HER BLOOD HOWLS

“Don’t text him back.”

Nia said it around the rim of her drink without looking up, which was how you knew she meant it. Sage, across the table, made a face and slid her phone under a paper napkin like that counted as restraint.

“I wasn’t going to,” Sage said.

“You already did,” I said.

She blinked at me. “How would you know?”

“Because your left eyebrow does that guilty little hop.”

“My face betrays me.”

“Your taste in men betrays you,” Nia said, and finally looked up.

I laughed into my glass. The place was loud enough to hide it—bass thudding through the floorboards, somebody shrieking near the dart boards, the hot smell of fryer oil fighting with lemon cleaner and beer. Friday at Rook’s always felt like the room had a pulse of its own. Sticky, crowded, alive. The kind of place where people came to make choices they’d call accidents tomorrow.

Sage dragged the napkin off her phone and frowned at the screen. “He said he misses my energy.”

“Men say ‘energy’ when they’ve got nothing else to offer,” I said.

“That is so specific.”

“That is so true,” Nia muttered.

Sage pointed at me. “You’re only this ruthless because you’re happy. It’s smug.”

I leaned back in the booth, vinyl pulling at the backs of my thighs, and smiled over the straw. “I’m not smug. I’m protective.”

“Those are cousins,” Nia said.

“First cousins,” Sage added.

I let them have that. Fair was fair. I had opinions. About men, about intentions, about what women should never have to settle for just because somebody was handsome and knew how to make eye contact. My father said I came out of the womb with my fist closed around a standard. He also said my mother had been worse.

I still liked hearing that.

My phone buzzed against the table. Not a text. The old-fashioned buzz of a call.

Dad.

I picked up right away. “Hey.”

The first thing I heard was metal clanging, then his voice, too casual by half. “Bug.”

That single word, and my spine went straight.

“Why do you sound like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re trying to sound normal.” I sat up, already reaching for my bag. “What happened?”

Across from me, both of my friends went still. They knew that tone too.

There was a pause. Voices in the background, low and fast. Not bar noise. Men. Outdoors, maybe. Gravel under boots.

“Your back door was open when I got home,” Dad said.

Everything in me tightened so hard it felt clean.

“No,” I said.

“I locked it before I left. I know I did.”

Nia was mouthing What? and I held up a finger without taking my eyes off the table.

“Did you go inside?” I asked.

Another pause. Too long.

“Dad.”

“I looked around.”

I was already standing. “I’m on my way.”

“Marisol—”

“Did you call the police?”

A strange silence answered me. Not empty. Careful.

Then he said, “I called Eli.”

That stopped me colder than if he’d said there was blood on the kitchen floor.

Nia rose too. “What is it?”

I covered the phone. “Back door was open. My dad called Eli.”

Her whole face changed.

Sage swore under her breath and grabbed her jacket.

Into the phone, I said, “Why would you call him before me?”

“He was closer.”

That was not an answer. That was a lie wearing work boots.

“Don’t do that,” I said quietly.

Outside the booth, somebody stumbled into my shoulder and muttered sorry without slowing down. The song changed. A fresh wave of laughter crashed from the bar. The whole room kept moving while something old and mean put its hand around the back of my neck.

“Bug,” Dad said again, softer now, “just come home.”

Home was twelve minutes away if traffic behaved and every red light feared me personally. I was moving before I’d ended the call, Sage at my back, Nia already digging her keys out because she drove like she had unfinished business with death.

We pushed through the crowd, through the heavy front door, into the parking lot striped with neon spill. The night smelled like hot asphalt, cigarette smoke, and the river somewhere beyond the warehouses.

My skin prickled.

Not nerves. Not exactly.

It started low, under my ribs, a vibration so deep I almost thought it was the bass still following me out from the bar. Then it climbed, quick and electric, across my shoulders, down my arms, into the ink on my skin. Every tiny hair on my body lifted.

Nia was saying something, but the words blurred.

At the far end of the lot, a black truck rolled in too fast and cut its lights before the engine died.

The driver’s door opened.

And whatever had just stirred awake inside me bared its teeth.