air smelled like damp cedar and something sweet she couldn’t place.
A red fox darted across the path up ahead. Instinctively, Emmett threw an arm out, catching her just shy of the shoulder.
She blinked, heart racing. “Fox. Not a dragon.”
“You weren’t looking.”
“Youwere staring at a tree.”
He didn’t move his arm. She didn’t duck out from under it.
Eventually, they fell into rhythm. The path wove gently downhill, and she slowed once, pulled off course by a lopsided cluster of mushrooms.
“Feel that?” she asked, crouching. “The air’s colder here.”
Emmett looked annoyed. “You’re going off-course again.”
“There’s a shift in the soil.”
“There’salwaysa shift.”
She stood. “You know, for a guy who's worried I might trigger a town-wide haunting, you're not exactly curious about what I’m picking up.”
“Iamcurious,” he said flatly. “I’m just not reckless.”
They bickered the rest of the trail. About methods. About logic. About whether “vibe science” was a real field.
But she noticed the way he stayed close. The way his hand brushed hers when he handed her a water bottle. The way he waited when she paused to scribble something down in her field journal, even if he pretended not to care.
That night, the sky turned pale lilac with dusk as they returned to the inn.
Katniss leaned on the porch railing and stretched her arms overhead with a groan. “I think I have splinters in muscles I didn’t know existed.”
Emmett leaned beside her, arms crossed, one eyebrow lifting. “You whine a lot for someone who insisted on coming.”
“I’m not whining. I’mnarrating. And how else was I going to get the lay of the land to get a grasp on this cold case? No one is talking and you kept stopping me every time I went out on my own.”
His mouth twitched. The first hint of a smirk she’d seen.
“I’ll be back before dawn,” he said after a pause. “Miriam wants fresh warding laid by the east field.”
“Cool,” she said, trying not to smile. “I’ll bring the vibes.”
He started down the steps but hesitated halfway. Turned.
“Katniss.”
She looked up.
“If something doesn’t feel right, you tell me. Youdon’tchase it. You don’t go it alone. You tellme.”
The words hit soft and firm, like the hand he’d held to her elbow back in the clearing. Like a tether.
Something in her chest tugged at that.
“Okay,” she said quietly.
He nodded and walked into the dark, swallowed by trees and silence.
