Euryale’s arm was looped through mine, her grip firm enough to let me know I wasn’t going anywhere without her say-so. To any casual observer, we might’ve looked like an odd couple—her, a mythological goddess in a sleek black dress that clung like it had been poured on; me, some unlucky schmuck she’d dragged along for the ride. Her sunglasses shielded the full force of her gaze, but they didn’t stop people from parting like a biblical sea when we walked down the sidewalk.

  It was only the ones who didn’t move that worried me.

  We were coming from another transaction, as Lily liked to call it—one of my increasingly frequent, increasingly lucrative makeout sessions with the Alterkind. It had been a simple meeting: just me and some fanged, winged, or otherwise mystical creature looking for a few hours of mundanity. I barely even remembered the guy—his face had been strikingly normal, but his shadow had moved independently of him, shifting and stretching like it had a mind of its own. Not my business. My business was the kiss, the transfer, and the cash.

  Now Euryale was escorting me back—standard procedure. If I was alone for too long, I was liable to get myself into trouble. She called it protection. I knew it was babysitting. The girls took turns making sure I wasn’t snatched off the street by something hungry, amorous, or—worst case—both.

  I should have felt safe.

  At first, I barely noticed them—just a guy in a trench coat standing too still at a street corner, a woman in dark glasses who never looked anywhere but at us. But the further we walked, the more of them I spotted. Same silhouettes. Same eerie stillness. A growing feeling of being herded somewhere I didn’t like.

  “Are you seeing this?” I muttered.

  Euryale didn’t answer right away, but her fingers tightened—just a fraction—on my arm. “I see them.”

  She adjusted her sunglasses.

  That meant she was using them now—shifting her vision, seeing heat signatures, illusions, how magic clung to things. The veil peeled back.

  “Not human,” she said under her breath. “Not any kind of human.”

  We kept walking, but my stomach twisted tighter with every step. My “appointments,” as I called them—my supernatural smooching services—had been going smoothly. No new spies. No weird interruptions. The little bug I’d caught and locked up in its crystal prison hadn’t made any new noise. If anything, the only sign it was still alive was the disappearance of my snack stash. Either it could phase through the crystal matrix, or it had figured out how to levitate snacks into its containment circle.

  The fact that it was starting to look a little rounder—and had taken on some color?

  That was just weird.

  But this—this wasn’t weird.

  This was a problem.

  Euryale guided me forward, her steps careful, deliberate. She was leading me somewhere, but not anywhere we’d planned to go. The way the watchers appeared—always just ahead, always between the moving crowds—meant we were being funneled. I had the creeping feeling that if I stopped walking, they’d stop too.

  “Who the hell are they?” I asked.

  Euryale’s voice was tight. “The Eyes of Aether. And if they’ve finally decided to move on you, things just got a lot worse.”

  A spike of cold zipped down my spine. I wasn’t an expert in supernatural politics, but even I’d heard of them. The Eyes didn’t just watch—they collected. Controlled. Turned dangerous anomalies into well-documented, neatly cataloged assets.

  And I was their next acquisition.

  “We should call for—”

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  “Already did,” Euryale interrupted. “Not sure anyone’s going to make it in time.”

  We reached a crosswalk. The red hand blinked.

  Stop.

  But stopping wasn’t an option.

  The crowd behind us thinned, leaving only trench coats, dark glasses, those too-still silhouettes closing in from every angle. Across the street, more of them waited. Silent. Watching.

  I swallowed. “So, uh. Got a plan?”

  Euryale sighed. “Not a good one.”

  Then the streetlight changed—

  —and the watchers stepped forward.

  I barely had time to think before Euryale moved. One second, she was beside me—poised, composed, statuesque. The next, she launched.

  It was like something out of a slow-motion action flick—the kind with pounding orchestral music and gratuitous close-ups. She was a blur of dark fabric and gold, her sunglasses whipping off to reveal the full fury of her petrifying gaze. The first watcher didn’t even flinch in time before her foot hit his chest like a freight train, sending him sailing into a knot of his comrades.

  For one glorious moment, I was in awe.

  Then reality smacked me upside the head.

  Oh. Right. I am still here.

  And I was very kidnappable.

  I did the first thing that came to mind—drop. Dead weight. Make myself the least convenient person to abduct. A pair of hands lunged for me, but I twisted, flailing like a sack of potatoes, and hit the pavement in what was possibly the world’s most undignified tactical maneuver.

  A trench coat loomed overhead, arms outstretched. I scrambled for the nearest solid object—a bus bench—and dove beneath it like my life depended on it. My fingers locked around the cold metal slats in a death grip.

  Above me, chaos reigned.

  Euryale was still destroying people. I caught glimpses of her through the gaps in the bench—her hair a radiant blur, her body moving like coiled thunder. She slammed one trench coat into the sidewalk hard enough to crack it. Another crept behind her, but she twisted midair, and one of her snakes lashed out, hissing, scoring a sizzling cut across the attacker's face.

  Me? I was clutching metal like it was holy relic. Boots thundered past my head.

  Then—hands. Again. Grabbing, pulling. My leg was seized, and I was being dragged backward, my nails screeching across the sidewalk.

  Then, somewhere behind me—

  CRACK.

  Something hit the pavement with enough force to rattle my bones. A shriek followed—sharp and strange, like metal shearing glass.

  A familiar voice rang out, fierce and possessive, “Get your hands off my meal ticket!”

  Lily, and she wasn’t alone.

  The air changed in an instant. Heat bloomed behind me like a furnace had cracked open, laced with sandalwood, dark sugar, and cinnamon bark—spiced and heady, soaked in supernatural want. Pheromones hit the street like tear gas. Everything buzzed with seductive energy.

  And then the men arrived.

  Not Eyes—no trench coats. These were… gym bros?

  At least three of them, fresh from the altar of protein and pre-workout. Wide-eyed and slack-jawed, they moved with religious zeal. One dove between me and a shadowy attacker, yelling something heroic. Another, bronzed and bare-chested, swept Lily into his arms like she was Lana Turner reincarnated.

  She stroked his jaw with a manicured nail. “You’re sweet, darling. Show me how strong you are.”

  The man roared—an honest-to-God primal roar—and launched himself into a trench coat like a linebacker possessed.

  It was kind of terrifying.

  To my left, a flicker of movement. A new voice, low and amused:

  "I see we’re late to the party."

  Elly.

  She landed like a whisper, light as a cat, all muscle and precision. A flick of her wrist, and twin knives gleamed silver under the streetlights.

  An Eye turned to her. She smiled with teeth.

  “Oh, you poor thing,” she murmured.

  He lunged.

  She flowed—not stepped, flowed—out of his reach, her blade flashing in a tight arc. He staggered.

  Not from the knife.

  From the timing.

  The streetlight behind him turned green.

  A car roared forward.

  SCREECH.

  Headlights engulfed him just before the sedan clipped his knees and sent him cartwheeling into a row of garbage cans.

  Another Eye turned, but another light changed—another swerve of fate—and a cyclist barreled into him like a guided missile. Tires squealed. Horns blared. The battlefield shifted.

  Between Euryale’s brute force, Lily’s walking weaponized lust, and Elly’s chaos-manipulating finesse, the Eyes crumbled. Their precision shattered. Their numbers thinned.

  They were losing.

  I was still under the bus bench, white-knuckled, watching it all like a horror fan who got dragged onstage mid-performance.

  Then Euryale crouched beside me, face flushed, hair wild, a small tear across her dress. Her voice hissing like a snake, low in warning, “Dan,” urgency curling beneath the cool. “We have to go.”

  I glanced past her.

  Lily was behind her, sweat on her brow and sparks in her eyes, blood on her heel where she’d kicked someone in the teeth. Elly twirled her knives once, clean and sharp, and gave me a wink.

  The Eyes were gone.

  No bodies. No blood trails. Just… nothing.

  The street around us looked normal. Cars moved again. Pedestrians strolled. Music leaked from an open café window.

  As if nothing had happened.

  I peeled my fingers from the bench one by one, feeling them cramp. My knees were jelly. My heart was a jackhammer in my throat.

  “Yeah,” I breathed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”