Elly picked up on the second ring. “Daniel?”

  “Get Eury,” I snapped. “Now. Tell her to meet me at the house.

  Now.”

  “Daniel, what—?”

  “I said NOW!”

  I hung up.

  Didn’t wait for the follow-up. Couldn’t. My thumb was already slipping on the touchscreen from sweat. My legs were already moving, pounding against the pavement like I could outrun the sound of her voice echoing in my skull.

  People turned to look. I didn’t care. Let them stare.

  I was still shaking. My mouth tasted like copper. The world had that washed-out, desaturated tone it gets when adrenaline’s peaking and your body’s running on fumes. My right ankle dragged slightly from where I’d twisted it lunging after her—too late.

  My brain kept playing it on loop.

  Her gasp.

  Her collapse.

  Her body leaving the ground.

  Her voice fading, her final words wasted in warning me.

  I vaulted the last fence, cut across two unlit yards, crashed through a hedge that smelled like cat piss and cheap fertilizer. Somewhere in the scramble, my hand slammed into a chain link and tore a knuckle. Didn’t matter.

  My shirt was soaked. My chest was on fire. My lungs felt like collapsing tents. I checked my pocket every twenty steps to make sure I still had my phone.

  When I finally reached the house, the door was already unlocked.

  I slammed it open.

  Elly was in the hallway, phone still clutched in her hand, her expression mid-shift from confusion to horror. “What the hell—?”

  “She’s gone,” I said. Or maybe gasped. Or maybe broke.

  Elly froze. She didn’t ask who.

  Not confused. Not disbelieving. Just locked in, like a machine flipping to combat mode.

  “Sit,” she ordered, pointing to the couch.

  “I’m fine—”

  “You look like you got thrown off a bridge and then beaten with your own spine. Sit.”

  I sat.

  Everything came out of me in a jagged, choking torrent. My words were mud. My throat raw. Every time I tried to breathe, it caught halfway, rerouted through my teeth like static.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “There was this park—we weren’t even supposed to—she was just teasing—but I—I flashed, and it hit her—and I swear to God I didn’t mean to—and then there were these guys, five, maybe six. They were just waiting for an opening, and they took it. One of them grabbed her, and I hit one so hard it cracked his mask and then I did the thing again but worse, and they just—they left me, Elly, they didn’t want me, they—”

  “Hey.”

  She crouched in front of me and put both hands on my knees, firm but not harsh. Her eyes locked on mine like anchor points.

  “Hey. Daniel. Breathe. You are not the problem.”

  “But I—”

  “Lily made a dumbass decision to challenge you in a dumbass place, and you’re not going to carry that weight, got it?”

  I opened my mouth, but Elly slapped my knee, hard enough to make me flinch.

  “Got it?”

  I nodded. Mute.

  Good. Now strip.”

  “What? I don’t think we have time for—”

  “Not like that, dumbass,” she rolled her eyes. “You smell like fear and lawn clippings. Change your shirt.”

  She tossed me a clean t-shirt from the laundry pile and pointed toward the bathroom. “Rinse your face. Change into something that doesn’t scream ‘please abduct me.’ Then drink this.”

  It was one of her neon green secret stash energy drinks. The ones hidden behind the Dr. Pepper like radioactive waste. I hated them, almost as much as she hated it when I called them Lembas drinks. They tasted like melted glow sticks and childhood mistakes. I drank it anyway.

  The bathroom mirror sucker-punched me.

  My reflection looked like a horror extra who wandered off set. Bloodshot eyes. Skin blotchy and gray. Dried blood crusted around one nostril. Pine needles in my hair. Dirt smudges on my collar. I looked like someone who had already lost.

  I splashed water on my face. Changed. Drank more of the glowing sugar acid. Tried to breathe.

  Didn’t work. But I looked less like a problem. And that was something.

  When I stepped out, Euryale was already there.

  She didn’t say what happened. Didn’t have to.

  Her golden eyes scanned me, then narrowed like a hawk sighting prey. There was a flicker—just for a moment—of something softer. Then it vanished beneath the iron.

  “We’ll get her back, Dan,” she said. Quiet, but seething. “And we’ll make them regret thinking they could touch her.”

  Her words weren’t loud. But they cut like a blade dipped in poison.

  Elly nodded, stepping beside her. “Start from the top. No skips. No rush. Names, smells, movement. Everything. Slow this time.”

  So, I told them.

  really told them.

  How Lily had taunted me, and how I’d overreacted. How the air had cracked. How I’d seen one of the attackers mouth the word Null just before they moved. How they’d grabbed her like it was a snatch-and-grab they’d probably rehearsed for weeks.

  How they left me behind.

  Euryale didn’t blink. Elly didn’t breathe. They just absorbed it. Every word. Every detail.

  Then we planned.

  And it wasn’t one of those soft, talking-it-out plans.

  It was surgical. Tactical. Lethal.

  Maps came out. Old notebooks. A stack of notes on paper slips they’d hoarded like trading cards. Elly’s handwriting scratched through half a dozen pages while Eury traced symbols in condensation on a cold drink cup. The smell of ozone and ink filled the room. My heartbeat thudded in time with the ceiling fan.

  Elly’s voice turned clipped, professional. “We find the trail, we find her. They left you because they want you to come to them, on their turf.”

  “I can live with that,” I muttered.

  Eury’s tail hissed against the tile. “You won’t live with it if we don’t move fast. They won’t kill her—not yet. They are doing this to get at you. Their bait must be alive to work.”

  That word—bait—hit me like a nail.

  We laid out contingencies. Contacts. Eury’s eyes flashed with memories she didn’t explain. Elly rattled off potential tracking rituals like she was reading a grocery list. I just... gave them everything. All the panic. All the anger. All the ache that was burning a hole through my chest.

  And when it was done, when the map was marked and the strategies sketched, I finally breathed.

  Because they weren’t just protecting me anymore. This time?

  They were going to war for one of us.

  And I didn’t care who got scorched along the way.