A moment later, Eli shuffled into the room.
He looked hollow-eyed but awake, wearing one of Joell’s oversized hoodies and clutching a bowl of cereal like it was an offering to some breakfast god. He paused when he saw her.
Katie turned the pad toward him. “Is this familiar?”
Eli froze.
Then, wordlessly, he rolled up his sleeve.
There it was. Fresh on his arm, gleaming faintly like wet ink, was exactly the same symbol. Except his version writhed subtly with light, pulsing like it was breathing.
Katie whispered, “We’re connected.”
Bubbles bobbed in agreement. “You are the key, and he is the lock. Or maybe the other way around. Hard to say.”
Eli dropped into the armchair across from her. “I think I dreamed it too. But I didn’t know what it meant.”
“You said the markings were a map,” Katie said. “But maybe this one’s a door. I just have a feeling… Roots and an eye?”
Sahara entered a moment later, holding a mug that readI Studied Dead Languages So You Don’t Have To.Her braid was still damp from the shower, and her tone suggested she’d been listening outside the door for at least a minute.
“You two just made my job harder,” she said, setting her mug down and pulling a stack of parchment from her tote. She dropped the parchment next to Katie’s sketch and started lining up symbols across the table, muttering, “Okay, so this one,” she tapped the root-like tendrils, “matches a variant I saw in the Ostara sequence. And this part,” she pointed to the eye, “looks like a convergence glyph. Not convergence like ‘let’s all meet at Starbucks,’ but convergence like a crossing of planes or triangulation.”
Eli paled.
“Does that mean it’s closing in? Getting close to finding us?” Katie asked.
Sahara didn’t answer right away. “It might mean it’s looking, or it’s found you two and is watching for someone else to complete the triangulation.”
The lights flickered once. “Damn. I hate it when the mansion tries to communicate.”
“Why?” Eli asked.
“Just that it means ghosts are around. Don’t worry, they’re friendly. I think,” Katie said.
Bubbles twitched in midair.
Joell poked her head around the corner. Her voice was brisk but not unkind. “Morning briefing in the library. Rayna got a message from Payne.”
Katie stood, still clutching the sketchpad. “What kind of message?”
“Not the ‘wish you were here’ kind.” She pointed to Eli’s new pulsing tattoo. “I’m guessing it’s related to that.”
They followed her through the long corridor, past walls hung with ancestral portraits and age-worn tapestries. The L.A.W. mansion always felt old and weird, but today the air carried an edge of urgency beneath the wood polish, overpowering the lavender calming spells.
Rayna stood in the library in fresh combat boots and yesterday’s eyeliner. She was holding her phone and not looking thrilled about it.
“Payne and my pets are alive,” she announced without preamble. “My brownstone’s not in great shape, but he, Michael, and Daniel fought off a mimic. It got through the wards.”
Lioness let out a low whistle. “Didn’t think that was possible.”
“It shouldn’t be,” Rayna said. “But it did. Payne said it was testing them. Learning. And it used my face to throw them off.”
Katie felt a spike of cold panic.
Rayna continued, “We think it’s after the teens. That’s the only thing that makes sense. The markings, the dream-visions, the graffiti. It’s trying to crack the code before we do.”
“You found me before the woman did. The woman who was supposed to find me in the Between,” Eli said. “Now you’re all in her way.”