Page 8 of Autumn L.A.W

Lioness looked like she’d forgotten what speaking was.

Sahara answered for her. “She won’t need it.”

Cal walked off with one last glance over his shoulder. Lioness waved weakly.

Sahara waited until he was out of earshot before rounding on her. “No.”

Lioness blinked. “What?”

“No,” Sahara repeated. “Absolutely not. You are not adopting a firefighter today. We have an ancient prison cracking open beneath Central Park.”

Lioness scowled. “I’m not adopting him. He just… showed up.”

“Men don’t just show up,” Sahara said. “Not ones with shoulders like that.”

Lioness opened her mouth, probably to protest the shoulders comment, then shut it again. Hey, what can you say to refute the truth?

Sahara softened a fraction. Maybe an eighth of a fraction. “Look. I’m not saying you can’t talk to people. I’m saying, be careful. I know you. You feel things deeply. And right now, you’re vulnerable after that vision.”

Lioness’s expression wavered, revealing the flicker of uncertainty she’d been hiding.

“Yeah,” Lioness admitted. “The vision… It shook me.”

Sahara exhaled. Good. Honesty she could work with. “Then stay close. We need to reestablish grounding sigils and wards before anything else destabilizes.”

Lioness nodded. “Okay. I’m with you.”

Sahara tucked her ruined notebook under her arm and nudged Lioness gently forward. “Come on, Disaster Child.”

Lioness smiled faintly. “Lead the way, Sand Princess.”

A fresh tremor rippled under their boots—subtle, but undeniable. Sahara didn’t need a vision to translate it.

The thing beneath the earth was getting impatient.

CHAPTER 3

Lioness Graves had seen some weird things in Central Park—joggers in dinosaur pajamas, marriage proposals written by bad poets, a guy once trying to catch pigeons with his bare hands. But today? Today blew all of that out of the water.

The world lurched. Not a rumble. More of an honest-to-Goddess tremor that made the trees shiver and sent a flock of birds blasting upward like confetti out of a cannon.

Lioness stumbled forward, catching herself on the caution tape that she and Sahara had not been authorized to put up but did anyway. Her sketchbook slipped from her fingers and flopped onto the grass.

“Okay,” she said aloud, because sometimes narrating her life helped. “That was not normal. That was ‘something is waking up, and it’s out to get us’ levels of abnormal.”

The cracked earth in front of her split again. A sharp seam zigzagged across the ground like a lightning bolt.

“Lioness!” Sahara called, barreling toward her from the far side of the site, ponytail whipping. “Back up. Now.”

Lioness didn’t argue. Mostly because the ground was shifting under her boots, and arguing required stability. She hopped backward just as the crack widened and released a gust of air so cold it slapped her across the face.

She reeled. “What the—? Did someone leave the door to Antarctica open?”

“No,” Sahara said, sliding to her side. “Worse. I think the obelisk seal ruptured.”

Before Lioness could respond, a spike of nausea slammed into her gut so hard she hunched over. Her vision blurred at the edges. Heat prickled across her skin. Hot, then cold, then hot again, like a thermostat having a seizure.

Sahara swayed beside her. “Lioness? Do you feel⁠—”