I didn’t sleep much that night. Every time headlights slid across the blinds, I half-expected to see another white square stuck to the glass. The spider muttered nonsense in the pantry. Elly snored like a cute, tiny, elven chainsaw in the next room. By morning, the sticker on the mirror had flaked away to dust—but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been checked off a list.

  When Elly texted, “We’ve got a new client,” I said yes before I even asked what kind.

  The job was a dud.

  Not that I was complaining. Makeout gigs were awkward at the best of times, and this one had involved more tissues and hand sanitizer than usual. A local bouncer with faint troll blood in his veins, built like a cross between a sumo wrestler and a linebacker, had been testing whether my spit could finally suppress the mossy green patterns that crawled over his skin.

  Spoiler: it couldn’t. He tipped me twenty bucks anyway and muttered something about trying a dermatologist. Apparently, his troll blood made him susceptible to skin colonization by moss and other organisms. It wasn’t supernatural, just a byproduct of his nature. On the upside, I think I did make his teeth a little less sharp and his eyes a bit less imposing, though. That was worth $20 to him.

  “Successful night,” I muttered, as Elly and I stepped out into the cool air. My hoodie smelled faintly of stale beer and antiseptic wipes, which was just about the worst cologne combination in history.

  Elly wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a frat party after flu season.” She adjusted her jacket, flicking crumbs from the sleeve. “Do us both a favor and shower before you try to flirt with anyone, okay?”

  “Why would I need to flirt?” I asked, deadpan. “I’ve got you here with me.”

  Her eyes narrowed, but the corner of her mouth twitched. “Careful, Mercer. I might start charging, like you do.”

  We crossed the cracked asphalt lot toward her hatchback, which sat under a flickering lamp like a loyal but battered steed. I was already rehearsing the joy of fast food and the sweet embrace of my recliner when Elly stopped dead.

  “Daniel.”

  I followed her gaze.

  Shapes.

  They weren’t standing around the car — they were leaning toward it, as if pulled by gravity. Five of them, maybe six, figures with proportions wrong enough to make my skin itch. Their limbs were too straight, their edges too sharp. Each had a hollow in its chest, like an old metal mailbox slot yawning open.

  The Collectors.

  I had seen them before, but never this close, never so deliberate.

  One reached a long, jointless arm toward the hatchback’s hood. Its fingers bent like paper creasing. Where it touched, paint lost its shine, dulling to flat gray.

  Elly’s hand clamped on my wrist. Her nails bit into my skin. “No.”

  She was shaking, but not from fear. From fury. Her car wasn’t just a vehicle; it was her shield, her home between worlds. I knew that. And they were taking it.

  “Elly, wait—”

  She had already pulled a knife from her jacket, silver edge glinting. Her glamour slipped, ears sharpening, eyes blazing. “That’s mine,” she hissed.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The air bent. The Collectors turned their heads in eerie unison, their sockets black as night. The nearest opened its chest cavity wider. A faint slip of paper fluttered out, disintegrating before it hit the pavement.

  That was enough for me. I grabbed her arm and yanked, hard.

  “Daniel—!”

  “No weapons! You fight them, you’re next.”

  She jerked against me, teeth bared. “Let me go!”

  I didn’t. Couldn’t. My instincts screamed louder than hers. The Collectors weren’t moving fast, but they didn’t need to. They had all the patience of granite and bureaucracy. And if Elly swung, they’d tag her.

  I hauled her backward, one step, two, until her heels scraped the curb.

  “Look!” I snapped, pointing.

  The first Collector pressed both palms flat against the hood. The metal rippled. Not like denting, not like heat shimmer. It flattened.

  The car’s color bled away in waves, peeling to two dimensions, like it had been run through a photocopier. Tires crumpled sideways, doors stretched thin. The windshield collapsed into a rectangle of glassy sheen that shimmered, then disappeared.

  Elly’s breath hitched, breaking like glass. “No, no, no—”

  The hatchback was gone. Not smashed, not stolen. Just… archived. Filed into nothing.

  The Collectors stood still. Their heads turned slowly, surveying the empty space. One tilted, as though sniffing. The paper slot in its chest shuddered, but nothing came.

  Then, in perfect synchronization, they stepped backward. One by one, they dissolved — not vanishing, but folding in on themselves, edges collapsing like origami until there was only the dark, still parking lot.

  Silence.

  My pulse was a hammer in my ears. I hadn’t even realized I was holding Elly against me until she shoved me back, breathing hard.

  “You bastard,” she spat. Her knife clattered to the pavement. “You let them take it!”

  I wanted to say something clever, something comforting. Instead: “Better your car than you.”

  Her eyes snapped to mine, sharp enough to cut. “That’s not just a car, Daniel! That was mine. My wards, my sigils, my history—” She broke off, shaking. “You don’t understand.”

  “Maybe not,” I admitted. My throat was raw. “But I understand this: if you’d fought, they’d have tagged you. And then what? You’d be a file in their cabinet. A sticky note on their wall. Gone.”

  She trembled. Fury and grief tangled on her face. For once, no smart remark, no barbed comeback. Just silence.

  “You can replace the car. I can’t replace you.” I bent down and picked up her knife. Pressed it gently back into her hand.

  Still, she fumed, gritting her teeth and staring at the empty spot where her car had been.

  “We’ll get them back. The car, the people, all of it. But not if you go kamikaze in a parking lot.”

  She closed her fist around the hilt until her knuckles went white. Then she shoved it into her jacket and turned away, shoulders hunched.

  We walked. Not toward home. Just away.

  Behind us, the lot was empty, save for a faint square of darker asphalt where the hatchback had been. A perfect parking space. Too perfect.

  I couldn’t shake the thought: it wasn’t just a car.

  It was proof.

  Proof that the Collectors weren’t rumors, weren’t shadows. They were real. They were here. And they were filing the world away, my world, one piece at a time.

  It would only be so long before they came after something that really mattered to me, something more irreplaceable than a car.

  Back at my apartment, the silence pressed heavier than usual. Elly had vanished into the bathroom without a word, and I was left staring at the dent in my couch cushion like it could offer answers.

  That’s when the scratching started.

  The Pop-Tart Spider crawled onto the coffee table, mandibles twitching. Its eyes glimmered like raindrops catching streetlight. For once, it didn’t reach for the snack box.

  Instead, it froze. Legs stiff.

  “VEHICLE,” it rasped. The word vibrated like static, sharper than usual. “GONE.”

  My breath caught. “What?”

  “FILED.”

  The syllables hit like a door slamming shut.

  I sat forward, pulse spiking. “Hold on. You weren’t there. How the hell do you know about the car?”

  The spider tilted its head. Its glittering eyes refracted like glass marbles, impossible to read, impossible to ignore. Then, with slow certainty, it clicked its forelegs against the table in a pattern—tap, tap, pause, tap-tap. A rhythm. Almost like… filing.

  My stomach twisted. “You’ve been… watching. Not just here. You see things beyond the apartment...”

  It didn’t deny it.

  The realization crawled under my skin, colder than the night air outside. If the spider could spy outward—beyond the pantry, beyond the apartment—then we weren’t just feeding it. We might have been feeding Jade’s enemies intel without knowing it. Or maybe… maybe we had a new set of eyes on our side, if we could figure out how to leverage it.

  After all, we brought the Pop-Tarts.

  I swallowed. “Elly’s not gonna like this.”

  From the bathroom, the toilet flushed.

  The spider clicked one last time, almost smug. “WATCHER.”