Night three.

The headache started on night two, by the way.

Now it's something else.

Thick, solid pressure behind my eyes, pulsing in time with my heartbeat, feels less like a headache,

more like my skulls trying to unmake itself from the inside.

I was at my desk staring at an incident report into the letters bled together

when Nika's father shouldered his way into the station.

His daughter Nika was a silent shadow behind him. Her small face far too

serious. Harper! Heaving the cooler onto the breakroom table with a wet thud. Forty pounds of silver

salmon for saving my girl. I stood, in the motion sending a fresh, hot spike through my temples.

This is too much.

I was just doing my job.

My objection died as Nika's voice.

Small but impossibly clear, cut through the station's low hum.

Auntie showed me where to wait,' she said.

"'She said someone would come before the bad thing did.'

Then the studio went silent.

One moment there was the familiar clutter of noise,

Chief Morrison's low chuckle, the clack of Dale's keyboard,

static hiss of the radio. The next,

there was nothing. It was as if a glass bell had dropped over the entire room. Morrison was

frozen, his coffee cup and inch from his lips. Dale's hand hovered over his mouse, his fingers

...