Amanda Hayes had a morning ritual that started with two cigarettes and half a pot of coffee she never finished. The smoke didn't calm her. The caffeine didn't wake her. But the ritual helped her believe that if she could get through that first hour, the rest of the day might not kill her.
She lived in a single-story house just off an old gravel road where the woods pressed too close and the mailbox leaned like it was giving up. She didn't decorate. There were no family photos. No plants. The walls were eggshell-white, the color of stale waiting rooms and bad dreams.
She liked it that way.
Everything she owned could be packed in two boxes and a duffel bag. And some nights, she still thought about doing just that, leaving Bon Temps behind and never looking back. But she never did.
Because every time she thought about it something in her bones told her this place wasn't finished with her yet.
Amanda worked the day shift at the parish library. The building was small, and most days she saw more dust than people. The town's kids weren't big on reading, and the adults only came in for tax forms or free Wi-Fi. She didn't mind it because it gave her time to think. Even though she never liked where her thoughts went.
There were gaps in her memory. Not dramatic blackouts, just… strange patches. Places where she should remember something, someone, but all that remained was static. Waking up with bruises she couldn't explain. People looking at her like they expected her to say something she didn't know how to say. Amanda simply chalked it up to stress and trauma. There'd been plenty of that.
But sometimes, she'd be shelving books or wiping dust off a monitor and feel it again. That pressure at the base of her skull, like someone was watching her from inside her own mind.
Like her life wasn't really hers.
By night, she bartended at Merlotte's three times a week. Not because she needed the money, even though it helped, but mainly because the noise kept her grounded. There was something strangely comforting about pouring drinks for men who didn't know how to make eye contact and women who only pretended to.
Sam Merlotte liked her too. He thought that the quiet, dependable Amanda, who never called in sick and always closed without complaint was an ideal addition to the staff.
She caught him watching her sometimes, but not in a creepy way. Just… watching. Like he couldn't quite figure her out. Like she didn't fit.
He was right. She didn't.
On this particular night, Amanda's shift started at 6:00 p.m., just as the sun began to fold itself into the trees. The heat was sticky and wet, and the sky looked like someone had bled rust into the clouds.
She parked behind the bar in her dented Ford truck, killed the engine, and lit her first cigarette of the evening. She sat with the door open, one boot on the gravel, her other leg still inside.
She didn't look at the woods.
She never did.
There was something in them she didn't want to see. Or maybe something that didn't want to be seen.
The bar was already half-full with locals and regulars. The same faces every night, every week, every year.
Amanda stepped inside and moved like a ghost who had memorized her haunting schedule.
"Evenin', Amanda," Sam called from the back near the stockroom.
"Evenin', Sam"
She nodded once, grabbed an apron, and slid behind the bar.
A couple of rowdy voices shouted at the TV overhead. There was a rerun of a vampire rights hearing on the news, some senator saying True Blood was unnatural, that the "undead" would never be real citizens.
Amanda ignored it, she had heard the same thing a thousand times before.
Still, she didn't trust vampires. Not because they drank blood, that part made sense in a weird way. She didn't trust them because every time she'd ever seen one, she'd felt a cold stab in her chest that made her want to run, and she didn't know why.
An hour passed. Then two.
Amanda moved through her shift like she always did fast hands, short answers, no eye contact unless it was necessary.
Across the street, half-obscured by a dying oak tree, stood a man watching through the reflection in a dusty window. Inside, the bar pulsed with weak lights and working-class exhaustion.
But his eyes weren't on the crowd.
They were on her.
She moved behind the bar with the quiet confidence of someone who hated being seen. Her posture was military-tight, but her eyes wandered when she thought no one noticed. Like she was scanning for danger that didn't exist. Or maybe something that did.
He watched the way her fingers tapped the glass twice after every pour. The way she checked the exits often. The way she winced, just slightly, every time someone laughed too loud behind her.
There was no scent of magic. No trace of fae. But something in her felt off.
It scratched at the edge of his senses like broken glass under his tongue.
'What is she?' A thought running rampant through his mind.
Amanda paused mid-shift. The bourbon in her hand sloshed just slightly, though her grip was firm.
Something had changed.
The bar looked the same. The sounds were the same, Shania Twain on the jukebox, laughter, muttered complaints about beer prices.
But the air... was wrong. It pressed down on her skin like humidity, only colder. Like a static charge building just beneath the surface of her bones.
She blinked once.
It passed.
She shook her head and poured the drink. 'I need to stop being so paranoid'
Outside behind the dying oak tree, Lucan tilted his head.
"Huh... She felt it," He mumbled.
Not consciously. But her body reacted. That flicker—less than a heartbeat—was enough.
He closed his eyes and exhaled through his nose.
Amanda finished her shift without incident, but something stayed in her chest like a trapped breath. A low hum in the back of her skull, like a voice trying to break through and speak.
She stepped outside to light her final cigarette of the night, when she suddenly stopped cold. Her senses reaching out.
The parking lot was empty. No footsteps. No voices. No cicadas.
Just the crunch of gravel beneath her boots.
And eyes.
She couldn't see them. But they were there. Watching. Waiting.
She turned slowly toward the treeline.
Nothing.
No one.
Just trees.
But her pulse told a different story.
She lit her cigarette and took a long drag, hand steady even though her gut twisted.
"Fuck this," she muttered. And got in her truck.
She didn't turn on the radio.
Didn't look in the rearview mirror.
Didn't breathe until she was five miles down the road.
Across the lot, half-buried in shadow, Lucan stood still as a corpse, observing.
She hadn't seen him. But some part of her had felt him.
"Interesting"