Jamie Gray's Arc

Chapter 1 of 9

Jamie keeps her hands flat on the counter, counting her breaths the way she's been doing since yesterday. Three days since the bite. Two days since she ran. One day since her hands shook so hard she couldn't hold a cup. She's been tracking everything — how fast her heart beats when someone gets too close, how her jaw aches when she clenches it, how long she can go without sleep before the edge in her chest gets sharper. If anger is the trigger, she needs to know exactly how angry is too angry. She needs a map of the curse before it maps her. The diner is nearly empty. She picked the stool at the far end on purpose, back to the wall, eyes on the door. Through the wide front window she can see the whole street — the crooked houses, the bridge over dark water, the cypress trees leaning in from the swamp. She's been here forty minutes. Long enough to order coffee she didn't drink. Long enough to notice the woman by the window, the one who's been sitting alone with a newspaper she hasn't turned a page of since Jamie walked in. The woman stands. Crosses the black and white tiles. Stops at Jamie's elbow and slides something across the worn Formica counter — a napkin, ivory-colored and wrinkled, with seven words written in blue pen. Jamie reads them twice. Her pulse spikes. Her jaw locks. The tremor starts in her left hand, just the fingertips, spreading fast. The woman doesn't move. Doesn't blink. Jamie forces herself to look up, to meet her eyes for the first time in days, and the terror she expects to feel doesn't come. What comes instead is worse — a flicker of hope she can't afford. Because if someone knows what she is and isn't running, maybe they know how to stop it. Maybe her map just got a guide.