On top of the cage is a folded piece of paper. Dawes hands it to me.
I unfold it.
Block letters. Neat handwriting.
Resume operations. Start with these.
I fold the paper and put it in my pocket.
The father hasn’t stopped watching me. The mother has her arms around both children, her face turned into the girl’s hair. The boy is looking at me the way I’ve seen wolves look at people who hold their lives in their hands. Comprehension. The understanding that what happens next is decided by someone outside the cage.
It lands in me. Recognition, not surprise. This is what I built. Not in this specific form, not with a cage on my lawn, but this. The delivery. The choice handed to me in the simplest possible terms.
I look at the father. “How long since you ate?”
“Two days. Maybe three. The kids had some water this morning.”
“Dawes. Bolt cutter.”
He doesn’t ask. Doesn’t hesitate. He goes.
While he’s gone, I stand in the grass with the family, the cage, and the note in my pocket. I don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say that means anything until the lock is off. Words without action are what I’ve been trading in for a decade. I’m done with that.
Dawes comes back. I fit the jaws around the padlock — industrial, heavy, the kind meant for livestock — and I squeeze until the lock shears. The cage door swings open.
The family doesn’t move.
I step back. Give them space.
“You can come out. Take whatever time you need. I need to make a call before I can tell you what happens next. Dawes will get you water.”
Dawes disappears toward the equipment shed. I walk fifteen feet down the fence line and pull out my phone. I scroll through the council contacts that I transferred onto this phone years ago. The Ravenclaw number. Never used because they’re magic-blood.
I dial.
It rings. A woman answers. Voice clipped. “Hello.”
“Brenna Corvus?”
“Yes?”
“This is Garrett Forrester.”
“I know. Why are you calling?”
“The Syndicate delivered a family to my gate an hour ago. Two adults, two children. Magic-blood. Intercepted in transit somewhere I don’t know. Beaten but alive. I need a safe place to send them.”
Silence. She’s thinking. I don’t fill it.
“How old are the children?”
“Boy, maybe seven. Girl, five or six.”
“And you’re asking me to take them.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”