**Interlude

  Dixie Confronts Nolan**

  Nolan paced the length of Trixie’s living room like a caged thing, hands flexing at his sides, glancing every few seconds toward the couch where Trixie lay unconscious beneath a quilt Dixie had dragged over her with her teeth.

  He wasn’t good at sitting still. He wasn’t good at helplessness. And right now he was drowning in both.

  Dixie watched him silently from the back of the armchair, tail curled neatly around her paws, eyes sharp as polished glass.

  He didn’t notice her right away.

  Not until she spoke.

  “You’re loud.”

  Nolan flinched, then scrubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus—warn me before you do that.”

  “I did,” Dixie said. “With my eyes. You ignored them.”

  “Because I’m a little distracted,” he snapped.

  Dixie blinked slowly. “I noticed.”

  She hopped down from the chair and padded toward him, each step controlled and deliberate, like she was carefully choosing where to place her weight.

  When she sat in front of him, she angled her head up, studying him like he was a puzzle she hadn’t decided whether to solve or shred.

  “You’re frightened.”

  Nolan swallowed hard. “Yeah. No kidding.”

  “Humans often fear what they cannot catalogue,” Dixie said. “Magic. Memory loss. Void beings. Your insignificance in the cosmic narrative.”

  Nolan’s jaw tightened. “You’re not helping.”

  “I am not trying to help.” Her tail flicked once, sharply. “I’m assessing.”

  “Assessing what?”

  “You.”

  Nolan stared at her, caught between annoyance and exhaustion. “What, am I being graded?”

  “Yes,” Dixie said simply.

  “And how am I doing?”

  “Poorly.”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  He let out a broken laugh. “Thanks.”

  Dixie’s ears twitched. “She almost didn’t come back.”

  Nolan froze.

  Dixie’s voice dropped lower, softer, stripped of sarcasm. “When she collapsed in that room… the Hollow King touched her. The pressure of him brushed her pattern. If it had gone deeper—if he had taken one more breath into her mind—”

  Her voice caught.

  A tiny, terrible sound.

  Nolan knelt without thinking, coming eye?level with her. “Dixie…”

  “She is my witch,” Dixie whispered. “My anchor. My reason for existing. And I smelled her slipping away. I smelled it, Nolan.”

  Her pupils thinned to razor lines.

  “And you—” She jabbed a paw into his chest. “—were the one holding her.”

  He didn’t back away. “I wasn’t going to let her fall.”

  “You didn’t.” Dixie’s tail lashed. “But you don’t understand what that moment meant. If she had gone fully hollow — if her name had emptied — I would have… unraveled.”

  The word shook.

  Nolan’s breath hitched. “Dixie, I didn’t know.”

  “You’re not supposed to know,” she snapped. “But ignorance is dangerous. And you are dangerously… attached.”

  “Attached?” he echoed.

  “Yes.” Her eyes narrowed. “You look at her the way witches look at spells they don’t know how to cast.”

  Nolan flushed. “That’s not—”

  “It is,” she interrupted.

  He ran both hands through his hair, looking tired, cornered. “Fine. Yes. I care about her. A lot. She’s—”

  Important. Brilliant. Courageous. More than she realizes.

  He didn’t say any of that.

  He just exhaled. “She matters.”

  Dixie studied him.

  Really studied him.

  Then her expression — such as a cat’s expression could shift — softened by a degree.

  “Good,” she murmured. “Because she will need someone who can see her when she cannot see herself.”

  Nolan blinked. “Dixie…”

  “I am not finished.”

  He waited.

  “If you stay,” she said, voice steady, “you will be hurt. You will lose pieces of your memory. You will be marked. Perhaps killed. The Archivist enjoys tidy conclusions, and he will not tolerate you as a loose thread.”

  Nolan swallowed. “I figured.”

  Dixie leaned forward, placing her forehead briefly, gently, against his knee — a gesture so intimate and fleeting he wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it.

  “Then answer this,” she said softly. “Are you going to run?”

  Nolan looked at Trixie, small and pale under the quilt, her curls tangled against the pillow, her breath uneven.

  Then he looked back at Dixie.

  And shook his head.

  “No.”

  Dixie’s shoulders lowered — not relaxed, but relieved.

  “Good,” she said. “Because if you do… I will hunt you.”

  He snorted. “I believe that.”

  “You should.” She padded back toward the couch, tail swaying. “Now sit down, Detective. You’re wearing a hole in her rug with your pointless pacing.”

  He sat beside Trixie, brushing a strand of red hair from her cheek.

  Dixie curled up on her witch’s chest, eyes half?closed.

  Neither of them slept.

  Both of them kept watch.