[This post is from Matt’s point of view.]
A knock on the front door echoed through the house. In the kitchen, both of them froze for a split second. Their gazes met and Hecate swallowed hard, drawing herself up straight. “Stay in here. I’ll deal with it.”
Matt nodded, throat tightening. She shot him a brave smile and he forced himself to smile back before she turned away.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
He turned off the stove and dried his hands, drifting toward the doorway to listen in even as Hecate crossed the living room to the front door.
It had been quiet in the weeks since Menhit had discovered him there, and if Matt were truly honest with himself, it was a relief from the constant tension he’d experienced back home with his sister and Thom and Phelan and all the rest. He wasn’t sure when he’d started to feel safe again, but sometime over the course of the weeks he’d been here with Hecate, it had happened and it felt good. In fact, except for the fact that he knew that his sister and their friends had to be worried about him, he felt pretty good about where he was and what he was doing.
The real Hecate was one of the most sweet and vulnerable people he’d ever met and he’d figured out how and why it had been easy for Cíar to fall in love with her—and why he’d fallen for her, too.
He peeked around the corner. There was a shadowed figure on the porch, but only one.
That’s reassuring. He closed his eyes and leaned against the wall next to the doorway, out of sight but within easy hearing.
The front door opened. Hecate’s voice drifted back to him, heavy with surprise—and a bare hint of dread. “I thought you were dead. How did you find me?”
Short but a good transition and tension builder.