They kept going, trading bits of the school between them: the best window seats in the library, which vending machine ate your money, which stairs squeaked if you tried to sneak in late. It should have been overwhelming. Instead, it felt like being handed a map one landmark at a time.

  I was halfway to relaxing when movement at the edge of my vision snagged my attention.

  The humanities building door swung open. A cluster of kids poured out, spilling down the steps in knots of two and three. In the middle of them, a boy jogged down the last couple of stairs, laughing at something someone said, shouldering his backpack higher.

  Shaggy hair. Tie loose, like it had fallen asleep in the middle of English. His face turned just enough that I caught the line of his jaw, the slope of his nose.

  My stomach flipped.

  It took a heartbeat for my brain to recall the context—from alley shadow and monster stink, from hoodie sleeves shoved up over claw marks—to sun and blazer and a group project handout folded in his fist. Then the two images slammed together and stuck.

  Him.

  A breath punched out of me in a tiny, sharp sound.

  Both twins’ heads snapped toward me, Sera looked curious, Shara, concerned.

  “You okay?” Sera asked.

  I looked back at the boy. He’d broken away from his group, heading across the quad in our general direction. Up close, the differences were sharper. No blood. No snarling thing with a poisonous halo trying to take his arm off. But under the rolled-back cuffs of his blazer, faint pale lines laddered his forearms—scars.

  “Oh,” Shara breathed, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her gaze had jumped past my shoulder. Her smile got broader. “Theo.”

  They shot to their feet in the same motion, grass scattering.

  “Theo!” Sera called, waving.

  He looked over, saw them, and lit up like someone had flipped a switch. The easy, nonchalant walk turned into a loose, bounding stride. In three seconds, he closed the distance, slipping an arm around each twin’s shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Up close, he was…fine. Cute, in a scruffy, boy-on-a-band-poster way. His hair flopped into his eyes; his grin showed slightly crooked teeth that somehow made it worse and better at once. His blazer was technically regulation, but the top button of his shirt was undone, tie knotted low and already loosening.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Ladies,” he said, drawing the word out just enough to be a joke. His voice had a warm rasp to it, like he’d laughed his throat out one too many times. “You skipping practice to lounge in the sun? Coach know?”

  “Active recovery,” Sera said primly, leaning into his side.

  “It’s on the schedule,” Shara added.

  He laughed, this low, pleased sound, and squeezed them both briefly. They went pink. Actual, visible flush on faces I’d just watched stay calm talking about Olympic Trials.

  I stared. I couldn’t help it. They were reacting to him like he was Jacob Elordi stepping out of a Netflix original, and I was just…not seeing it. Objectively attractive, sure. Charismatic, yeah. But this was way out of proportion.

  My brain did this little click, flipping to a different file: Ms. Cho. The way Mom had gone soft-faced and chatty around her while I just felt…nothing. How Cho expected me to be “likable” and “charismatic” like they were knobs I could turn up, and how whatever she was doing slid right off me.

  I focused on that memory and then on him.

  There it was—the same invisible weight in the air. Not as strong as with Ms. Cho, fuzzier around the edges, but definitely the same flavor. Whatever made other people lean in and light up around him? It wasn’t just good hair. It was something else entirely.

  He finally seemed to notice me. His gaze slid past the twins and landed. For a beat, his expression stayed in flirty autopilot.

  “And who,” he said, dialling the charm up, “is your very serious-looking friend?”

  He aimed the full wattage of his smile at me, like he expected me to dissolve on the spot. My spine did the opposite. It straightened.

  “Diana,” I said. “New.” I did not add: I watched a creature try to eat you in an alley while you waved a sword at it.

  His smile faltered, just a hair, when I didn’t do the whole giggle-hair-tuck thing. Confusion flickered—like he’d pulled a lever and gotten the wrong sound.

  Then something shifted behind his eyes. The performance peeled back a layer. He really looked at me.

  Up close, his irises were this muddy green-brown, like river water in shade. A faint line cut through his left eyebrow, a scar I hadn’t registered from a distance. There was no recognition there—of course there wouldn’t be; he’d never seen me that night—but something like curiosity sparked as he took me in.

  “Diana,” he repeated, losing the flirty lilt. “Good name, like the goddess of the hunt.” The corners of his mouth hitched up again, but it was a different shape now. Less trying-to-impress, more…pleased. “Nice to meet you for real.”

  For real.

  A tiny chill traced my spine.

  “Same,” I said, because my mother had raised me with basic manners even around boys who thought the sun rose because they smiled at it.

  The twins looked between us like they were watching the first episode of a show they’d been dying to see. Sera’s flush hadn’t faded. Shara was still close enough to his side that her shoulder brushed his ribs every time she breathed. At least I thought I got them right. Somewhere between sitting on the grass and Theo walking out of the building I’d lost track of which was who.

  I didn’t get it. I didn’t get him. But I got one thing crystal clear: wherever monsters and bleach-scrubbed alleys fit into this school, this boy was standing in the middle of it.