The day after we found the sketchbook, the atmosphere shifted. The air itself felt watchful.
I was walking home alone, the sketchbook safely zipped inside my backpack, a secret that felt heavier than any textbook. A sleek, black SUV I'd never seen before in our neighborhood rolled past me, moving too slowly. The windows were tinted opaque, but I felt a pair of eyes on me. The license plate was mud-splattered, unreadable.
A cold prickle ran down my neck. Paranoia, I told myself. You're just spooked.
At school the next day, Hector Alcantara, the scion of the wealthiest family in Nasugbu—a guy who usually didn't know I existed—bumped into me hard in the hallway, sending my books flying.
"Watch it, ghost-hunter," he muttered, not even breaking stride. The words were casual, but the venom in them was real.
I froze, kneeling among my scattered papers. Ghost-hunter. How did he know? Was it just a lucky insult, or did it mean something more?
The feeling of being watched intensified. During lunch, I saw the same black SUV parked across the street from the school gates. When I looked out the classroom window later that afternoon, it was gone.
That night, from my bedroom window, I saw a pinprick of light in the woods across from our house. A single, glowing ember, moving in a slow, deliberate arc. The exact motion of someone smoking a cigar.
The stories rushed back to me. The kapre that smoked a giant cigar in the old mango tree near the river, its red eyes glowing in the dark like embers.
But this was no kapre. This was a man. A man watching my house.
Luna's warning echoed in my mind. "He saw me watching."
We had started to dig up the past. And now, something from that past was watching us back. Our investigation was no longer a secret. And we were no longer the only ones searching.