Page 87 of Haunt Me, Maybe

We bolted down the spiral stairs and out the broken door, into the morning. The town square lay quiet and ordinary, like nothing had happened. But something very much had. Aven’s magic flared outside one of the safe places, and away from Fenn.

Gideon would have felt it.

We ran until we were around the corner from the inn, slipping onto the residential streets where the houses were still sleeping. Aven slowed first and leaned against a fence, chest heaving.

I turned to her, eyes wide. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, her entire frame shaking. “Yeah. But…he knows. He definitely felt that.”

I’d figured as much. “Then it’s time. We start today. Leave traces around town. Small flares. We’ll keep him chasing the shadows and then, at the end of the week, let out the real pulse. The trap.”

I stepped close and cupped her face. My thumbs brushed her cheeks, still flushed from everything we’d almost done. That step we’d almost taken.

“We’ve got this,” I swore. “You’ve got this.”

She managed a small, determined smile. The festival was days away. The plan was in motion. And whatever waited on the other side, it would finally all be over. One way or another.

I didn’t shake. Not anymore.

Death burned most of that out of me; the reflex, the adrenaline, the biological fallout of fear. A lifetime of being untouchable should have made me immune to panic. But as we tore down the residential streets toward the inn, Aven’s boots slapping the pavement and her ragged breath loud in the crisp morning air, something inside me felt unsteady. Like a fault line cracked open beneath my ribs.

Aven ran beside me, cheeks flushed, hair coming loose from its knot, eyes wide and bright with the aftermath of magic, almost-sex, and near-death all tangled together. She didn’t look back once. Neither did I. The warped crows had followed the lure; we still heard their distant, furious shrieks fading toward the edge of town like a storm moving off.

The inn rose ahead of us, its porch light burning from the night before. We took the stairs two at a time and climbed straight to the attic without speaking. The wards recognized us and parted like water before the door clicked closed with a soft, final sound.

Fenn already waited.

He sat in the center of the room, his small, dark body rigid and his golden eyes glowing faintly in the morning light. He’d felt it too, that flare of Aven’s magic. It would have rung through every ley line in a fifty-mile radius like a struck bell. As it was supposed to.

He didn’t move when we burst in. He simply lifted his head and fixed us with that unblinking stare.

Aven dropped to her knees beside him, breathing hard. “Fenn⁠—”

It all spilled out. The crows, their beaks warped into blades, the overwhelming amount of them. I leaned against the wall, arms folded to keep my hands from curling into fists.

“They came after us like a strike team. No hesitation. No warning. They dove straight for her throat.”

They were sent to kill, Fenn told Aven. But not you.

He hit me with a pointed look, pupils narrow and pissed off. Like he could tell what we’d been up to before the attack. Like he knew I’d been right on top of her when they descended, claws out. Was I what they were after then?

Aven’s breath caught. She looked at him and then at me. “Gideon knows?”

Fenn gave her a long, level stare—the kind that said he’d seen centuries of fools underestimate the things that hunted witches.

He knows something is protecting you, he said, quietly. He may not know the specifics, but he knows that a battle awaits him this time.

The attic constricted suddenly, the ceiling pressing down with the faint smell of old cedar and candle wax.

I pushed off the wall, fury fueling my nonexistent veins. “Good. Let him come prepared. We’ll be ready.”

Fenn’s eyes narrowed. You think your anger will be enough?

“I think seventy years of waiting has given me plenty of practice at being patient,” I said. “But I’m done waiting. He wants a fight? He’ll get one.”

Aven looked between us, then down at her hands, still trembling from the surge of magic and a healthy dose of fear.

“Do we stick to the same plan?”