Closing Time

69. (End)

"Thanks for your purchase. Your bus will arrive on time. Take a seat."

"Thanks." I smiled at the cashier behind the anti-theft grill. She slid the bus ticket to me, her eyes already turning to the next customer in line.

Turning away from the window, I headed back to the entrance. It was time for my hourly snack. There was a vending machine outside.

The bus depot wasn't very crowded. There were only a handful of people around besides me. Their auras rippled with homesickness, exhaustion, or just the pure unease that came with leaving for a job you hate. As for me, I was finally leaving for good.

Taking a seat on the uncomfortable metal chairs with my snacks, I glanced up at the giant clock. Fifteen minutes till my bus arrives. My last fifteen in this place. I've spent enough time in this town. Eight months, almost nine counting this week. My welcome had been overstayed the moment I stepped into this place. I wasn't supposed to be here. If it hadn't been for those two, I wouldn't have even approached this place.

Or so I'd like to hope.

I felt like my travels had been pretty random up to this point. It clearly hadn't been true. I'd been homing into this town since the moment I left. I just didn't know it.

This Hunter Hole.

Over the last week I'd spent here after waking up, I'd constantly felt eyes on me. Police cars around corners, cars outside my bar at odd times of the night, the constant sound of footsteps behind me. The police had not only stalked me, they'd visited me. Said they had it on reliable sources that I might have a hand in the sudden disappearance of seven people.

Axel's well-placed alibi of my stay in the other town was not well received, but it cleared me of suspicions. I could see the irritation in their eyes as they called up each place I said I'd been to and requested footage and proof of my stay there. The little stunt we'd pulled in that diner there had ensured a good amount of people knew me, and thought that they had seen me sitting at that place every morning for breakfast during my hospital stay.

The blast at that abandoned factory had made the news, the rumour mill and the gossip factory. The suspicions the police had about me had pushed the last two into overdrive.

Anyone with kids would drag their children away from me or tell them not to stare. Whenever I sat down at a public place or a cafe, quite a few people would get up. Suspicious stares followed me everywhere I went. I didn't know if the ones watching me were jusy curious pedestrians or Hunters. It was hard to differentiate between them and the normal people here. I had no way to spot them amidst all the murky auras around me.

Pitying looks sometimes followed the suspicious stares. Eyes would linger on my heavily scarred, shaved head. It had taken Carla, Ryland and Robert a while to get used to it, but that was to be expected.

My story about having to rush to Axel in the other town when he had an accident, losing my phone on the way, and also falling down the stairs after arriving there was taken with a fair amount of confusion and suspicion among them too. They didn't believe me at first. But they didn't have any proof that told them not to believe me either. After all, when it rains, it pours.

However, I had to commend them for sticking by me. They seemed to be the only ones who seemed to be standing up for me in this place. It almost made me feel bad about leaving. Which was quite a big thing in itself considering how my feelings were harder to reach than before. Feeling detached and numb from events happening around me was another massive change I was getting used to.

There had been no fear when the police came to question me. No dread when I saw those cars outside my place. No worry when I'd been threatened with jail time. Not even a single moment of panic when I realised I was being followed by more than the police. My mind was always clear. Analysing everything with a clarity that had never existed before. Anything and everything that had happened around me in the last few days felt irrelevant, almost miniscule considering the scope of the events I had been a part of within the last year and a half. Nothing seemed to faze me anymore.