Episode Two: Part One
The air in Charleston is getting heavier, thick with the scent of jasmine and old secrets. And for photographer Manon, the spring season is giving way to something far more complicated than the heat: a woman named Falcon.
Falcon writes letters by hand, drives a vintage Shelby Mustang, and knows the crumbling history of every building in the city. She’s perceptive, guarded, and utterly captivating—but the more Manon sees of her, the more questions arise. Why is Falcon only available after sunset? Why does her skin feel so cool? And what is the impossible truth behind the 170-year-old deed of her historic Battery mansion?
In this installment, the slow-burn courtship intensifies, and Manon is forced to confront the fact that the woman she’s falling for may not just be careful, but dangerous. Dive back into the mystery and the atmospheric romance.
Spring into Summer 2024
The note arrived the morning after the gallery opening.
Manon found it slipped under her apartment door, cream-colored paper, heavy weight, the kind you couldn’t buy at Staples. The handwriting was elegant, old-fashioned, written with what had to be a fountain pen.
Thank you for yesterday evening. I haven’t been that captivated by conversation in longer than I care to admit. The phosphate factory awaits. — Falcon
No phone call. No text. A handwritten note like something from another century.
Manon stood in her narrow kitchen, coffee going cold in her hand, reading it three times. Her friend Emma would call this pretentious. A red flag. Who wrote actual letters anymore?
But Manon folded it carefully and tucked it into her camera bag.
The phosphate factory squatted on the Ashley River like a dying beast.
All crumbling brick and rusted metal, surrounded by marsh grass and mosquitoes. Manon had been photographing it for months, documenting its slow surrender before developers finally tore it down. The light at sunset turned everything golden, softening the violence of decay.
She was adjusting her tripod in what had been the maternity ward when she heard the car.
A vintage Shelby Mustang, dark green, engine purring like a satisfied cat. Falcon emerged wearing linen trousers and a loose white shirt, sleeves rolled to her elbows. She looked like she’d stepped out of a 1920s photograph herself.
“You came,” Manon said, surprised despite the note.
“I said I would.” Falcon approached carefully, conscious of entering Manon’s workspace. “Should I stay out of your way?”
“You can watch. Just don’t talk while I’m shooting.”
For the next hour, Falcon was perfectly silent.
Manon lost herself in the work—framing shots, adjusting exposure, moving through the factory’s corpse with practiced ease. She was aware of Falcon watching, those green eyes tracking her movements with an intensity that should have been uncomfortable but somehow wasn’t.
When the light finally failed, Manon packed her gear and found Falcon standing by a collapsed wall, running her fingers over exposed brick.
“They built this in 1903,” Falcon said quietly. “Employed two hundred people at its peak. Mostly Black workers, terrible conditions. Closed in 1968 when the demand for phosphate dropped.” She looked at Manon. **”The land remembers. You can feel it in the stones.”**
“How do you know all that?”
“I told you. I preserve old buildings. You learn their stories.” Falcon’s smile was slight.
“Besides, Charleston is a small city. Everything here has history, whether we want to remember it or not.”
They walked along the river as dusk deepened into night.
Falcon asked questions like she genuinely wanted answers—not the art school responses about composition and light, but the real reasons. Why Texas felt like suffocation. Why the ocean called to her. Why she photographed ruins instead of new construction.
“Because new things lie,” Manon found herself saying. “They pretend they’ll last forever. Ruins are honest. They show you what happens when we stop maintaining the facade.”
“That’s rather bleak.”
“Maybe. But there’s beauty in it too. In the honesty.”
Falcon stopped walking, turned to face her in the growing dark. ”Is that what you see when you look at me? Something honest?”
The question was odd, weighted with something Manon didn’t understand.
“I see someone who writes letters by hand and drives a car from 1967. Someone who knows too much about abandoned factories and talks about land remembering.” She hesitated. “Someone who’s careful. Like you’re afraid of taking up too much space.”
Falcon’s expression shifted—surprise, then something softer. “Perceptive.”
“Occupational hazard. I spend a lot of time looking.”
“I’ve noticed.” Falcon’s voice dropped lower. “May I take you to dinner?”
“You didn’t eat at the gallery.”
A pause. “I don’t eat much. Medical condition. But I enjoy the company.”
It was a lie. Manon knew it was a lie, though she couldn’t articulate how. Something in Falcon’s careful phrasing, the way she held herself apart even when standing close.
”Okay,” Manon said anyway. “Dinner.”
The courtship unfolded in slow increments, like a photograph developing in chemicals.
* Dinner at Husk, where Falcon ordered nothing and nursed a single bourbon for two hours while Manon ate and they talked about everything and nothing.
* Harbor walks after sunset, Falcon pointing out houses and telling their histories—who built them, who died in them, what scandals they’d witnessed.
Flowers delivered to Manon’s apartment: camellias, gardenias, night-blooming jasmine, always with handwritten notes in that elegant script.
Saw these and thought of you. — Falcon
I hope your work is going well. I’m thinking of you. — Falcon
Her friends noticed.
“You’re glowing,” Emma said over coffee at Caviar & Bananas. “New girlfriend?”
“I don’t know what she is,” Manon admitted. **”We’ve been seeing each other for three weeks and I know almost nothing about her.”**
“Red flag.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not going to stop seeing her.”
“No.”
Complicated was an understatement.
Manon started noticing the oddities in the second month.
How Falcon was only ever available after sunset.
How she never ate, only drank bourbon or wine, never finishing a glass.
How her skin was always cool to the touch, even in Charleston’s brutal summer heat.
How she seemed to know every historic building in the city intimately, describing details from eras she couldn’t possibly remember.
And the people around her.
Arthur, the serious man who drove her everywhere and called her “Guardian” when he thought Manon wasn’t listening.
Landon, the younger man who lived in her Battery mansion and had marks on his neck that Manon recognized from her brief experimentation with BDSM in grad school, but these were different. Too precise. Too regular.
Manon started researching the Battery mansion for a potential photo project, looking through city records and historical archives. The house had been won in a card game in 1852 by ‘Charlotte Falcon’. Same name. Obviously an ancestor.
Except there were no other Falcons in the records. No parents, no siblings, no descendants. Just Charlotte Falcon, who’d owned the property continuously for 170 years according to deed records.
Impossible.
She should confront Falcon. Should demand answers. Should probably stop seeing her entirely because this was veering into genuinely weird territory.
Instead, Manon let Falcon kiss her for the first time on the second-floor piazza of the Battery mansion, city lights spreading below them like scattered diamonds, Falcon’s mouth cool and careful against hers.
“I should go slower,” Falcon murmured against her lips.
“Why?”
“Because…” Falcon pulled back, those green eyes searching Manon’s face. “Because you deserve someone who can give you normal. Daylight and breakfast dates and a future that looks like what you probably imagined.”
“Maybe I don’t want normal.”
“You should.”
“But I don’t.” Manon cupped Falcon’s face, feeling the coolness of her skin, the way she held herself so carefully controlled. ”I want you. Whatever you are.”
The line between curiosity and commitment has been officially crossed. Manon has chosen to ignore the chorus of “red flags” and step fully into Falcon’s orbit, trading the possibility of a “normal” life for a terrifying, seductive unknown.
But the oddities are mounting too quickly now—from the strange staff who call Falcon ‘Guardian’ to the century-old property records that simply don’t make sense. Manon is close to understanding the impossible truth of who, or what, Falcon is. And once she knows, there’s no going back.
What choice will Manon make when the full, chilling reality is revealed?
Stay tuned for the conclusion of Episode 2 next week! If you’re enjoying this story, please consider sharing this post with a friend. It helps us grow the Substack!
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